Reuben Gold Thwaites was born in Massachusetts in 1853. When
twenty-three years of age he came to Madison, Wisconsin, to
act as editor of the Wisconsin State Journal. Just ten years
later he was made secretary and superintendent of the State
Historical Society of Wisconsin, in which capacity he served
until his death in 1913.
All students of history in the University of Wisconsin knew
Mr. Thwaites, for no doubt partly through his influence,
instructors in history impressed upon the young men and women
in their classes the conception of history as being always in
the making. To many a student who had always thought of
history as being something written in books this new
conception came as a great awakening. He urged upon all with
whom he came in contact the importance of recording local
events, and he had an extraordinarily keen sense of
tendencies and activities in his state that were really vital
and significant.
The State Historical Library at Madison contains thousands
of newspaper clippings, little pamphlets, letters by obscure
people, apparently unimportant legal or official documents
that were gathered by Reuben Gold Thwaites, and that now form
the priceless sources of the history of the state. The
services of such a man to his community cannot be reckoned
commercially. The state knows itself better, understands its
ideals more thoroughly, and furnishes to its students a fund
of incontrovertible facts on which to base their study,
because it possessed a citizen like Reuben Gold Thwaites.