[EDITORIAL NOTE.]
THE local historical work of the Northwest has been done in part under the auspices of various State and sectional historical societies. The Ohio Society, organized in 1831, became later inanimate, but was revived in 1868, and ought to hold a more important position among kindred bodies than it does. Mr. Baldwin has given an account of the historical and pioneer societies of Ohio in the Western Reserve and Northern Ohio Historical Society’s Tracts, no. 27; and this latter Society, organized in 1867, with the Licking County Pioneer Historical Society, organized the same year, and the Firelands Historical Society, organized in 1857, have increased the historical literature of the State by various publications elucidating in the main the settlements of the last century. The youngest of the kindred associations, the Historical and Geographical Society of Toledo, was begun in 1871. The State, however, is fortunate in having an excellent Bibliography of Ohio (1880), embracing fourteen hundred titles, exclusive of public documents, which was compiled by Peter G. Thomson; while the Americana Catalogues of Robert Clarke & Co., of Cincinnati, are the completest booksellers’ lists of that kind which are published in America. The Ohio Valley Historical Series, published by the same house, has not as yet included any publication relating to the period of the French claims to its territory. The earliest History of Ohio is by Caleb Atwater, published in 1838; but the History by James W. Taylor—“First Period, 1650-1787”—is wholly confined to the Jesuits’ missions, the wars of the Eries and Iroquois, and the later border warfare. (Field, Indian Bibliography, no. 1,535.) Henry Howe’s Historical Collections of Ohio, originally issued in 1848, and again in 1875, is a repository of facts pertaining for the most part to later times.
The Historical Society of Indiana, founded in 1831, hardly justifies its name, so far as appears from any publications. The chief History of Indiana is that by John B. Dillon, which, as originally issued in 1843, came down to 1816; but the edition of 1859 continues the record to 1856. The first three chapters are given to the French missionaries and the natives. (Field, Indian Bibliography, nos. 429, 430; Sabin, vol. v. no. 20,172.) A popular conglomerate work is The Illustrated History of Indiana, 1876, by Goodrich and Tuttle. A few local histories touch the early period, like John Law’s Colonial History of Vincennes, 1858; Wallace A. Brice’s History of Fort Wayne, 1868; H. L. Hosmer’s Early History of the Maumee Valley, Toledo, 1858; and H. S. Knapp’s History of the Maumee Valley from 1680, Toledo, 1872, which is, however, very scant on the early history.
In Illinois there is no historical association to represent the State; but the Historical Society of Chicago (begun in 1856), though suffering the loss of its collections of seventeen thousand volumes in the great fire of 1871, still survives.
The principal histories of the State touching the French occupation are Henry Brown’s History of Illinois, New York, 1844; John Reynolds’s Pioneer History of Illinois, Belleville, 1852, now become scarce; and Davidson and Stuvé’s Complete History of Illinois, 1673-1873, Springfield, 1874. The Historical Series issued by Robert Fergus pertain in large measure to Chicago, and, except J. D. Caton’s “Last of the Illinois, and Sketch of the Potawatomies,” has, so far as printed, little of interest earlier than the English occupation. H. H. Hurlbut’s Chicago Antiquities, 1881, has an account of the early discovery of the portage.
The Michigan Pioneer Society was founded in 1874, and has printed three volumes of Pioneer Collections, 1877-1880. The Houghton County Historical Society, devoting itself to the history of the region near Lake Superior,[538] dates from 1866. It has published nothing of importance. The State of Michigan secured, through General Cass, while he was the minister of the United States at Paris, transcripts of a large number of documents relating to its early history. The Historical Society of Michigan was begun in 1828, and during the few years following it printed several Annual Addresses and a volume of Transactions. Every trace of the Society had nearly vanished, when in 1857 it was revived. (Historical Magazine, i. 353.) The principal histories of the State are James H. Lanman’s History of Michigan, New York, 1839; Electra M. Sheldon’s Early History of Michigan, from the First Settlement to 1815, New York, 1856, which is largely given to an account of the Jesuit missions;[539] Charles R. Tuttle’s General History of Michigan, Detroit, 1874; James Valentine Campbell’s Outlines of the Political History of Michigan, Detroit, 1876. (Cf. Clarke’s Bibliotheca Americana, 1878, p. 92; 1883, p. 169; Sabin, Dictionary, vol. xii. p. 141.) A few of the sectional histories, like W. P. Strickland’s Old Mackinaw, Philadelphia, 1860, touch slightly the French period. A brief sketch of Mackinaw Island by Lieutenant Dwight H. Kelton, U. S. A., includes extracts from the registers of the Catholic Church at Mackinaw, and a list of the French commanders at that post during the eighteenth century.
The Historical Society of Wisconsin was founded in 1849, and reorganized in 1854. It has devoted itself to forming a large library, and has published nine volumes of Collections, etc. (Joseph Sabin in American Bibliopolist, vi. 158; Field, Indian Bibliography, no. 1,688). Mr. D. S. Durrie published a bibliography of Wisconsin in Historical Magazine, xvi. 29, and a tract on the Early Outposts of Wisconsin in 1873. A paper on the “First Page of the History of Wisconsin” is in the American Antiquarian, April, 1878. The principal histories of the State are I. A. Lapham’s Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 1846, which lightly touches the earliest period; William R. Smith’s Wisconsin (vol. i., historical; vol. ii., not published; vol. iii., documentary, translating in part the Jesuit Relations from the set in Harvard College Library), Madison, 1854; and Charles R. Tuttle’s Illustrated History of Wisconsin, Madison and Boston, 1875.