Stoddard, Amos

, soldier, writer and diplomat, was born at Woodbury, Conn., Oct. 26, 1762. He was a son of James Stoddard and a descendant of Anthony Stoddard, who came from England about 1630 and settled at Boston. During the Revolutionary war he served in the Continental army, after which he became clerk of the Massachusetts supreme court. In 1798 President Adams commissioned him captain of artillery, and he was assigned to duty on the western frontier. As representative of the United States government, he received the transfer of Upper Louisiana from the Spanish authorities at St. Louis on March 9, 1804. Kansas was at that time a part of the transferred territory and came under the dominion of the United States government. Stoddard remained as civil commandant at St. Louis until Oct. 1, when he was ordered south. In 1807 he was promoted to the rank of major, and at the siege of Fort Meigs in the spring of 1813 he was wounded on May 5, and died a few days later. He was a member of the U. S. Philological Society and the New York Historical Society, and the author of a work entitled "Sketches, Historical and Descriptive, of Louisiana."

Pages 767-768 from volume II of Kansas: a cyclopedia of state history, embracing events, institutions, industries, counties, cities, towns, prominent persons, etc. ... / with a supplementary volume devoted to selected personal history and reminiscence. Standard Pub. Co. Chicago : 1912. 3 v. in 4. : front., ill., ports.; 28 cm. Vols. I-II edited by Frank W. Blackmar. Transcribed July 2002 by Carolyn Ward.