Two Biographical Sketches of Gabriel Furman

The following two biographical sketches of Gabriel Furman (1800–1854) appeared in the reprint edition of Notes, Geographical and Historical, Relating to the Town of Brooklyn, on Long-Island published in 1865 by the Faust Club of Brooklyn. The first is by the (unidentified) editor and compiler of that volume; the second is by the publisher and bookseller William Gowans. Gabriel Furman was a Brooklyn lawyer, judge, and state senator, and an eminent scholar, book collector, compiler, and antiquarian. He led an eccentric and solitary life, and died in poverty, the victim, some said, of an opium addiction. His published works consisted of the Notes, Geographical and Historical, Relating to the Town of Brooklyn, on Long-Island, first published in 1824, an annotated edition of Daniel Denton\u27s A Brief Description of New-York, Formerly Called New-Netherlands, published in 1845 for William Gowans\u27 Bibliotheca Americana series, and a posthumous compilation of some surviving notes and manuscripts, published in 1874 as Antiquities of Long Island. Furman’s Introduction and Notes to his 1845 edition of Daniel Denton’s A Brief Description of New-York may be found at http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/23