BRAINARD, John Gardiner Calkins, poet, born in New London, Connecticut, 21 October, 1796; died there, 26 September, 1828. He was graduated at Yale in 1815, and studied law, but, after practising a short time at Middletown, Connecticut, went to Hartford, and took charge there, in 1822, of the "Connecticut Mirror." He paid little attention to politics, but devoted himself to the literary part of the paper, publishing in it many poems, mostly ballads, which soon brought him into notice. He had previously written a few pieces for a New Haven paper called the "Microscope." Brainard had always been delicate, and in 1827 consumption forced him to give up his editorship and retire to the east end of Long Island, where he remained until he returned to his father's house in New London, to die. Although he suffered much, he continued to write until just before his death. He published a collection of his poems (New York, 1825); and a second edition enlarged, entitled "Literary Remains," with a sketch of the author, by John G. Whittier, his successor as editor of the "Mirror," was published after Brainard's death (1832; 3d ed., with portrait, Hartford, 1842). --His brother, Dyar Throop, a well-known physician of New London, also eminent as a botanist and chemist, was graduated at Yale in 1810, and died in New London, 6 February, 1863, aged seventy-three years.