The quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Vol. 4, March, 1903-December, 1903Oregon Historical Society
History
The quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Vol. 4, March, 1903-December, 1903
Oregon Historical Society
Oregon -- History -- Periodicals
From these sources it is found that during the progress of the work on
the Native Races, Mr. Bancroft had after hard labor and much revision
completed his introduction to the History of Central America, and had
written a half of the first volume. Oak wrote half of the preface and
the fine print summary of explorations, and Nemos was responsible for
a third of the volume from page 460 on, although he prepared material
in the rough, leaving it to be rewritten by a German aid whose name is
not given, but who may have been a man by the name of Kuhn mentioned
as having done work on the second volume.
Of this latter volume, Mr. Bancroft wrote one chapter, apparently the
first, which deals with Pizarro and Peru. Nemos and a writer named
Peatfield (J. J. Peatfield, described by Bancroft [Lit. Ind.,
265-267,] as a "strong man and one of talent," was born in
Nottinghamshire, England, August 26, 1833. His father, a clergyman,
educated him for the church and he took his degree at Cambridge in
1857, being graduated in the classical tripos. The church, however,
was distasteful to him, and he obtained a tutorship, subsequently in
1862 going to Nicaragua to engage in cacao cultivating. This
enterprise proved a failure. After attempting cotton, cacao again, and
finally coffee all in vain, in 1865 he became a bookkeeper at San
José, the capital of Costa Rica. In January, 1868, he was made a clerk
and translator to the legation at Guatemala, and two years later,
British Consul General for Central America. While holding the
consulship of Guatemala a third time, he resigned on account of ill
health and went to San Francisco, where he arrived in November, 1871.
Becoming bookkeeper and cashier for a Nevada mine at White Pine, and
battling much with ill health, he returned to San Francisco, where he
acted as teacher and bookkeeper until February, 1881, when he entered
the library), labored together on the volume and prepared half of it,
and Bates a fourth. Kuhn wrote a fifth which was partly rewritten by
Nemos. The latter claimed about a fourth of a volume as the actual
material written by him for the first and second volumes together.
The third volume, including the history of Central America in the
nineteenth century, was written by Savage, who, nearly all his life
had been engaged in the consular service of the United States in Cuba
and Central America.
(Thomas Savage, according to a biography written by himself, was born
at Havana, Cuba, August 27, 1823, a short time after his parents had
removed thither from Philadelphia. His father, a descendant of the
earliest settlers of Massachusetts and a brother of Savage, the famous
genealogist of New England, was from Boston, and his mother, a native
of Charleston, South Carolina, was the daughter of a French planter
who had escaped the great massacre in San Domingo and a Maryland
woman of Jewish extraction).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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