Francis Parkman

Francis Parkman, Jr. (September 16, 1823-November 8, 1893), an American historian, is considered one of the great historians of North America. He traveled the Oregon Trail in 1846 and lived with Indians for months to gather material for his best known work, The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life (1849). That work and his seven-volume France and England in North America (1865-1892) are considered more than mere rich historical records, they are exquisitely written. Parkman was also a noted horticulturist and wrote several books on the subject.