Philip Freneau
Philip Morin Freneau (New York City, January 2, 1752 - December 18, 1832) was a well-known American poet, newspaper editor, nationalist and captain at sea. He is also called the Poet of the American Revolution. biography
Freneau was the oldest of five children of the hugress and wine trader Pierre Freneau and his Scottish wife. The young Philip was raised in Monmouth County (New Jersey) and studied under the supervision of William Tennent, Jr. After his father's death in 1767, Philip Freneau went to the College of New Jersey, the current Princeton University.
In Princeton, Freneau became intimate friends with James Madison, with whom he later founded the National Gazette. In 1771, Freneau graduated after writing the History of the Prophet Jonah and together with Hugh Henry Brackenridge, the proseic satire Father Bombo's Pilgrimage to Mecca.
After graduating, Freneau first tried to teach what he did not succeed. He also began a study of theology, but gave it after two years. When the American War of Independence approached in 1775, Freneau began to write anti-British documents. In 1776 he left from America to West India, where he stayed for two years and wrote about the beauty of nature. In 1778 he returned to America, where he joined a gang of revolutionary hijackers. He was captured as a gangster and stayed for six weeks on a British prison ship. About this experience that almost cost him life, he wrote a work entitled The British Prison Ship.
In 1790, Freneau married and joined the New York Daily Advertiser. Thomas Jefferson and Madison tried to get Freneau to Philadelphia to collaborate with the National Gazette, which was intended to be a response to the Gazette of the United States. Jefferson offered Freneau a job as a translator at the United States Department of State to accept Freneau, after which he left enough free time to lead the critical news sheet, which was especially distant from Alexander Hamilton and President George Washington's politics. The latter had a special aversion to Freneau.
At the end of his life, Freneau returned to the countryside, where he continued to write about politics and nature. Freneau died at the age of 80 on her way home to undercooling. He is lying with his wife and mother buried at Matawan's Philip Morin Freneau Cemetery.
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