not only as an historian but also as a poet of great merit. The late Harvey W. Scott being once asked who was the most reliable historian in Oregon, replied: "Oregon has but one historian—Mrs. F. F. Victor." This was high praise from a competent judge. Mrs. Victor's work as a writer of Oregon history is greater than that of all others combined; and as a collector of Oregon history her work is second only to that of Geo. H. Himes. . . .
Mrs. Victor had collected all the material for the Oregon history when the Bancroft Publishing House offered her ten years' work on their histories on condition that she would turn over her collections to Mr. Bancroft—who wrote history by proxy. Mrs. Victor accepted this proposition because she had not the money to bring out her own book. . . . She was married to Henry C. Victor, a naval engineer, who was ordered to the Pacific coast in 1863. Mrs. Victor followed her husband in 1865, and they settled on land in Columbia County and tried to develop a salt spring, and did make some salt. Mr. Victor was drowned in the sinking of an ocean steamship—the Pacific, November 4, 1875, south bound from Victoria, B. C. —and his widow commenced then to write Oregon history.
After the Bancroft series was completed in 1890, she returned to Oregon, living in Salem and Portland. The best years of her life had been given to those 39 volumes that sold up and down the Pacific Coast at from $175 to $390 a set, and she came back to Oregon at the age of 64, so little the recipient of the Bancroft liberality that we get the following recollection of her by Fred Lockley:
When I lived in Salem, I became acquainted with Frances Fuller Victor. She had written for Bancroft, the history of Oregon, also the history of Washington, and was the author of a number of books published under her own name. At the time I knew her, she was boarding at the home of E. M. Waite, the old-time printer of Salem. In spite of her years
