Maitland Leroy Osborne: A Biographical Sketch
Hanna Wallinger
Associate Professor of American Studies, University of Salzburg
The first clue to the identity and the scope of Osborne’s work comes from the index to the FICTIONMAGS contents.1 The name is listed as “Osborne, Maitland LeRoy” and the period of his life erroneously as 1846 to 1918. Osborne is indexed with a number of publications (short stories, poems, sketches, and articles) in the National Magazine in the period between July 1899 and October 1914, as well as with a few publications in several mass market magazines with an emphasis on fiction such as Munsey’s, the Monthly Story Magazine, the Ocean, Gunter’s Magazine, and the All-Story Magazine. The name O.S. Borne—his thinly disguised pen name that also appears in the Colored American Magazine—is listed (without any further information) with publications in the National Magazine between November 1899 and March 1900. Except for birth and death dates this list provides reliable information on the publications by Osborne/Borne and points to the National Magazine as his major publisher. Osborne is also listed in the Black Literature Index with a poem published in the Richmond Planet in August 1900.
The available United States Federal Census records—a Civil War Pension Index, a Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles Index, and several U.S. City Directories—reveal that there were two Maitland Leroy Osbornes (the name being spelled Maitland L. or Maitland Le Roy and Osborn without the closing “e”): father and son. The family and all family members are listed in the census records as white. The elder Osborne (1846-1918) grew up in Maine and was a Civil War veteran. His son Maitland Leroy was born April 9, 1871. His mother died less than a year after his birth. The father moved with his second wife and young son to Indiana where he worked as a carpenter. The census record of 1880 shows that their neighborhood consisted of mainly immigrant families and that the household employed a black hod carrier by the name of Samuel Green. Geography and demography seem to preclude the possibility that the family was passing for white. In “Firelight Fancies,” a poem published in the National Magazine in March 1901, Osborne remembers his “childhood on the farm” as a happy and carefree time.2 By 1900 the family had moved back to Connecticut and then to Massachusetts, where the elder Osborne died in 1918.3
In the census record of 1900 the twenty-nine-year-old Maitland Leroy Osborne, a resident of Everett Ward, Middlesex, MA, is listed as a journalist living with his paternal uncle, his aunt, and their daughter Stella Adele, whom he married in 1905. The records of 1910, 1920, and 1930 locate him in Middlesex and later Quincy, Massachusetts, living with his parents-in-law and wife, whom he supported as “superintendent of a Publishing House” (1910 census), and “Foreman, Publishing House” (1920), and “Superintendent, Publishing House” (1930). All of the census entries identify him and his family as white and situate him in a predominantly white working- and lower-middle-class neighborhood. The 1940 census indicated he continued to reside lived in Quincy, and that he was unemployed and seeking work. His occupation is listed as printer at a publishing house. He died Oct 28, 1960 in Quincy.4
The decisive clue to the identity of the younger Osborne as the writer of the short stories and The Stress of Impulse, the first serial novel in the Colored American Magazine, comes in a collection of poetry, Pipe Dreams, published by George H. Ellis in Boston. The author’s name is “A. Vagrant,” but the address to the reader (“Apology”) is signed by Maitland LeRoy Osborne, Everett, Mass., June, 1908, and the list of titles by the same author includes The Stress of Impulse. There can be no doubt, therefore, that it is the younger Osborne we are talking about, that he identified as white, and that he lived from 1871 to 1960.
