B. F. (Benjamin Franklin) DeCosta

Born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1831, Benjamin Franklin DeCosta was educated at the Biblical Institute in Concord, New Hampshire, and entered the Episcopal ministry in the 1850s. Alongside his church work, he developed a strong interest in history and gradually became better known as a writer and researcher than as a parish clergyman.

DeCosta wrote about exploration, colonial history, and church questions, with some of his best-known work focused on pre-Columbian voyages and the historical record surrounding Columbus. Titles associated with him include The Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen and Columbus and the Geographers of the North. He had a reputation for lively, argumentative scholarship and for taking seriously sources that many readers found obscure or controversial.

Today he is remembered as a 19th-century American historical writer whose work reflects a period when questions about discovery, national origins, and old travel narratives fascinated both scholars and general readers. Even when later historians revised or challenged parts of his conclusions, his books remain part of the long conversation about how the history of North America was written.