Francis Parkman

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) was born in Boston to a prominent New England family and became one of the foremost American historians of his generation, devoting most of his working life to France and England in North America, a seven-volume history of the colonial struggle for the continent completed over four decades. The Oregon Trail (1849), his first and most popular book, grew out of a strenuous 1846 journey along the westward trail that permanently damaged his already fragile health, leaving him for years nearly blind and unable to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time; he dictated much of his later work and had assistants read sources aloud to him. He was also an internationally regarded horticulturist and briefly held a professorship of horticulture at Harvard. He died at his home in Jamaica Plain, Boston, at seventy.