Herbert Eugene Bolton

Bolton was born on a farm between Wilton and Tomah, Monroe County, Wisconsin, in 1870 to Edwin Latham and Rosaline (Cady) Bolton. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1895. That same year he married Gertrude Janes, with whom he eventually had seven children. Bolton studied under Frederick Jackson Turner from 1896 to 1897. He was also influenced by Charles Homer Haskins and Richard T. Ely. At University of Wisconsin, his fellow students included Carl Becker and Guy Stanton Ford. Starting in 1897, Bolton was a Harrison Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and studied American history under John Bach McMaster. In 1899, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied under John Bach McMaster, Edward P. Cheyney and Dana C. Munro. ==Career==

From 1899 to 1901, he was professor of history and economics at Milwaukee State Normal School. He taught the "History of the Americas" course, which enrolled up to a thousand students. His round-table seminar became famous, and the historians trained in that group have long been known as the “Bolton School.” In 1932, Bolton served as president of the American Historical Association, and his presidential address, "The Epic of Greater America," he laid out his vision of hemispheric history, which has later been called the "Bolton Theory." In 1937 Bolton examined the recently discovered Drake's Plate of Brass and called it authentic proof that Sir Francis Drake had landed on the California coast in 1579. Later analysis in 1977 demonstrated conclusively that the plate was a forgery. Portland State University archaeologist, Melissa Darby, maintained Bolton knew it was a forgery but took part in a deliberate deception to support his contention that Drake landed somewhere near San Francisco Bay. Between 1929 and 1934 historian E.G.R.Taylor published several articles about Drake with evidence for a more northerly landing in Oregon or Washington, and a new consensus was forming that Drake and his crew in the Golden Hind had landed and spent most of the summer of 1579 in the Pacific Northwest. The new Northwest theory of Drake’s movements was eclipsed when the Drake’s Plate of Brass marking his land claim was found on a hill overlooking San Francisco Bay in 1936. The timing of the discovery of this alleged artifact from Drake was not likely a coincidence. This Plate of Brass was trumped by tHerbert E. Bolton as authentic, and physical proof of Drake’s presence. The plate was only revealed as a fraud in 1977, but by then the Northwest Coast landing theory had been forgotten. Biographer, Albert Hurtado, conceded that Bolton may have been careless in his assessment of the brass plate but doubted that the world-renowned historian would deliberately risk his reputation. The hoax may well have been perpetrated by colleagues of Bolton's, who planted the fake to just to prank him. But the joke went horribly wrong when Bolton mistakenly and publicly authenticated it. His doctoral students include Woodrow Borah, John W. Caughey, LeRoy R. Hafen, Abraham P. Nasatir, J. Fred Rippy, and Ursula Lamb. In 1944 retired as a professor at Berkeley. He taught briefly at San Francisco State College in retirement. He died of a stroke in Berkeley, California, in 1953. ==Honors==

• President, American Historical Association 1932 • Member, American Philosophical Society 1937 • Bolton Hall on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is named after him. Bolton taught there when it was the Milwaukee State Normal School in the late nineteenth century. • The Conference on Latin American History, the professional organization of Latin American historians in the U.S., affiliated with the American Historical Association, established the annual Herbert Eugene Bolton Prize for the best book in English on Latin American history. ==Legacy==

Bolton is best known for his research on Spanish colonial history in the Spanish-American borderlands and his vision of an integrated history of the Americas. Biographer Kathleen Egan Chamberlain argues: His writings, particularly The Spanish Borderlands, still challenge traditional views of colonial and frontier history. They raise significant questions, such as the role of frontier on Spanish institutions and Spanish-Indian versus Anglo-Indian relations. The search for common historical elements between North and South America remains an open subject, and the call for greater hemispheric history has yet to be answered. Bolton taught enthusiastically until 1953 when he died at the age of 82, and left hundreds of graduate students, who have expanded Borderlands history and seek to make it relevant to 20th-century history. In a collection of essays on the development of research and teaching of Latin American history, an entire section, "Bolton, Boltonism, and Neo-Boltonism," was devoted to his work and influence, with nine essays and sixty-six pages devoted to him and his work. His 94 written works are still influential today, especially through the concepts of the Spanish Borderlands and the Bolton Theory. The Bolton Prize of the Conference on Latin American History, the professional organization of Latin American historians, honors the best work in English on Latin American history. The 1970 publication, The Spanish Borderland Frontier, 1513–1821, by John Francis Bannon (1905–1986), provided a new synthesis of Spanish Borderlands historiography, based on his own work and fifty years of research by other Bolton scholars. Bannon focused on the successful Spanish expansion in New Spain, from eastern Texas westward. ==List of works (Partial)==

• • • • • • • • edited by Bolton • republished 2008. • • {{cite book |last = KINO |first = Eusebio Francisco |title = Spain in the West: Kino's Historical Memoir of Pimería Alta, A Contemporary Account of the Beginnings of California, Sonora and Arizona, 1682–1711 • {{cite book |last = KINO |first = Eusebio Francisco |title = Spain in the West: Kino's Historical Memoir of Pimería Alta, A Contemporary Account of the Beginnings of California, Sonora and Arizona, 1682–1711 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ==Notes==