Hubert Howe Bancroft

Hubert Howe Bancroft May 5, 1832 – March 2, 1918 was an American historian and ethnologist who wrote, published and collected works concerning the western United States, Texas, California, Alaska, Mexico, Central America and British Columbia. Bancroft was born in Granville, Ohio to Azariah Ashley Bancroft and Lucy Howe Bancroft. His parents were staunch abolitionists. The family home was a station on the Underground Railroad, and is now a dormitory on the campus of Denison University. He attended the Doane Academy in Granville for a year, and he then became a clerk in his... brother-in-law's bookstore in Buffalo, New York. In March 1852, he was sent to San Francisco, California, where he initiated and managed a regional office of the business. He also began his own publishing house. In 1868, he resigned from his business in favor of his brother, A. L. Bancroft. He had accumulated a great library of historical material, and abandoned business to devote himself entirely to writing and publishing history.
more