Frances Fuller Victor

Frances Auretta Victor (née Fuller; formerly Barritt; pen names: Florence Fane, Dorothy D.) (May 23, 1826 – November 14, 1902) was an American historian and historical novelist. She was known for her books about western United States, and especially Oregon history.

Early life

She was born as Frances Auretta Fuller in Rome, New York, on May 23, 1826, the eldest of five sisters. She was a "close relative" of judge Reuben H. Walworth. Frances Fuller was educated in a ladies' seminary in Wooster, Ohio.

She and her sister Metta Victoria Fuller became widely known for their writing while growing up in Ohio and Pennsylvania. 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.

Career

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 May 1862, she married Henry Clay Victor, a naval engineer and brother of Metta's husband, in Philadelphia. 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.