Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Meigs County-born satirist, journalist and short-story writer, author of The Devil's Dictionary and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," who served with the 9th Indiana Infantry in the Civil War and vanished in Mexico in 1913-1914.

Born June 24, 1842, log cabin at Horse Cave Creek, Meigs County
Died c. 1914, Mexico

Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

At a glance

Born: June 24, 1842, log cabin at Horse Cave Creek, Meigs County (Meigs County) source
Died: c. 1914, Mexico (disappeared; no death record exists) source
Buried: unknown; no grave source
Also known as: Ambrose Bierce, Bitter Bierce
Education: Kentucky Military Institute, Kentucky, to 1860
Known as: Writer

Life story

Ambrose Bierce was born at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, tenth of thirteen children, all with names starting with A. The family soon moved to Kosciusko County, Indiana, where he went to school in Warsaw.

He worked as a printer's helper, attended the Kentucky Military Institute, and fought in the Union Army from 1861, including Shiloh and Kennesaw Mountain, where a head wound ended his service.

He became a San Francisco columnist and satirist, working for Hearst. His books include Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891) and The Devil's Dictionary (1906).

In late 1913 he went to Mexico as an observer with Pancho Villa's army. His last letter is dated 26 December 1913, and no one has found him.

Ohio ties

Horse Cave Creek (1842 to early childhood)
birthplace, a log cabin; the family later moved to Kosciusko County, Indiana Meigs County · source
Akron (family tie, 1830s-1876)
home of his uncle Lucius Verus Bierce, Akron mayor, Ohio state senator and Patriot War commander Summit County · source

Timeline

1842 Born June 24 in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek, Meigs County, the tenth of thirteen children of Marcus Aurelius and Laura Sherwood Bierce. source
1857 Having grown up in Kosciusko County, Indiana, left home at 15 to work as a printer's devil on the Northern Indianan in Warsaw. source
1860 His brief time at the Kentucky Military Institute ended when the school closed after a fire. source
1861 Enlisted as a private in Company C, 9th Indiana Infantry, and was at Philippi, (West) Virginia, on June 3. source
1862 In March the 9th Indiana joined William B. Hazen's 19th Brigade in the Army of the Ohio; Bierce fought at Shiloh on April 6-7. source
1863 Commissioned first lieutenant in April and served on Hazen's staff as a topographical engineer; Hazen, raised in Hiram, Ohio, had first commanded the 41st Ohio Infantry. source
1864 On May 27 at Pickett's Mill, Georgia, Hazen's brigade attacked in four battalions, the front two led by the colonels of the 41st Ohio and 124th Ohio; in June Bierce was badly wounded in the head at Kennesaw Mountain. source
1865 Resigned in January because of the effects of his head wound. source
1876 His uncle Lucius Verus Bierce died November 11 in Akron, leaving property to the city for Bierce Park, later the site of the Akron Public Library. source
1881 His first "Devil's Dictionary" column appeared on March 5. source
1891 Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, including "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," was published in San Francisco by E. L. G. Steele. source
1913 Left Washington in October to tour Civil War battlefields, crossed into Mexico, and wrote his last known letter, in December from Chihuahua, saying he had attached himself to a division of Villa's army. source
1919 The Akron Evening Times of April 30 reported him killed by Villa's forces, describing him as the nephew of a former Akron mayor; his fate was never confirmed. source

What Ambrose is known for

The Devil's Dictionary
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891)
Can Such Things Be? (1893)
Fantastic Fables (1899)
The Cynic's Word Book / The Devil's Dictionary (1906)
Collected Works (12 vols, 1909-1912)
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890)

Stories

An Ohio-born officer in an Indiana regiment

Bierce left Meigs County as a small child, so it was as an Indiana volunteer that he went to war in 1861, a private in Company C of the 9th Indiana. The regiment was sent into western Virginia, where Bierce saw his first fight at Philippi on June 3, 1861, and in March 1862 it was put into William B. Hazen's 19th Brigade of the Army of the Ohio. That brigade fought at Shiloh, Stones River, Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, and in 1864 through the Atlanta campaign. Bierce rose from sergeant to first lieutenant and joined Hazen's staff as a topographical engineer. He resigned in January 1865 after a head wound at Kennesaw Mountain, and the regiment itself was mustered out in Texas that September.

Source

The crime at Pickett's Mill

On May 27, 1864, at Pickett's Mill, Georgia, Hazen's brigade was sent forward without support against the Confederate line. Bierce, on Hazen's staff, later described the brigade formed in four battalions of about two hundred yards' front: the right front led by Colonel R. L. Kimberly of the 41st Ohio, the left front by Colonel O. H. Payne of the 124th Ohio, and the rear by two Kentucky colonels. Its nine regiments had been worn down to fewer than two hundred men each. Bierce put the Union loss at about 1,400 men, nearly half of them killed or wounded in Hazen's brigade in less than thirty minutes of fighting. His account, "The Crime at Pickett's Mill," is in the first volume of his Collected Works.

