Historians from the Past: C.W. Butterfield (1824-1899)

Early histories of the American Revolution in the west relied on oral tradition, local lore, legend, and even a bit of inventive myth-making as a young United States spread beyond the Appalachians and sought to develop its own, new identity.Considerable effort, but not always the most rigorous methodology, often went into combining these sources into a narrative and telling an integrated story of how events in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston or London eventually affected communities “over the mountains.”The first historians overlapped with the Revolutionary generation.Often, the writers were children in the early 1800s and heard stories from veterans and settlers themselves (or their relations, descendants, and neighbors) in their old age.

A second generation came along in the mid-19^thcentury.The most notable was Lyman Draper.He set out to write the definitive history of the war on the frontier, but ended…