Leroy F. (Leroy Freeman) Jackson

Born in London, Ontario, on July 15, 1881, he moved with his family to North Dakota in the early 1890s. He studied at the University of North Dakota and the University of Chicago, and later spent a year at Harvard doing research under historian Frederick Jackson Turner.

He taught history in several places and was one of the first history professors at the State College of Washington, later Washington State University. Archival records also describe him as an educator involved in Native American education, with later work in Alaska and New Mexico.

As a writer, he published children’s books as well as articles and monographs. He is especially associated with The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes (1918), illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright, a collection full of bright, rhythmic verses that helped keep his name alive with generations of young readers.