Joseph Orton Kerbey

Joseph Orton Kerbey was an American writer, journalist, and diplomat who lived from 1841 to 1913. Sources connected with his works describe him as a telegraph operator and Union spy during the Civil War, experiences he later turned into books such as The Boy Spy and On the War Path.

After the war, he worked in Washington as a press telegraph reporter in the U.S. Senate Press Gallery, and later entered the U.S. diplomatic service. He served as a consul in Pará, Brazil, and wrote from that experience in An American Consul in Amazonia.

Kerbey's writing is closely tied to the events he lived through, which gives it a direct, eyewitness quality. For readers interested in American history, wartime memoir, or accounts of South America in the early twentieth century, his work offers a personal and unusually wide-ranging perspective.