author
Benjamin Drake
1794–1841
A lively early American writer and newspaper editor, he is best remembered for vivid biographies that brought frontier history and Native leaders to a broad 19th-century audience.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Kentucky in 1794 and later active in Cincinnati, Benjamin Drake was an American historian, editor, and writer. He helped found the Cincinnati Chronicle and served as its editor for several years, building a reputation as a clear, energetic prose writer with a strong interest in the history of the expanding United States.
His best-known books include The Life and Adventures of Black Hawk and Life of Tecumseh, works that introduced many readers of his time to major Native leaders and conflicts of the early republic. He also wrote about William Henry Harrison and contributed to the blend of journalism, biography, and popular history that shaped how western and frontier stories were remembered.
Drake died in Cincinnati in 1841. Although not as widely read now as some of his contemporaries, his books remain part of the early American record of frontier politics, war, and biography.