Francis Parkman

Francis Parkman Jr. (September 16, 1823 – November 8, 1893) was an American historian, remembered for *The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life* and his seven-volume series *France and England in North America*. His writings remain respected both as historical accounts and as literature. Parkman was also a prominent horticulturist, served briefly as a Harvard professor of horticulture, and wrote several books on the subject. He published essays opposing women’s suffrage, which remained in circulation after his death. From 1858 until his death, he served as a trustee of the Boston Athenæum.

Parkman was born in Boston to Francis Parkman Sr., a Unitarian minister, and Caroline Hall Parkman. As a child, his frail health led his family to send him to his maternal grandfather’s 3,000-acre wilderness property in Medford, Massachusetts, hoping a rustic life would strengthen him. During those four years, he developed a deep love for forests—later calling his life’s work “the history of the American forest”—and learned to hunt and survive in the wild, eventually riding bareback, a skill he used while living with the Sioux.

He entered Harvard at 16 and, during his second year, conceived the grand historical project that would define his career. At 20, he embarked on an eight-month Grand Tour of Europe, crossing the Alps and Apennines, climbing Vesuvius, and living in Rome, where Passionist monks tried but failed to convert him. After graduating in 1844, he reluctantly studied law at his father’s urging, but the plan failed to dissuade him from his historical ambitions. His family disapproved of his focus on American wilderness history—considered ungentlemanly at a time when serious historians studied ancient or Spanish empires—but his works became so popular that by his death, early American history was in vogue. Theodore Roosevelt dedicated his four-volume *The Winning of the West* to Parkman.

In 1846, Parkman traveled west on a hunting expedition and lived for weeks with the Sioux, who were then grappling with European-introduced diseases and alcoholism. This experience shaped his portrayal of Native Americans, which rejected the “noble savage” stereotype. Writing during the era of manifest destiny, Parkman viewed the conquest and displacement of Indigenous peoples as progress—a triumph of “civilization” over “savagery,” a common belief then. He wrote *The Oregon Trail* while convalescing from illness in Staten Island and Brattleboro between 1846 and 1848. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1855 and a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1865.

After the Civil War, Parkman, along with Boston Athenæum librarian William F. Poole and trustees Donald McKay Frost and Raymond Sanger Wilkins, recognized the need to preserve Confederate newspapers, broadsides, books, and pamphlets for future historians. Thanks to his foresight, the Athenæum now holds one of the world’s largest collections of Confederate imprints. In 1879, he published a widely circulated essay against women’s suffrage, arguing that women were “the impulsive and excitable half of humanity” and unfit for government.

Born into a wealthy Boston family, Parkman had the financial means to pursue his research without worry, aided by a modest lifestyle and later book royalties. He traveled extensively across North America, visiting most sites he wrote about, and made frequent trips to Europe for original documents. His achievements are remarkable given his lifelong, undiagnosed neurological illness, which often left him unable to walk and, for long periods, nearly blind. He relied on others to read documents aloud and wrote in darkness or dictated his work.

Parkman married Catherine Scollay Bigelow in 1850; they had three children. One son died in childhood, and his wife died soon after. He raised two daughters, introducing them to Boston society and seeing them both married with families. He died at age 70 in Jamaica Plain and is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. He also helped found Boston’s St. Botolph Club in 1879 and served as its first president.