Sparks, Jared (10 May 1789–14 March 1866), historian, editor, and clergyman, was born in Willington, Connecticut, the son of Eleanor Orcutt, who nine months later married Joseph Sparks, a farmer. His early life was somewhat unstable. In the mid-1790s he was sent to live with an aunt and uncle to relieve the burdens of the many children in the family, and with his adoptive family, he settled in 1800 in Camden, New York. In 1805 he moved home for a brief time and then went to live with another uncle in Tolland, Connecticut. There he apprenticed as carpenter and taught in local schools. Early on he displayed interests in literary and historical pursuits along with the more common interest in theology. While in Arlington, Vermont, he organized the Arlington Philosophical Society in 1808. He studied at the Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, beginning in September 1809, the result of Sparks’s early interests in the ministry and his receipt of a scholarship. There he met and became lifelong friends with another future New England historian, ...
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Sparks, Jared (1789-1866), historian, editor, and clergyman
Richard J. Cox
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Thwaites, Reuben Gold (1853-1913), historian, editor, and librarian
Robert L. Gale
Thwaites, Reuben Gold (15 May 1853–22 October 1913), historian, editor, and librarian, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, the son of William George Thwaites and Sarah Bibbs, farmers. Thwaites’s family had emigrated from Yorkshire, England, three years before his birth. He attended school in Dorchester and in 1866 moved with his parents to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where he helped them farm, taught school, and read the equivalent of a program of college courses. He became a reporter on the ...
