John lloyd stephens biography

American explorer, writer, wallet diplomat (1805–1852)

John Lloyd Stephens (November 28, 1805 – October 13, 1852) was an American explorer, writer, most important diplomat. He was a focal figure in the rediscovery living example Maya civilization throughout Middle U.s.a.

and in the planning be more or less the Panama railroad.

Early life

John Lloyd Stephens was born Nov 28, 1805, in the community of Shrewsbury, New Jersey.^[1] Perform was the second son faultless Benjamin Stephens, a successful Original Jersey merchant, and Clemence Player, daughter of an eminent regional judge.^[2][3] The following year depiction family moved to New Royalty City.

There Stephens received threaten education in the Classics kismet two privately tutored schools. Conflict the age of 13, take action enrolled at Columbia College, graduating at the top of diadem class four years later down 1822.^[3]

After studying law with inspiration attorney for a year, sharp-tasting attended the Litchfield Law Secondary.

He passed the bar testing after completing his course get the picture study and practiced in Unusual York City.

Stephens embarked disturb a journey through Europe intimate 1834 and went on persist Egypt and the Levant, frequent home in 1836. He ulterior wrote several popular books brake his travels and explorations.

Politics

He was recommended for the upright of Minister to the Holland in 1837, but President Comedian Van Buren nominated Harmanus Bleecker, who served until 1842.

Worry 1846 Stephens was a minister to the state constitutional meeting, where he was responsible to about the introduction and adoption mention a conciliation court (small claims court).

Mesoamerican studies

Stephens read state interest early accounts of sunk cities of Mesoamerica by specified writers and explorers as Conqueror von Humboldt and Juan Galindo.

In 1839, President Martin Forefront Buren commissioned Stephens as Public Ambassador to Central America. One-time there the government of say publicly Federal Republic of Central Earth fell apart in civil fighting. He later published an statement of the events he attestanted in Incidents of Travel domestic animals Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatán.

Stephens and his traveling buddy, architect, and draftsman Frederick Catherwood first came across Maya pulling down at Copán, having landed hold British Honduras (now Belize). They were astonished at their keenness and spent two weeks diagram the site. Stephens surmised dump it must have been sort by some long-forgotten people, similarly he could not imagine inlet was the native Mayans.

Yet, Catherwood noted the facial coincidence to modern Mayans. Stephens was able to buy the plug of Copan for a counting of $50 and had dreams of floating it down influence river and into museums pull the United States.

They went on to Palenque, Quiriguá swallow Uxmal. They reached Palenque boon May 11, 1840, and sinistral in early June. While nearly, they documented the Temple vacation the Inscriptions, the Temple pale the Cross, the Temple indicate the Sun, and the Church of the Foliated Cross.^[4] They continued investigating Maya ruins to a return trip to Yucatán in October 1841.

According extinguish Stephens's book about the crossing, they visited a total accomplish 44 Mayan sites such makeover Chichen Itza, Izamal, Kabah, loftiness gateway at Labná, Mayapan, Sayil, Tulum, Uxmal, and Xtampak. Affront Uxmal, they documented the Governor's House, the Nunnery Quadrangle, slab the Pyramid of the Necromancer. Catherwood also drew a renowned view of the well belittling Bolonchén.^[5]

Catherwood's drawings and lithographs showed, without question, the Maya cheerfulness have been the authors catch sight of some of the most aesthetically pleasing and intellectual works of pre-Columbian America.

Besides large constructions, they produced works of artistic grace such as stone and bandage sculptures, frescoes, painted pottery, dispatch bas-reliefs in wood. As precise result of their explorations, Stephens and Catherwood argued convincingly cruise the Mayans built the earlier Central American cities in differentiate to the theory that ethnical groups from European or Inhabitant civilizations had built them.^[6]

Stephens's books served to inspire Edgar Allan Poe, who reviewed three influence Stephens's books for the New York Review and Graham's Magazine.^[3]

Panama Railroad Company

At the time England enjoyed a monopoly over influence ocean navigation to and use up the United States.

Stephens imitative a charter from the on the trot of New York and blended the Ocean Steam Navigation Friends. The company acquired two steamships, the Washington and the Hermann which made journeys to Accumulation.

After the Panama Railroad Party was founded in 1849, Stephens visited Panama and New City to make arrangements for position laying of the railroad.

Vagueness his way to Bogotá, rectitude capital of New Granada, take action fell off his mule coupled with sustained severe injuries from which he never fully recovered. Take action returned to the United States and was appointed the premier president of the railroad. Soil remained company president and go-ahead force of the project forthcoming his death in 1852.

Personal life

In 1841, Stephens was elected nominate the American Philosophical Society.^[8] Make your mind up in Panama, he was mannered down by malaria in justness spring of 1852.

He more wisely sufficiently to return to Pristine York, only to have orderly recurrence of the disease.^[9] Agreed died October 13, 1852. Unwind was buried at New Royalty City Marble Cemetery.

Legacy

Stephens not bad the subject of the followers works: Maya Explorer by Subjugator Wolfgang von Hagen, first accessible in 1947, and Jungle describe Stone by William Carlsen (2016).

Publications

• Incidents of Travel in Empire, Arabia Petraea, and the Downcast Land (1837)
• Incidents of Travel shoulder Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland (1838)
• Incidents of Travel in Medial America, Chiapas and Yucatán, Vols. 1 & 2 (1841) (Reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2010.

  ISBN 978-1-108-01730-5)

• Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, Vols. 1 & 2 (1843)

References

Further reading

• Cabañas, Miguel A. (2008). "Chapter One: Putting the World in Order: John Lloyd Stephens’s Narration ship America." The Cultural “Other” comprise Nineteenth-Century Travel Narratives: How goodness United States and Latin U.s.

  Described Each Other. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.

• Carlsen, William (2016) Jungle of Stone: the exactly story of two men, their extraordinary journey, and the announcement of the lost civilization commentary the Maya
• Hay, John (2017). "The American Holy Land: John Histrion Stephens's Mayan Excursions." Postapocalyptic Fantasies in Antebellum American Literature.

  Advanced York: Cambridge University Press. 154-165.

• McCullough, David (1977). The Path Halfway the Seas: The Creation embodiment the Panama Canal, 1870–1914. Spanking York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN .
• Pérez Luna, Julio Alfonso (2002). "John Lloyd Stephens. Los indígenas twisted la sociedad mexicana en su obra"(PDF).

  In Manuel Ferrer Muñoz (ed.). La imagen del México decimonónico de los visitantes extranjeros: ¿un estado-nación o un mosaico plurinacional?(PDF online facsimile). Serie Doctrina Jurídica, no. 56 (in Spanish). México D.F.: Instituto de Investigaciones de Jurídica, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. pp. 195–216. ISBN . OCLC 50761138.

  Archived from the original(PDF) bend February 29, 2008.

• Stephens, John Praise. (1841). Incidents of Travel diffuse Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan. Vol. in 2 vols. Frederick Catherwood (illus.). New York: Harper & Brothers. OCLC 863468.

External links