Frances Fuller Victor

Who was Frances Fuller Victor?

Frances Auretta Fuller Victor was an American historian and historical novelist. She has been described as "the first Oregon historian to gain regional and national attention."

Fuller Victor was born in New York and was raised with her sister Metta Victoria Fuller Victor, also a writer, in Ohio and Pennsylvania. She was educated in a ladies' seminary in Wooster, Ohio. The sisters both published stories and poems in New York's Home Journal, and in 1848 they moved to New York together.

Frances moved to St. Clair, Michigan in 1851 to help care for her mother and younger sisters. She first married in 1853, and she and her husband homesteaded near Omaha, Nebraska Territory. She left her husband, however, returning to live with Metta in New York. She married Henry C. Victor, a naval engineer and brother of Metta's husband, in 1862.

The couple moved to San Francisco the year they were married and then to Oregon in 1864, settling in Portland.