John Treat Irving

Born in New York City in 1812, he was a nephew of Washington Irving and graduated from Columbia College in 1828. Although trained as a lawyer and later active in business, he is best remembered as an author who wrote about the American frontier and life in the West.

In 1833, he joined an expedition led by Indian treaty commissioner Henry L. Ellsworth to visit the Pawnee and other tribes on the prairies. That experience became Indian Sketches (1835), the book most closely associated with his name. He also wrote fiction and other prose works, including The Hunters of the Prairie, The Van Gelder Papers, and The Attorney.

Irving lived a long life that stretched from the early republic into the 20th century, dying in 1906. Today he is remembered as a lesser-known but fascinating observer of the American West, especially for readers interested in travel writing, frontier encounters, and the literary world connected to the wider Irving family.