Townsend was born in Georgetown, Delaware, on January 30, 1841.[1] He originally wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and in 1861 he moved to the New York Herald. He is considered to have been the youngest correspondent of the war. In 1865, Townsend was Washington correspondent for the New York World, covering the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and its aftermath. His daily reports filed between April 17 – May 17 were published later in 1865 as a book, The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth, reprinted in 1977,[2] and published in audio version in 2009.
Immediately following the war, he married Elizabeth Evans Rhodes of Philadelphia. By 1868, he had become one of the most quotable Washington correspondents, working for the "Chicago Tribune," and, after 1874, for the "New York Graphic." His letters, published several times a week, were several columns long, and included lively word-portraits of politicians and opinion. He established and edited, with an Ohio journalist and politician, Donn Piatt, the Capital at Washington, D.C., in 1871, but parted company with Piatt soon after.[3]
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