4 Quotes & Sayings By Francis Parkman

Francis Parkman was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 16, 1823. His family moved to Falmouth, Maine, when he was ten years old. For the next ten years he was educated in the public schools. He left school to work for a man named John Hubbard who was building a wooden ship in Eastport, Maine Read more

When he was seventeen years old, Parkman went to sea on board the Louisa. He served under Captain Robert Gray in the West Indies and North America. On August 6, 1846, Parkman married his first wife, Ann Eliza Stone; they had two children together before her early death in 1852.

On May 21 of the following year, Parkman married his second wife, Mary Wells Lawrence; they had ten children together before her death in 1888. After his marriage to Lawrence ended in divorce in 1896, Parkman became close friends with Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and his family. He also became friends with Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Henry Morton Stanley when they visited Eastport in the summer of 1894.

1
Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. Francis Parkman
2
The great medley of Oregon and California emigrants, at their camps around Independence, had heard reports that several additional parties were on the point of setting out from St. Joseph's farther to the northward. Francis Parkman
3
The reader need not be told that John Bull never leaves home without encumbering himself with the greatest possible load of luggage. Our companions were no exception to the rule. Francis Parkman