Francis Samuel Drake

Background

Francis Samuel Drake was born on February 22, 1828 in Northwood, New Hampshire, United States. He was the son of Samuel Gardner and Louisa (Elmes) Drake. His father was the proprietor of the first antiquarian bookstore in Boston, and the prolific editor and author of many works of American history.

Education

Drake was educated in the public schools of Boston.

Career

By 1848, Francis was a lieutenant in the Boston Light Guards, and in that capacity he went to Washington for the ceremonies held in connection with the laying of the corner-stone of the Washington Monument. In 1862 he removed to Kansas.

During the Civil War, he served in the army for a brief period in the capacity of adjutant.

He was back in Boston by 1871. The next year he published in one bulky volume a Dictionary of American Biography Containing Nearly Ten Thousand Notices (1872).

In 1872 he published a List of Members of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, and in 1873, Memorials of the Society of the Cincinnati of Massachusetts, and The Life and Correspondence of Henry Knox, both objective, dependable, and dry.

He was not a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, but was probably “employed” to arrange the Memorials in accord with the resolution of the Society.

His history, The Town of Roxbury, was published in 1878.

Two years later he contributed to Justin Winsor’s Memorial History of Boston a series of three articles each on Roxbury and Brighton.

He edited Schoolcraft’s Indian Tribes of the United States in 1884, and in 1885 he published Indian History for Young Folks, a book which has since been three times copyrighted— 1912, 1919, and 1927.

Tea Leaves, Being a Collection of Letters and Documents Relating to the Shipment of Tea to the American Colonies appeared in 1884, the editor’s introduction comprising half of the entire volume.

During the last years of his life he was consistently referred to by the Boston Directories as a “stationer, ” and one of the newspaper obituaries concerning him said that he was the “proprietor of a large circulating library and periodical store in Boston. ”

Achievements

• Francis' Dictionary of American Biography, with his latest corrections and all the materials that he had gathered for a new edition, was incorporated in Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Town of Roxbury: Its Memorable Persons and Places, Its History and Antiquities, with Numerous Illustrations of Its Old Landmarks and Noted Personages

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Dictionary of American Biography

    (Dictionary of American Biography. 1,017 Pages.)

  • Indian history for young folks

Connections

By 1856 Drake married M. Valentine.

Father:

Samuel Gardner

Mother:

Louisa (Elmes) Drake

Spouse:

M. Valentine