Jonathan Scott Hartley was born in Albany, New York on September 23, 1845.

His first important work (1882) was a statue of Miles Morgan, the Puritan, for Springfield, Massachusetts.

He devoted himself particularly to the making of portrait busts, in which he attained high rank.

[1] He sculpted three of the nine busts around the front of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

He also sculpted the Washington Irving and the Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Noah Davis.