professor of history, b. Central Falls, R.I. He graduated from Brown Univ. (B.A., 1897) and Harvard Univ. (Ph. D., 1900). He was appointed instructor at the Univ. of Wisconsin in 1900 and became a full professor in 1910, a position that he held until his death. At first specializing in New England history, under Frederick J. Turner's (q.v.) plan for a department of sectional specialists, his interests gradually came to cover a wide range of American history. In 1904 his first book was published, Civil Service and the Patronage, and among the most important of the many works that followed were Guide to the Materials for American History in Roman and Other Italian Archives (1911), Development of American Nationality (1913), and The Rise of the Common Man (1927), one of the early works in the field of social and intellectual history. Deeply interested in the Civil War, he spent many years preparing a work on the period, but died before its completion, although one volume, The American Civil War, an Interpretation (1937), was published posthumously. A colorful and dynamic personality, he created a host of campus legends and was the center of some of the university's most popular traditions. His fame as a lecturer was widespread, and he devoted much of his time to addressing audiences within and beyond the state. Who's Who in Amer., 17 (1932); Madison Wis. State Journal, July II, 1932; Madison Capital Times, July 13, 1932; Wis. Mag. Hist., 17; C. R. Fish Papers.

The Wisconsin Historical Society has manuscripts related to this topic. See the catalog description of the Carl Russell Fish Papers for details.

View a related article at Wisconsin Magazine of History Archives.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]