Source

The other Bierce of Ohio

Ambrose's uncle, Lucius Verus Bierce, was born in Connecticut in 1801 and made his life in Akron, where he was mayor in 1839, 1841, 1844, 1849 and 1867-1868 and represented the district in the Ohio Senate in 1862-1863. He was commander-in-chief of the Patriot forces that raided Canada after the Battle of the Windmill, with a reward of 2,000 pounds sterling offered for his capture, and he later aided John Brown's Harpers Ferry raid with money or arms. He gave $5,000 for books, and the University of Akron's Bierce Library is named for him; he also left his High and Market streets property to the city for Bierce Park, later the site of the public library. When an Akron paper reported Ambrose's death in Mexico in 1919, it identified him as the former mayor's nephew.

Source

The last letter

In October 1913, at 71, Bierce left Washington, writing to friends that they must forgive his obstinacy in not dying where he was. He crossed into revolutionary Mexico. In December his daughter received what proved to be his last known letter, dated from Chihuahua, saying he had attached himself unofficially to a division of Pancho Villa's army and mentioning a coming advance on Ojinaga. Nothing more was ever heard from him. George Sterling, writing the memoir for the 1922 edition of his letters, said no one could say whether illness overtook him or he went deliberately toward death.

Source

Honors and things named for them

Grolier Club list of 100 influential American books (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians)

Family

father: Marcus Aurelius Bierce
spouse: Mary Ellen 'Mollie' Day

Sites to know

Homes, graves, markers, museums and monuments; the numbered ones are on the map.

1 Ohio Historical Marker 15-53, Birthplace of Ambrose Bierce (in front of Eastern Local High School)
Reedsville, 38900 OH 7 Meigs County · source
Birthplace site, log cabin at Horse Cave Creek (unknown)
Horse Cave Creek, Meigs County Meigs County · source

Ohio places

Where Ambrose Bierce was born, lived, worked and is remembered, with the ZIP code, town and county pages for each.

Born: Pomeroy (county-seat stand-in for Horse Cave Creek), Meigs County ZIP 45769 (approximate) · Pomeroy · Meigs County

Myths and corrections

Things often said about Ambrose Bierce, and what the record shows.

Often said Ambrose Bierce served in an Ohio regiment.

The record Though born in Meigs County, he enlisted in Company C of the 9th Indiana Infantry. The Ohio link is that the regiment served in William B. Hazen's brigade, which included the 41st and 124th Ohio, and Bierce served on Hazen's staff. source

Often said The University of Akron's Bierce Library is named for Ambrose Bierce.

The record It is named for his uncle, Lucius Verus Bierce, the Akron mayor who gave $5,000 for books. source

Often said Bierce was executed by Pancho Villa's men (as the Akron Evening Times reported in 1919).

The record Unproven. His last known letter is from Chihuahua in December 1913; no record of his death has been found, and several theories compete. source

Fate in Mexico is unknown: theories include execution by Villa's or Huertista forces, or a deliberate vanishing; no body has been found.

Documents

Primary records: patents, letters, court and government files, nominations and old county histories, each at the archive that holds it.

The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 1, with "Bits of Autobiography" ("What I Saw of Shiloh," "The Crime at Pickett's Mill") (Project Gutenberg #13541) 1909, Project Gutenberg
The Letters of Ambrose Bierce, with a memoir by George Sterling (Project Gutenberg #36218) 1922, Project Gutenberg
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (San Francisco: E. L. G. Steele, 1891), scan 1891, Internet Archive
The Devil's Dictionary (Project Gutenberg #972) 1911, Project Gutenberg

Pictures

Free to use with the credit shown. Select a picture for the original and its license.

Front cover of the 1903 first edition of The Testimony of the Suns and Other Poems by American poet George Ste...
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Leading critic Ashton Stevens interviews poet George Sterling and his friend Herman George Scheffauer for the ...
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1909 sonnet "The California Condor" typescript hand-corrected and signed by George Sterling with comments by A...
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The first "The Devil's Dictionary" column by Ambrose Bierce, from The Wasp, 5 March 1881, vol. 6 no. 240, page...
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Couverture anglaise originale de The Fiend's Delight (1873) d'Ambrose Bierce
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Title page for the book Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?). New York: The Cassell Publishing C...
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Os contos Completos
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First page of January 1904 first typewritten draft of "A Wine of Wizardry" with comments in black ink by Georg...
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First page to "Psychological Shipwreck", a short story, as published in Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce ...
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Tales of Soldiers and Civilians 1st ed title pg
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Scanned copy of page 71 of the pulp magazine "Weird Tales (September 1923, volume 2, number 2) showing the sto...
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Ambrose Bierce, American author
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