Osborne was active as a writer until the 1940s, publishing vignettes, occasional poetry, political essays,5 and essays on various subjects in mainstream periodicals.6 His “The Romance of Ancient Egypt” bears a publication date of 1923 and “Old Guy” appeared in a detective magazine in 1940.7 The fact that he listed his profession as foreman and superintendent in census polls up to 1930 and as printer in 1940 points to the fact that he was employed at a publishing house but not necessarily as a writer. Although between 1899 and 1901 he published mainly in the Colored American Magazine, he seems to have maintained a lasting relationship with the National Magazine, which carried nine stories by him between July 1899 and October 1914. The only evidence of his publishing in a black periodical other than the Colored American Magazine is his poem “Where the Farmhouse Stood,” which appeared in the black-owned Richmond Planet on 18 August 1900. Other than a co-authored piece on Belgian hares (April 1901), his record of publication with the Colored American Magazine stops after the final installment of The Stress of Impulse in January 1901, and he is not profiled in R. S. Elliott’s “The Story of Our Magazine” of May 1901 despite this long and informative article coming only shortly after the conclusion of Osborne’s novel.
1. This index was entered by members of the FICTIONMAGS mailing list whose purpose it is “to discuss the history of fiction magazines, and to exchange information about magazines which have carried fiction, past or present.” See http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/0start.htm ↩
2. Osborne, “Firelight Fancies,” National Magazine, March 1901, 521. ↩
3. The elder Osborne was born Oct. 7, 1846, in Norridgewood, Somerset County, Maine, and died July 10, 1918, in Whitman, Plymouth County, MA. He enlisted on Nov. 13, 1863, as a private in Company K, Maine, 29th Infantry Regiment, where he mustered out as 1st Sergeant in 1866. He married Mary Abby Blake (b. Nov. 13, 1848, in Maine) on Dec. 4, 1869. Their son Maitland Leroy was born April 9, 1871, and his mother died Feb. 17, 1872, when young Maitland was not even a year old. The father married Clara A. Clark a good year later on Feb. 26, 1873, in Wakefield, Middlesex County, MA. This is the woman young Maitland knew as and identified on subsequent census questionnaires as his mother. In 1900 the family had moved back to Salisbury Township, Litchfield, CT, and in 1910 to Plymouth, MA. The elder Osborne’s profession is given as farmer. He is buried in Colebrook Cemetery Whitman, Plymouth Co, MA. All biographical data are collected from ancestry.com and are based upon the 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940 United Stated Federal Census records, a Civil War Pension Index, a Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles index, U.S. City Directories (for Everett, MA, and Quincy, MA). Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2009 and 2010. I would like to thank John Ulrich, student research services at Harvard University, for helping me get started with this database.↩
4. I want to thank Lee Osborne and Bob Boston for finding the day of his death and the grave. E-mail to author March 25, 2013.↩
5. For example “Jefferson and the Dark Days of ’14” (signed by O.S. Borne), National Magazine (February 1900): 551-56; “The Birth of the Monroe Doctrine” (signed by O.S. Borne), National Magazine (March 1900): 599-614; “Andrew Jackson and Nullification,” National Magazine (April 1900): 713-16; “In the Haunts of Daniel Webster,” National Magazine (June 1900): 168-176.↩
6. See “The Author of ‘David Harum,’” National Magazine (August 1899): 455-58; “In the American Land of Canaan,” National Magazine (October 1899): 15-18; “Second International Congregational Council,” National Magazine (November 1899): 193-97; “Recollections of P.T. Barnum,” National Magazine (March 1900): 641-48; “Jack London and ‘The Son of Wolf’,” National Magazine (May 1900): 50-53. The use of O.S. Borne as a name is restricted to the period between November 1899 and May 1900 and only for issues where there is a second publication under the name of Osborne. The same is true for the Colored American Magazine. His only publication as O.S. Borne comes in May 1900 in the same issue as his short story “The Wild Mountain Rose” under the name Maitland Leroy Osborne.↩
7. Osborne’s short story “Old Guy” is reprinted in 100 Dastardly Little Detective Stories, selected by Robert Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1993) with an acknowledgment (together with other stories) to Frank A. Munsey Company 1934-41. It was originally published in Detective Fiction Weekly 135.1 (24 February 1940). National Magazine also lists “The Romance of Ancient Egypt” by Osborne for its April 1923 issue.↩