author
Reuben Gold Thwaites
1853–1913
Best known for bringing major early American documents to a wider audience, this Wisconsin historian and editor helped shape how readers encountered the frontier, exploration, and colonial past. His work combined newsroom energy with a librarian’s patience for gathering and organizing sources.
5 Audiobooks
Afloat on the Ohio : an historical pilgrimage of a thousand miles in a skiff, from Redstone to Cairo
by Reuben Gold Thwaites
Historic Waterways—Six Hundred Miles of Canoeing Down the Rock, Fox, and Wisconsin Rivers
by Reuben Gold Thwaites
Daniel Boone
by Reuben Gold Thwaites
The Colonies, 1492-1750
by Reuben Gold Thwaites
Stories of the Badger State
by Reuben Gold Thwaites
About the author
Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1853 and raised from his teens in Wisconsin, he built his career through journalism, self-directed study, and historical work. He became managing editor of the Wisconsin State Journal before joining the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, where he later succeeded Lyman C. Draper as secretary.
He is remembered especially as a librarian, historian, and editor of large documentary series. Among the projects most often associated with him are the Jesuit Relations, Early Western Travels, and the Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, works that helped preserve and popularize important records of North American history.
Beyond editing, he also wrote books on Wisconsin and early America. He died in 1913, but his reputation has lasted because he made difficult, scattered historical materials far more accessible to ordinary readers as well as scholars.