Emma Helen Blair

Class of 1874: Editor, translator, historian

Emma Helen Blair was born Sept. 12, 1851, in Menasha, Wisconsin, and became a renowned historian, translator and editor about the state of Wisconsin and the Philippines.

At Ripon, she studied the scientific course. She taught in public schools in Menasha and Milwaukee for two years, then worked as a journalist in Milwaukee. In 1892, she began postgraduate work in history, economics and sociology at the University of Wisconsin.

She was a librarian for the Wisconsin Historical Society and supervisor of the maps and manuscripts collection, and she prepared an Annotated Catalogue of Newspaper Files in the library.

In 1894, she resigned from the library staff to become the assistant to Dr. Rueben Gold Thwaites, superintendent of the historical society and a prominent historian and writer. From 1896-1901, he translated the 73-volume work Jesuit Relations, a massive work of English translations of the annual reports from Jesuit missions in New France to the Jesuit overseer in France between the years 1632 and 1673. Blair helped with editing and annotations.

She then assisted in editing the journal of Father Louis Hennepin, a missionary and explorer of the interior of North America, and the original journals from the Lewis and Clark expedition.

From 1903 to 1909, she produced her most notable work, the translation and editing of Philippine historical documents that were published in the monumental 55-volume series “The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898.” Her collaborator was Dr. James A. Robertson, later librarian at the Philippines Library in Manila.

Her last work, completed during her final illness, was the translation from the French and editing of documents for “The Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Region of the Great Lakes,” published in two volumes. This work included “The Habits and Customs of the American Indians,” the memoirs of Nicolas Perrot, a French explorer of the Upper Mississippi Valley in what is now Wisconsin and Minnesota during the last half of the 17th century.

She died Sept. 25, 1911, at age 60, just days after receiving an advance copy of volume 1 from the bindery. The Madison Democrat newspaper hailed her as “one of the most remarkable women of Wisconsin.”