Edward Noyes Westcott, author of “David Harum,” was a son of Dr. Amos Westcott, a prominent dentist of Syracuse, N. Y., of which city he was mayor during the Rebellion. After equipping himself, Edward became a banker and built up an excellent business. Then a series of adversities wiped out his business and broke his health. Previous to this, he had been captain of a Syracuse militia company, and while staging an exhibition drill at the old Welting opera house, fell into the orchestra pit, landing on the back of his head, from which injury he never fully recovered. It was while recuperating from the breakdown occasioned by the failure of his business, at a camp in the Adirondacks, that he began to write “David Harum.” He practically completed the novel while in Italy in the Winter of 1895-6. It was declined by many leading publishers, but when issued in the Autumn of 1898, following the death of the author, became at once a success, reaching a sale of 40,000 copies in a little more than a year. The human nature of the book is its strong characteristic. It is a faithful portrayal of certain phases of life in central New York in the late 1890s, and its humor is undeniable.

Lineage: Amos 7 Westcott, Gorton 6, Reuben 5, Amos 4, William 3, Jeremiah 2, Stukely 1

Source: History and Genealogy of the Ancestors and Some Descendants of Stukely Westcott, One of the Thirteen Original Proprietors of Providence Plantation and the Colony of Rhode Island with Especial Mention of The Westcotts of Cheshire, Berkshire County, Massachusetts and the Westcotts of Milford, Otsego County, New York and Some of the Allied Families, Incorporating, and Extending, the Research of the late Hon. J. Russell Bullock of Bristol, R. I. by Roscoe L. Whitman, 1932, page 404

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