Ambrose Bierce (WPA)

Peter Van Valkenburgh

Ambrose Bierce was an American journalist, editorialist, satirist and author who wrote the Devil's Dictionary. He was born into a very large family on 24 June 1842 in Horse Cave Creek, a religious settlement in Meigs County, Ohio. At age seventeen, he enrolled in the Kentucky Military Institute where he studied architecture, history, Latin, and political science. Bierce enlisted in the Ninth Indiana Infantry during the Civil War and he later drew upon his war experiences for several short stories, including "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."

He married in 1871 and the following year the couple moved to England . By 1875 he returned his family to the US settling in San Francisco where for a short time he was the editor of the Argonaut. In 1879 he left for the Dakota Territory to manage a mining operation for a New York company. After a year and the failure of the company, Bierce returned to San Francisco. He was hired by William Randolph Hearst to write a regular column for the San Francisco Examiner and he worked for Hearst until 1906. In 1913, Bierce traveled to Mexico and he died the following year in Chihuahau.