author
Joseph Mills Hanson
b. 1876
A soldier, historian, and writer of the American West, he brought firsthand experience and a strong sense of place to his books. His work ranges from frontier history and poetry to Civil War battlefield interpretation.
2 Audiobooks
With Sully into the Sioux Land
by Joseph Mills Hanson
Frontier Ballads
by Joseph Mills Hanson
About the author
Born in Yankton, Dakota Territory, on July 20, 1876, Joseph Mills Hanson grew up in South Dakota and was educated in both Yankton and at military schools in the East. Sources from the South Dakota State Historical Society and the University of South Dakota describe him as an author and historian, and note that his papers preserve material from his writing life as well as his family's earlier Dakota history.
Hanson's career reached across several fields. He served in the military, worked as a writer and editor, and became especially known for historical writing tied to the American frontier and the Civil War. His books include The Conquest of the Missouri, and the Library of Congress also credits him with editing and compiling a visual history of World War I. National Park Service material further shows that he later contributed historical research at Manassas and served as the battlefield park's second superintendent.
Taken together, those roles help explain the character of his work: practical, historically minded, and closely connected to the landscapes he wrote about. He died in 1960.