Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Noyes, James Oscar

NOYES, James Oscar, author, b. in Niles, Cayuga Co., N. Y., 14 June, 1829; d. in New Orleans, La., 11 Sept., 1872. He was graduated at Hamilton college in 1850 and at the medical department of Harvard in 1853. He then went abroad, continued his studies in the University of Vienna, visited Wallachia, and was appointed on the medical staff of Omar Pacha, the commander of the Turkish forces. He was afterward correspondent in Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt of the New York "Tribune," the Detroit "Free Press," and other journals. On his return to New York he engaged in literary pursuits, and became proprietor and chief editor of the "Knickerbocker Magazine" in 1858. He went to Fort Monroe, Va., as a newspaper correspondent at the beginning of the civil war, engaged in various army contracts, and subsequently in planting. He settled in New Orleans after the war, was appointed commissioner of immigration for the state of Louisiana, and in that capacity revisited Europe. He was the originator of an enterprise for connecting Mississippi river with the Gulf of Mexico by a ship-canal below New Orleans, and of one for draining that city. At the time of his death he was an active member of the New Orleans academy of arts and sciences. He published "Roumania" (New York, 1857) and "The Gypsies" (1858).