Don Quixote Exhibit - Station 4

Photograph of Severn Teackle Wallis
Daniel Coit Gilman Papers Ms. 1

From the collection of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library

Severn Teackle Wallis

The earliest edition of Don Quixote de la Mancha in the Peabody Library belonged to Severn Teackle Wallis, a Baltimore lawyer, who was born on September 8, 1816. His maternal grandfather was Severn Teackle (after whom he was named) of Talbot County, Maryland. His paternal grandfather, Samuel Wallis, settled with his family in Kent County in the early eighteenth century. His father, Philip Wallis, married Elizabeth Custis Teackle, and moved from Easton to Baltimore in 1816, where all his children-- four sons and three daughters-- were born, and where he lived in a house on Charles Street almost opposite the Cathedral.

Mr. Wallis spent his life in Baltimore--with the exception of several visits abroad and the period of his imprisonment during the civil war--where he conducted a thriving law practice at his residence at 215 St. Paul Street. His father had a considerable influence on Mr. Wallis's early education. Severn enrolled at St. Mary's College (later, St. Mary's Seminary), an institution founded in Baltimore in the latter part of the 18th century by members of the Society of St. Sulpice. Many of its students came from Canada, Mexico and South America.