author
Consul Willshire Butterfield
1824–1899
A 19th-century Midwestern historian and lawyer, he devoted much of his writing to the early American frontier, especially the Ohio Valley and the Old Northwest. His books helped preserve documents, local history, and Revolutionary-era stories that might otherwise have faded from view.
1 Audiobook
History of the Discovery of the Northwest by John Nicolet in 1634 With a Sketch of his Life
by Consul Willshire Butterfield
About the author
Born in 1824, Consul Willshire Butterfield was an American educator, author, and attorney whose work centered on the history of the United States in the West. Library of Congress records identify him as an educator and author, and surviving book catalogs show a long list of publications tied to Ohio, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and the early Northwest.
Butterfield is best remembered for writing county and regional histories and for collecting and editing material on frontier and Revolutionary-era subjects. His works include studies of George Rogers Clark, the Washington-Irvine correspondence, the expedition against Sandusky, the discovery of the Northwest, and several substantial histories of Wisconsin counties and the University of Wisconsin. Modern historians still note him as an energetic early researcher of the trans-Appalachian West, even if his methods reflected the standards of his own century.
He died in 1899. While some details of his personal life are less consistently documented across sources, his reputation as a prolific 19th-century chronicler of Midwestern and frontier history is well established.