H. D. Pittman

Hannah Daviess Pittman (1840–1919) was for sixteen years a member of the staff of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and during that time was also associated with the St. Louis Spectator, a weekly paper. She is also the author of the first American comic opera.

Early life and family Hannah Daviess was born in 1840, in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, the eldest daughter of Maj. William Daviess and Maria Thompson Daviess.

Personal life Soon after graduation, in 1857, Hannah Daviess married Williamson Haskins Pittman (1823–1875), a prominent wholesale dry goods merchant of St. Louis, senior member of the two firms — Pittman & Bro. and Pittman & Tennant — having been engaged in the early fifties with James E. Yeatman (Yeatman, Pittman & Co.) in a general commission business.

Pittman died in 1919, and is buried with her husband at Bellefontaine Cemetery, Saint Louis.

Selected works

Americans of gentle birth and their ancestors : a genealogical encyclopedia, (with Rosa Kershaw Walker) (St. Louis, Mo., Buxton and Skinner, 1919) (Text) The belle of the Bluegrass Country : studies in black and white (1906) The Heart of Kentucky (1908) Go Forth and Find (1910) Get Married, Young Men The Heart of a Doll (1908) In dreamland : a story of living and giving