Joseph Bushnell Ames

Joseph Bushnell Ames was born on August 9, 1878, in Titusville, Pennsylvania, the son of Elias Hurlbut Ames (1851-1891) and Eleanor Gray Bushnell (1855-1946).{{cite news|title=Obituary 5|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1946/02/08/93041107.html?pageNumber=18|accessdate=25 May 2018|work=The New York Times|date=February 8, 1946}} Both Ames' father and maternal grandfather, Joseph Bushnell (1831–1918), came from old New England families and became wealthy during the Pennsylvania Oil Rush. Ames' great-grandfather was the Pittsburgh industrialist Daniel Bushnell.{{cite book|title=Matthews' American Armoury and Blue Book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fmIUAAAAYAAJ&q=ashmun+ames+morristown&pg=PA71

|accessdate=2 March 2018|last1 = London)|first1 = John Matthews (of|year = 1903}} After Elias Ames' death of pneumonia in 1891 at age 39, Joseph's mother moved the family to Morristown, New Jersey, where her children had a privileged upbringing in the town that was then known as an "inland Newport.".{{cite news|title=Morristown|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/05/realestate/morristown.html?pagewanted=all|accessdate=2 March 2018|work=The New York Times|date=September 5, 1982}} Ames attended St. Mark's School and the Stevens Institute of Technology, graduating from the latter in 1901.{{cite book|title=Member of Beta Theta Pi Residing in New York City and Vicinity|year = 1909|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OHRIAAAAYAAJ&q=ashmun+ames+morristown&pg=PA6|accessdate=2 March 2018}} Ames then worked as a mechanical engineer in Morristown, New Jersey for a time, until he quit that profession and began writing.{{cite book|title=Catalogue of Beta Theta Pi|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4DoXAAAAYAAJ&q=joseph+bushnell+ames+stevens&pg=PA506|accessdate=5 March 2018|last1 = Pi|first1 = Beta Theta|year = 1905}}

Ames wrote over a dozen novels, primarily Westerns, during the 1910s and 1920s.{{cite book|title=Joseph Bushnell Ames|url=http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/ames_joseph_bushnell|accessdate=5 March 2018}} Some of his works, including the posthumously published The Bladed Barrier, included fantasy themes. While Ames' books were set in the Western United States (the famous Pete, cow-puncher - A Story of the Texas Plains, is one example), it is unclear whether he ever travelled there extensively.{{cite book|title=The American Cowboy: The Myth and the Reality|isbn = 9780806155999|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2oI1DgAAQBAJ&q=joseph+bushnell+ames&pg=PA176|accessdate=5 March 2018|last1 = Frantz|first1 = Joe B.|last2 = Julian Ernest|first2 = Jr. Choate|date = February 2016}} His novel Shoe-Bar Stratton was made into the 1922 Western film Catch My Smoke, directed by William Beaudine and featuring actors Tom Mix and Lillian Rich.{{cite book|title=Catch My Smoke|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013002/|accessdate=5 March 2018}}

File:Poster for "Catch My Smoke".jpg, based on Ames' novel "Shoe-bar Stratton"]]

For most of his writing career Ames lived in "Willow Hall," a mansion on his estate, "Speedwell," in Morristown, New Jersey. The estate was the former residence of industrialist George Vail. Today the home is preserved as a historic site.{{cite book|title=Willow Hall|url=http://www.newjerseyhills.com/park-commission-seeks-historic-speedwell-mansion/article_92267432-a031-5f7d-9db4-14497ea544c4.html|accessdate=5 March 2018}} Ames' brother Peter Ashmun Ames, to whom Joseph dedicated his 1921 novel The Emerald Buddha, was an American who served in the British Army in the Grenadier Guards during World War I and then as a British military intelligence spymaster and a member of the Cairo Gang, until Bloody Sunday, when Lt. Ames was assassinated in Dublin by order of Michael Collins during the Irish War of Independence.{{cite book|title=The Emerald Buddha|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=URbHo5HHqroC&q=peter+ashmun+ames&pg=PP10

|accessdate=2 March 2018|last1 = Ames|first1 = Joseph Bushnell|year = 1921}} The philanthropist Mary Warden Harkness, wife of Charles W. Harkness, was a first cousin of Ames' mother Eleanor.{{cite book|title=Matthews' American Armoury and Blue Book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fmIUAAAAYAAJ&q=ashmun+ames+morristown&pg=PA71

|accessdate=2 March 2018|last1 = London)|first1 = John Matthews (of|year = 1903}}

File:Willow Hall.jpg

• The Valley of Missing Men. London: A.C. McClurg & Company, 1925.
• The Man from Painted Post. New York: Century Company, 1923.
• The Stranger from Cheyenne. New York: Century Company, 1927.
• The Mystery of Ram Island. New York: Century Company, 1918.
• Chaps and Chukkers. New York: Century Company, 1928.
• The Bladed Barrier. New York, London: The Century Co., 1929.{{cite web|title=The Bladed Barrier|url=https://www.lwcurrey.com/pages/books/152362/joseph-bushnell-ames/the-bladed-barrier|accessdate=March 13, 2018}}
• The Secret of Spirit Lake. New York: Century Company, 1927.
• The Emerald Buddha. Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1921.
• Flame of the Desert. New York: Duffield, 1928.
• Curly and the Aztec Gold. New York: Century Company, 1920.
• Shoe-Bar Stratton. New York: Century Company, 1922.
• Pete, Cow-puncher: A Story of the Texas Plains. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1908.{{cite book|title=Google Books: Joseph Bushnell Ames|url=https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=bks&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Joseph+Bushnell+Ames%22

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• Under Boy Scout Colors. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1917.
• The Lone Hand. New York: A. L. Burt Company, 1926.{{cite book|title=University of Pennsylvania Library|url=http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Ames%2C%20Joseph%20Bushnell%2C%201878-1928

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{{Reflist}}

• {{Gutenberg author|32647}}

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Category:1878 births

Category:1928 deaths

Category:American male novelists

Category:Stevens Institute of Technology alumni

Category:20th-century American novelists

Category:Writers from Morristown, New Jersey

Category:People from Titusville, Pennsylvania

Category:Novelists from Pennsylvania

Category:20th-century American male writers