Item 0042 - Letter, November 1882

Francis Parkman was born on September 16, 1823, in Boston, Massachusetts.

He was an American historian. He studied Greek, Latin, and mathematics at the Chauncy Place School in Boston. A talented linguist, he entered Harvard University in 1840. At the insistence of his father, he entered Harvard’s Faculty of Law in 1844, but, though he received a degree in 1846, he never practised. He spent time travelling in Europe and through the forests of New England, the Great Plains, and southeastern Canada, writing histories of the American wilderness and American Indians. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1855, and in 1865, a member of the American Antiquarian Society. He published his classic history of "France and England in North America" (7 vols., 1865–1892). The Society for American Historians annually awards the Francis Parkman Prize for the best book on American history.

In 1850, he married Catherine Scollay Bigelow (1827–1858). He died on November 8, 1893, in Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts.