author
John Williams Streeter
1841–1905
A physician, Civil War veteran, and late-in-life farmer, he wrote with the kind of firsthand detail that makes rural life feel vivid and real. His best-known book turns everyday farm work into an observant, surprisingly personal story.
1 Audiobook
The Fat of the Land: The Story of an American Farm
by John Williams Streeter
About the author
Born in 1841 and dying in 1905, John Williams Streeter was an American doctor and writer best known for The Fat of the Land: The Story of an American Farm. Records from library and public-domain sources consistently connect him with that book and with the dates 1841–1905.
Contemporary and archival references indicate that he served in the Civil War with the First Michigan Light Artillery, later studied medicine, and practiced as a physician before turning some of his experience into fiction and memoir-like writing. The Fat of the Land is especially remembered for drawing on farm life in a direct, practical, experience-based way.
He also wrote Doctor Tom: The Coroner of Brett, another title that reflects his medical background. While detailed biographical material appears to be limited online, the surviving references suggest a life that moved through war, medicine, and agriculture before ending in Lake Forest, Illinois.