Carl Parcher Russell, National Parks administrator, ecologist, and historian was born in 1894 in Fall River, Wisconsin. He received an A.B. degree in biology from Ripon College in 1915, and later an M.A. in cytology and a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Michigan. Ripon College granted him an honorary doctor of laws in 1951.
Russell worked for the National Parks Service from 1923 until his retirement in 1957 as naturalist, museum specialist, administrator, director of research and interpretation, and Superintendent of Yosemite National Park. Russell's research on the fur trade and in other areas of his interest culminated in three books: One Hundred Years in Yosemite (Stanford University Press and Oxford University Press, 1931), Guns on the Early Frontiers (University of California Press, 1957) and Firearms, Traps, and Tools of the Mountain Men (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1967).
After his retirement, Russell moved to Orinda, California and began assembling family history materials, dating back to his pioneer grandparents' arrival in Fall River. An uncle, Zebulon Russell, had written a column for the Columbus Journal-Republican, “Fall River News,” and had saved clippings of his columns and historical articles, particularly those pertaining to the Civil War. Also, Fall River residents sent newspaper articles and other items of local interest to Russell. In this way an extensive correspondence was built up between Carl Russell and Walter Wright, who edited a selection of early Zebulon Russell columns which were published in the Columbus Republican as “Cheerful Yesterdays in Fall River,” from March to May, 1948. During this period Wright was writing a Civil War history of the military units in which Fall River men served.
