Mentioned in The Antebellum Crisis and America's First Bohemians

Known in the New York journals as "the Literary Policeman," George S. McWatters was a New York City police officer who occasionally visited Pfaff's and there earned the respect of the bar's bohemian patrons (McWatters xix). A.L. Rawson writes, "McWatters was a genial and kind-hearted policeman, and fond of children. When Ada [Clare]'s boy came he named him 'the Prince,' and the title was at once accepted by the coterie. . . . The coterie [at Pfaff's] helped to get him appointed on the 'force,' where he served until retired for long and faithful service" (107).

Born in Bavaria in 1840, Nast emigrated to New York City with his mother and sister in 1846 and his father followed them in 1850. Nast’s early artistic influences were historical painter Theodore Kaufmann, with whom he began his first formal study; Alfred Fredericks, whose studio was nearby and who became a mentor to Nash and helped him gain entry to the Academy of Design, as well as Frank Leslie, the publisher of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper who hired the sixteen-year old Nast for five dollars a week.

Characterized as an "eccentric literary man not without a spice of genius," William North was born in England and eventually settled in New York City (W. Rossetti 48-49). In England he established a periodical North's Magazine, and in New York he began publishing sensational stories like "The Living Corpse" which appeared in Putnam's in 1853 and was later reprinted in the Saturday Press.

Hatchik Oscanyan was born in Constantinople, Turkey. He later changed his name to Christopher. As an Armenian resident of the Ottoman Empire, he came to the United State for an education, but he decided to stay after he completed his studies at New York University (Nance 56; Lause 52). Scholar Susan Nance describes Oscanyan, along with Bayard Taylor, as individuals who "labored to sell various Ex Oriente Lux messages about the East in a growing information and publicity infrastructure that was taking shape in the 1840s, just as they both came to public notice" (54-5).

Charles Pfaff's obituary in the New York Times characterizes him as the proprietor of the famous Bohemian "chop house" at 647 Broadway that flourished between 1860 and 1875 ("In and About the City," 2). Born in Baden, Switzerland likely in 1819, Pfaff first arrived in New York in the early 1850s "part of a wave of German immigrants" (Blalock; Martin 18). According to scholar Justin Martin, "Herr Pfaff was a round little man with shaggy eyebrows and chubby fingers. His Old World manner and thickly accented English gave him a courtly and discreet air" (18).

An obituary of Charles Pfaff from the Brooklyn Eagle in 1890 mentions that William J. Rose was one of the "bright spirits" who met at Pfaff's ("[Acute gastritis]" 10). Mark Lause also refers to William J. Rose as "an American participant" of a February 1854 celebration in New York of the 1848 uprisings in Paris. According to the New York Times article written about the event, Rose played a prominent role as a speaker who proposed several toasts to the crowd.

Charles Dawson Shanly emigrated to New York City from Ireland via Canada and was working as the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Public Works in 1857. In New York City during the late 1850s and 1860s, Shanly was productive as a journalist and editor at such publications as Vanity Fair, Mrs. Grundy, the New York Leader, the Atlantic Monthly, and the New York Saturday Press.

Described as a "golden woman of poetical tendencies," Shaw was born to an Ohio clergyman (Kendall 305). Shaw married young but divorced and was shunned by her family as a result (Lawson 104). Though her first marriage to Dr. LeBaum failed, Shaw did remarry in 1863 to Captain Henry Bogardus. Shaw who was "brillant, beautiful, but eccentric" worked as an actress throughout the country, including cities such as New Orleans and St. Louis (Kendall 305).

Born in Connecticut, Stedman’s merchant father died leaving the small child in the care of his mother, maternal grandfather, and lawyer uncle. Stedman’s childhood passed between his grandfather’s New Jersey farm and his uncle’s Connecticut residence. Much of Stedman’s literary education likely came from his mother, who herself was an author of both verse and essay. Stedman’s juvenilia consists of poetry inspired by the Romantics and Tennyson. He attended Yale University but was expelled after a youthful indiscretion.