======================================================================
=                       Frances_Fuller_Victor                        =
======================================================================

                            Introduction
======================================================================
Frances Auretta Victor ( Fuller; formerly Barritt; pen names: Florence
Fane, Dorothy D.) (May 23, 1826 - November 14, 1902) was an American
historian and historical novelist. She has been described as "the
first Oregon historian to gain regional and national attention." She
was known for her books about the West and especially Oregon history.


                                Life
======================================================================
She was born as Frances Auretta Fuller in Rome, New York, in 1826, the
eldest of five sisters. She was a "close relative" of judge Reuben H.
Walworth. She and her sister Metta Victoria Fuller became widely known
for their writing while growing up in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Frances
Fuller was educated in a ladies' seminary in Wooster, Ohio.  The
sisters both published stories and poems in the 'Home Journal',
published by Morris & Willis. In 1848 the sisters moved together
to New York City.

In 1851, Frances moved to St. Clair, Michigan, north of Detroit to
help care for her mother and younger sisters. She married Jackson
Barritt in 1853, and she and her husband homesteaded near Omaha,
Nebraska Territory. She left Barritt, however, returning to live with
Metta in New York. There she published several of the first dime
novels with Beadle & Adams.

In 1862, she married Henry C. Victor, a naval engineer and brother of
Metta's husband. The couple moved to San Francisco the year they were
married and then to Oregon in 1864. They settled in Portland.

Following the move to Oregon, Fuller Victor's writing shifted from
fiction and feature articles to book-length regional histories. Over
the next 13 years, she compiled first-hand accounts of the history of
Oregon from territorial leaders such as Joseph Meek, Oliver Applegate,
and Matthew Deady. Her diligent studies informed both her fiction and
her historical writing, contributing to her success as a writer. Her
fiction in this period was considered to accurately capture the spirit
of western expansion and the notion of Manifest Destiny.

She also continued to write about women's rights. Among the
publications she wrote for was Abigail Scott Duniway's 'The New
Northwest'. She was a member of the Pacific Coast Women's Press
Association.

Henry C. Victor died on November 4, 1875, in the wreck of the
steamship 'Pacific' off Cape Flattery. In need of money, Fuller Victor
moved back to San Francisco to accept a 10-year contract offered by
historian Hubert Howe Bancroft. The terms of the contract required her
to turn over to him her extensive collections and research. She
contributed major portions of Bancroft's monumental work, 'The History
of the West', though Bancroft published her work under his own name.

Fuller Victor returned to Oregon in 1886. She was commissioned by the
Oregon Legislative Assembly to write a history of the Anglo-Indian
wars, which was titled 'The Early Indian Wars of Oregon'. To cover her
living expenses, she also sold face cream and other articles
door-to-door. She was granted a pension in April 1902.

In regards to surnames and personal identity, she has said, "What an
awkward thing it is for literary women to be deprived of their own
names! I furnished my biography to an encyclopedia the other day under
the F for Fuller heading, believing that Fuller is my rightful name."


                               Legacy
======================================================================
Fuller Victor was buried at River View Cemetery in Portland. The
initial grave marker was made of wood, and did not last long. In 1947,
the Daughters of the American Revolution supplied a permanent grave
marker. Fuller Victor's name was included among the names of
significant Oregonians on the walls of the Oregon State Capitol, which
was completed in 1938. In 1945 Crater Lake National Park formalized
the name of "Victor View," a viewpoint on the rim of the park, in her
honor.

In many respects, her legacy continued to be overshadowed by that of
historian Hubert Howe Bancroft, though her authorship was recognized
by a number of authorities. Leslie M. Scott, who served as editor of
the 'Oregon Historical Quarterly' and later as treasurer of Oregon,
suggested in a 1924 address that the 'History of Oregon' she wrote
while employed by Bancroft might be "the most monumental work on
Oregon history." She was included (along with several other women) in
a list of "Noted Leaders of the Oregonian's First 100 Years" in 1950.

Fuller Victor's legacy was invoked in a speech by scholar Terrence
O'Donnell at the inaugural Oregon Book Award event in 1987, which also
marked the beginning of the annual Frances Fuller Victor Award for
Creative Nonfiction. In 2005, the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission
selected 'The River of the West' as one of the 100 books that best
define the state and its people.

Beginning in 1951, Randall Mills began researching Fuller Victor's
life and work. He enlisted the help of Hazel Emery Mills, his wife;
the work became her lifelong passion following Randall's death shortly
after the project began. With assistance and encouragement over the
years from Thomas Vaughan of the Oregon Historical Society, Constance
Bordwell of the University of Oregon, and (after Hazel Mills' death in
1999) Bordwell's assistants Priscilla Knuth and Bruce Taylor Hamilton,
and Vaughan's associate Marguerite Wright, a biography was published
by the OHS Press in 2003. It was called 'Frances Fuller Victor: The
Witness to America's Westerings'. It was attributed to Hazel Mills and
Constance Bordwell as authors, with Thomas Vaughan and Marguerite
Wright as editors.

Separately, and without awareness of the Mills-Bordwell project, Jim
Martin, a legislative assistant with a background in journalism, took
an interest in Fuller Victor in 1976, after having noticed her name on
the Capitol's wall. He researched her work for eight years. After
searching for a publisher for five years, he published 'A Bit of Blue:
The Life and Work of Frances Fuller Victor', under his own Deep Well
Publishing imprint.

In 2021, Storybound (podcast) released the pilot of Florence Fane in
San Francisco, written by playwright Brianna Barrett and produced by
Jude Brewer, officially funded by a grant from the Regional Arts &
Culture Council in 2019. The pilot is a radio drama adaptation of
Barrett's historical fiction play based on the life of Fuller Victor,
specifically, her years spent working for The Golden Era in San
Francisco during the Civil War.


                   Works by Frances Fuller Victor
======================================================================
* 'Anizetta, the Guajira; or, The Creole of Cuba' (1848)
* 'East and West; or, The Beauty of Willard's Mill' (1862)
*
'[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=AHQ2270.0001.001
The Land Claim: A Tale of the Upper Missouri]' (1862)
* "Manifest Destiny in the West" in the 'Overland Monthly' (1869)
* 'The River of the West: The Adventures of Joe Meek' (1870)
* 'All Over Oregon and Washington' (1872)
* social columns for San Francisco's 'Daily Morning Call', written
under the penname Dorothy D (mid-1870s)
* "The Literature of Oregon." 'The West Shore' 1 (1876)
* 'The New Penelope: And Other Stories and Poems' (1877)
* Eleven Years in the Rocky Mountains and a Life on the Frontier
(1877) (an edited version of 'River of the West')
* Under contract with Hubert Howe Bancroft:
** Several volumes of the series 'History of the Pacific states of
North America', inaccurately attributed to Bancroft.
* 'Atlantis Arisen: or, Talks of a Tourist about Oregon and
Washington' (1891) (an edited version of 'All Over Oregon…'
* 'The Early Indian Wars of Oregon' (1894)
* 'Autobiographical Sketch' (1895)
* 'Poems' (1900)


                          Further reading
======================================================================
*
*
*
* [http://www.ulib.niu.edu/badndp/barritt_frances.html Barritt, Mrs.
Frances F.], Beadle and Adams Dime Novel Digitization Project


License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Fuller_Victor