Before the rise of professional academic history, there were devoted Brahmins of a literary bent (George Bancroft, Francis Parkman and Henry Adams) and skilled researchers and chroniclers, men such as J. Thomas Scharf of Maryland history fame and - the most prolific of all - Ben Lossing of New York, who, since they made their living by writing history, could rightly be labelled professional after all. Every literate history lover in the mid-to-late 19th century knew of Lossing and his work; he may not have been academically trained, but he knew where to look for evidence, did the digging we would expect him to do, and wrote with a flair for the dramatic.