George Alfred Townsend (January 30, 1841 – April 15, 1914) was an American journalist and novelist who worked under the pen name Gath.

He lived in various towns in Delaware and Maryland's Eastern Shore including, Snow Hill, Cambridge and Princess Anne.

[2] In 1860, after graduating from Central High School, he joined The Philadelphia Inquirer and worked as news editor, editorial writer and reporter.

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.

His letters, published several times a week, were several columns long, and included lively word-portraits of politicians and opinion.

[5] In 1884 Townsend traveled to Western Maryland to research locations for a romance novel based during the Civil War.

He purchased 100 acres of land[3] and built a baronial estate in the Catoctin Mountains called "Gapland," near Burkittsville, Maryland.

Gapland was built on the site of the Battle of Crampton's Gap, and is in close proximity to the battlefields of South Mountain and Antietam.

[6] His novels included The Entailed Hat (1884), which fictionalized a true story of a woman named Patty Cannon who kidnapped free blacks and sold them into slavery.

Townsend's other works include the short story collection Tales of the Chesapeake (1880) and the novel Katy of Catoctin (1887).