MANSFIELD, John Brainard, author, born in Andover, Windsor County, Vermont, 6 March, 1826; died in Effingham, Atchison County, Kansas, 29 October, 1886. He received an academic education, and was for several years engaged in canvassing for books and maps. He published, with Austin J. Cooledge, the first volume of a "History of the New England States," embracing Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont (Boston, 1860), but the civil war prevented the appearance of the second and remaining volume, which had been prepared for the press. After establishing a weekly paper called the "New England Meridian," in each number of which the muster-roll of one of the New England regiments was published, he acted as war correspondent for that journal, and subsequently served twenty months as hospital steward, until December, 1864, when he was mustered out of the service for disability. In 1866 he published in Washington, D. C., "The American Loyalist," in which were printed biographies and speeches of members of the 39th congress. After publishing a campaign paper in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1867, he returned to Washington and was employed in the government printing-office for several years. In 1882 he removed to Kansas on account of impaired health. While in Washington he began the preparation of "A Sketch of the Political History of the United States of America " from the settlement of Jamestown to the present time, which he completed, but it still remains in manuscript.