[1] Piatt was on staff at the Ohio State Journal (later The Columbus Citizen-Journal) with William Dean Howells, with whom he wrote Poems of Two Friends (1860).

[3] They lived in Georgetown,[5] in Washington, D.C., where John became a clerk and then librarian of the United States House of Representatives.

[1] Sarah and John James published two books together: The Nests at Washington, and Other Poems (1869) and The Children Out-of-Doors (1885).

[1] According to the Dictionary of American Biography, "Piatt's poetry shows the regular meters of his time, but is original and varied in subject mater and appreciative of natural beauty, literary associations, and human feeling.

[2] Leonidas Warren Payne Jr. considered Piatt one of the "minor poets of the West".