Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin, Pioneering the Upper Midwest 1820 - 1910

Born to an Irish Catholic family, Jeremiah Curtin (1835-1906), a linguist, translator, and folklorist, spent his early years on a farm in Greenfield, Wisconsin, and the first portion of this memoir, compiled by his wife, Alma Cardell Curtin, concerns his rural Wisconsin boyhood and subsequent struggles to obtain a scholarly education. After graduating from Harvard (1863), where he studied under Francis James Child, he moved to New York, read law, and worked for the U.S. Sanitary Commission while translating and teaching languages. He then traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia (1864), where he served as Secretary to the American legation headed by Cassius Clay. The memoir describes their difficult relationship, as well as Curtin's first travels through Russia and the Caucasus. Upon his return to the United States, Curtin lectured throughout the country about Russia, marrying Alma Cardell of Warren, Vermont in 1872.
"Except as to spelling, and to some extent punctuation and paragraphing, the text is left precisely as the Curtins, husband and wife, wrote it."--Pref.
"Paid for out of the income of the George B. Burrows Fund."
Also available in digital form on the Library of Congress Web site.