Wallace Bruce was born January 10, 1844, at Hillsdale, Columbia County, NY, the son of Alfred and Mary Ann McAlpine Bruce. He attended prep school at the Hudson River Institute, Claverack, New York. He was an officer and an active worker in his Greek fraternity, and also garnered an oratorical reputation as an excellent debater.

      After being graduated from the Claverack Academy he entered Yale where he was elected editor of the Yale Literary Magazine by the largest vote recorded up to that time. Following his graduation from Yale in 1867, he studied law with William A. Beach, gaining admittance to the New York bar in 1869.

       He toured Europe in 1870, he was in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. In 1871, he married Annie Becker, from the village of Schodack Depot, New York. To them were born two sons, Malcolm and Kenneth, and a daughter Clara (later Mrs. Clara Abernathy).

      Armed with his legal training, he embarked on a literary and lecturing career, at which he was successful. He held newspaper and magazine concessions from the Hudson River Day Line boats for many years, and wrote and photographed tour guides for the rivers of New York. At that venture, his business ability paralleled his literary success. Although living in New York, Bruce was for many years a book reviewer for the Chicago Times. The first poem which gave him national prominence was "Parson Allen's Ride," delivered at the Bennington Centennial in 1876. As his fame grew, he spent time travelling across the country, writing particularly about his journey to Yosemite.

       As a lecturer, he was a great proponent of the Chautauqua Movement, for which he spoke in DeFuniak Springs, Florida (and other places) from its inception in that state in 1885. He settled at DeFuniak as a winter home and became one of the founders of a permanent Chautauqua site there, serving as its president for the rest of his life.

      In 1889, Bruce was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison as United States Consul at Edinburgh, and served until 1893. An ardent admirer of Robert Burns, he was given the high honor of delivering the Burns anniversary addresses at Ayr, Edinburgh, and Kilmarnock in Scotland. Besides his consular duties, he also lectured on Burns and his other favorite writers, Sir Walter Scott, Washington Irving and William Shakespeare.

       Wallace Bruce suffered a stroke of paralysis in 1906 and after that was always in frail health. He died after having another stroke at his Florida home in January of 1914.

      One episode in Bruce's life stands out, that being his responsibility for the only Civil War memorial outside of America. A Scottish widow came to Bruce's consular office to seek a pension, as her husband had served in the American Civil War then went back to Scotland. He died and the family became destitute. Mrs. Bruce took an interest in the case and before long Wallace Bruce started to solicit subscriptions to build a Scottish memorial for Civil War veterans of Scotland. Andrew Carnegie was one such subscriber and the American sculptor George E. Bissell, a Civil War veteran, created a memorial which was placed in the Old Carlton Cemetery in Edinburgh. The memorial is a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln and a crouching freed slave extending his hand in gratitude towards the 16 foot high Lincoln. The monument was unveiled on August 23rd, 1893.

       Who Was Who in America, volume 1, page 155