Leroy F. (Leroy Freeman) Jackson

Leroy F. Jackson was a Canadian-born educator and author whose life stretched from 1881 to 1958. Archival records identify him as Leroy Freeman Jackson and note that he was born on July 15, 1881, in London, Ontario, before moving with his family to North Dakota in the early 1890s.

He studied at the University of North Dakota, later earned a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and also conducted research at Harvard. Collections of his papers describe him as an educator who was actively involved in Native American education in the early 20th century, and they show that his work included essays, speeches, poems, short stories, and research materials.

Readers of children’s books may know him best as the author of The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes, a lively collection of verse from the 1910s. That mix of scholarship, teaching, and playful writing gives his work a distinctive place in early American children’s literature.