Early Life

Emma Helen Blair was a historical editor and translator born in Menasha, Wisconsin. She attended high school in Westfield, Massachusetts and graduated from Ripon College in 1872.

After teaching in the public schools, she worked as a proof reader, assistant newspaper editor and registrar of the Milwaukee Associated Charities. While a student at the University of Wisconsin from 1892 until 1894, she was assistant to John W. Stearns, editor of the Columbian History of Education in Wisconsin in 1893.

Achievements

While a staff member of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin from 1894 until 1902, she prepared an Annotated Catalogue of Newspaper Files in the Library in 1895 and, on leave of absence, assisted Reuben Gold Thwaites in editing 73 volumes of The Jesuit Relations from 1896 until 1901. She also provided annotation assistance for Thwaites in his work on Father Louis Hennepin and the journals of Lewis and Clark. In association with James A. Robertson she translated and edited 55 volumes of The Philippine Islands from 1903 until 1909. Her last work, published posthumously, was the translating and editing of Nicolas Perrot's memoirs and other documents in The Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Region of the Great Lakes.

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