Donn Piatt

Donn Piatt (June 29, 1819November 12, 1891) was an American journalist, military officer, and public official. Born in Cincinnati, Piatt attended schools in Ohio and began contributing to newspapers as a young man. He started his career as a lawyer and was briefly a judge in the early 1850s. He represented the United States as a diplomat in Paris for about a year starting in 1854. Piatt served as an officer in the Union Army in the American Civil War from 1861 to 1864. After the war, he held a seat in the Ohio House of Representatives for a single term. He then moved east—first to New York, then to Washington, D.C. He began a journalism career in Washington, founding a newspaper and contributing to others. After retiring from journalism around 1880, Piatt returned to Ohio and wrote works of fiction and plays. Early life and education Donn Piatt was born on June 29, 1819, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Elizabeth (Barnett) and Benjamin M. Piatt, a judge. In 1827, the family moved to a large home outside West Liberty, Ohio, called Mac-o-chee, later the site of one of the Piatt Castles. Donn attended schools in Urbana, Ohio, and an institution called the Athenaeum in Cincinnati, now Xavier University. He studied at the Athenaeum for three years. According to his biographer Charles Grant Miller, Piatt had to leave the Athenaeum after throwing his mathematics teacher out of a window. By age 20, Piatt had published articles in The Catholic Telegraph and the Ohio Statesman. His father was a staunch Whig but Donn grew to favor the Democratic Party in that campaign. He started his first newspaper, the Democratic Club, during the 1840 United States presidential election. The first issue was printed in West Liberty on May 21, 1840.