Edward Augustus Brackett (October 1, 1818 – March 15, 1908) was a self-taught American sculptor, author, and conservationist.
Brackett was born inVassalboro, Maine to Reuben and Elizabeth (Starkey) Brackett, and moved with his parents in the spring of 1837 toCincinnati, where he started work as a sculptor.[1] In 1839 he showed a pair of portrait busts at the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts, and subsequently moved to New York City. In 1841, after roughly two years in New York, he moved toBoston with an introduction from his friendWilliam Cullen Bryant, where from 1843 he lived inWinchester, Massachusetts (at that time Woburn), from the early 1850s onward in the octagonalEdward A. Brackett House.
In October 1859, after the raid onHarper's Ferry, Brackett traveled to the jail there, where he made sketches and measurements ofJohn Brown's head, which he subsequently cast as a bust. It is today (2022) atTufts University.
After serving one year in the Civil War, he turned tohorticulture and the scientific breeding of fish.
In 1869, he was appointed to a state commission supervising inland fisheries, and became its head in 1873. From 1894 until his death he served as head of the Massachusetts Fish and Game Commission.
He died in Winchester on March 15, 1908.[1]
Edward Brackett married Amanda Folger on November 27, 1842 inCharlestown, Massachusetts. They had four children; Frank, Walter, Lena, and Bessie. Amanda (Folger) Brackett died in 1871, at the age of 50.
In 1872, Brackett married Elizabeth F. Belville, his wife's niece. They had one daughter, Bertha, born in 1876.
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