Frederick Blossom, social activist, translator, and librarian, was active in a wide variety of areas during his 96 years. He was born in New York City into the family of Frederick Augustus and Sarah (Hill) Blossom and was a direct descendant of Thomas Blossom, who arrived in America on the second voyage of the Mayflower. He had one brother, Harold, who was a noted landscape artist, and a sister, Katherine Eleanor. Blossom was married three times. His first marriage was to Alice Sidney Morrison who died in 1936. In 1937 he married Anna Williams from whom he was divorced in 1947. In 1953 he married Bertie Lee (Hunter) Hysong to whom he was married at the time of his death.
Blossom graduated from Amherst College with honors in 1898 and entered the business world. He worked as a salesman for the Dennison Manufacturing Company, as an assistant to the buyer at Macy's, and later as head of the European and South American divisions of the exporting firms of S. Hoffnung and Ladenas and Coe. In 1903 Blossom entered Johns Hopkins University for graduate studies in romance languages. From 1904 to 1909 he studied at the University of Grenoble. From 1909 to 1913 he taught French and Spanish at Bryn Mawr and Johns Hopkins. In 1914 he received his Ph.D. for a dissertation on Gustave Flaubert. Fluent in French and Spanish, he also had a reading knowledge of German and Italian.
After receiving his doctorate, Blossom went to work for Federated Charities of Baltimore as financial secretary and business manager. He continued in the same capacity for Federated Charities of Cleveland. After the death of his only daughter, Sidney, in 1916, Blossom became active in Margaret Sanger's birth control movement. He edited Birth Control Review and acted as manager of Sanger's New York offices for about a year before leaving after differing with her on policy. During this period he maintained an active interest in the suffrage movement through his relationship with Elizabeth Stuyvesant. He was also active in socialist politics and during World War I served as secretary of the Silk Worker's Union of Patterson, New Jersey during a long strike. The union was an affiliate of the Industrial Workers of the World. During the 1920s he organized relief work for members of the IWW who were in prison.
In 1925 Blossom entered the New York Public Library system as a student and reference assistant in the art department. He later worked in the Brooklyn Public Library and as librarian of the Explorers Club. In 1931 he went to work for A.C. Boni Publishers of New York as a translator and editor of Creative Arts magazine. During this period Blossom translated into English Marcel Proust's The Past Recaptured, Maxence van der Meersch's When the Looms Are Silent, and three novels by S.G. Collette.
Blossom worked for the Huntington Free Library from 1933 to 1937 when the Depression forced employee cut-backs at that institution. He then joined the Library of Congress, and served successively as a consultant in romance languages, assistant to the chief of classifications, and publications officer. After 1944 Blossom maintained a continuing interest in Scott Nearing's work and edited his newsletter World Events.
After retiring from the Library of Congress in 1948, Blossom moved to Clarkesville, Georgia and later to East Palatka, Florida where he ran a rest home with his third wife, Bertie Lee. They moved to Pleasant Hill, Tennessee in 1963 and lived there until his death. During his retirement Blossom was an active supporter of Carl Braden and the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF). Blossom also served as secretary of the Appalachian Relief Committee which he and his wife had helped found. He died in 1974 after a series of strokes.
