Charles Astor Bristed

Charles Astor Bristed (October 6, 1820 – January 14, 1874) was an American scholar and author, sometimes writing under the pen name Carl Benson. He was the first American to write a full-length defense of Americanisms and is the earliest known person to use the term "conspiracy theory". Biography Charles was born in New York City, New York, the son of the Reverend John Bristed, an Episcopal clergyman from a New England family, and Magdalena Astor. After his mother's death in 1832, Charles went to live his with grandparents, fur-trader John Jacob Astor and Sarah Todd at their home, "Hellgate" where many famous writers of the day, including Washington Irving and Fitz-Greene Halleck, visited. His mother was the eldest child of John Jacob Astor and his maternal uncle was William Backhouse Astor Sr. He graduated from Yale College in 1839 with honors, and from Trinity College, Cambridge, England, in 1845, taking numerous prizes and being made a foundation scholar of the college. Career He returned to the United States in 1847. Bristed amused himself by contributing articles, poetical translations, critical papers on the classics, and sketches of society to various journals, and in 1849 edited Selections from Catullus, for school use. In 1850, he published "Letters to the Hon. Horace Mann", being a reply to some strictures upon the characters of Girard and Astor. In 1852, a collection of his sketches on New York Society entitled "The Upper Ten Thousand", appeared in the Fraser Magazine. At the same time, he published Five Years in an English University, in which he described the manners, customs, and mode of life but little understood in the United States.