Rhenish ancestors were discernible in him-cheerfulness (Gemutlichkeit), frankness, firmness, patience, and energy-and yet no one could be more American in opinions and attitude. He was ideally qualified to write the history of the German contribution to American history, an enterprise which he under took only in spots as he edited the writings of Carl Schurz and other leading German-Americans.
The latter half of his professional life, 1920–1941, as superintendent of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin was given over largely to a series of valuable studies on the history of Wisconsin agriculture. In 1935, he lectured in London on the history of American agriculture and was accepted as the foremost authority on the subject. He edited the Wisconsin Magazine of History and frequently wrote critical studies of other historians, and biographies of the famous sons of Wisconsin.
Dr. Schafer's writings, in their main body, fall under four heads—those on the Pacific Northwest, the Pacific Slope, and the West generally; those on Wisconsin; those on agriculture; and those on German-American contributions to our cultural and material development, as indicated by Dr. Sheldon.
As much as Wisconsin and the states of the Pacific Northwest have reason to be grateful for such supreme talents spent in recording and interpreting their histories, it must be said, in consideration of the tremendously wider capacity of this man, that, however important regional chronicles may be regarded, he was qualified beyond all men for a particular kind of achievement of much greater significance.
He should have been the agricultural historian of America. Agriculture has had able and plentiful technological treatment, but it has never had a real history of the kind he would have written if he could have set himself to that and to no other purpose. He would have reveled in the task. He tells how as a boy he first became interested in history by having pointed out to him that there were cows and chickens at Jamestown. Old John Smith's colony came to life for him then, and always subsequently when records had an agricultural association there was a special joy and verve to his research and his writing.
His writings on Oregon, the Pacific Slope, and the West include the following books, pamphlets, and articles:
- History of the Pacific Northwest, 1905
- The Pacific Slope and Alaska, 1905
- The Acquisition of Oregon Territory, 1908
