John Franklin Jameson

John Franklin Jameson 1859-1937, American historian, b. Somerville, Mass. After teaching at Johns Hopkins, Brown, and the Univ. of Chicago he was director (1905-28) of the department of historical research of the Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C., and from 1928 to his death he was chief of the division of manuscripts in the Library of Congress. As chairman of the committee of management of the Dictionary of American Biography he was largely responsible for the inauguration and completion of that monumental work. In these and other undertakings, Jameson exercised much influence in American historical scholarship. He wrote The History of Historical Writing in America (1891) and The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement (1926) and edited Correspondence of John C. Calhoun (1900, repr. 1969).

Franklin, Sir John (1786–1847). After a distinguished naval career in the wars against Napoleon, Franklin became the most famous British Arctic explorer of his day. Then he became even more of a national figure by disappearing into the unknown. Franklin made his greatest discoveries on two overland journeys of 1818–22 and 1825–7 when he explored vast areas of northern mainland Canada. After a spell as governor of Tasmania from 1834 to 1843, he was chosen to take the Antarctic ships Erebus and Terror to the Arctic to force the North‐West Passage. Having got through sea passages to the west side of King William Island, the ships were frozen in. Franklin died, but his men survived to perish later of scurvy, starvation, and lead poisoning from their tinned foods. Not until 1859 was the nature of the disaster fully established.

Franklin, Battle of a Civil War battle in November 1864 between Union forces under Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield and Confederates under Gen. John B. Hood in Franklin, Tennessee. It was a major Union victory, with casualties in the thousands on the Confederate side.