Historian Joseph C. Schafer was born on December 29, 1867 near Muscoda, Grant County, Wisconsin. After leaving the home of his parents, Mathias and Ann J. Schafer, he attended the Madison Normal School in South Dakota, graduating in 1890 after two and one-half years of liberal studies. Schafer then taught for two years at a small Grant County high school before enrolling at the University of Wisconsin as a junior. He graduated with honors in history in 1894. For the next four years Schafer taught history and civics at the State Normal School in Valley City, North Dakota.
In 1898 Schafer re-entered the University of Wisconsin, taking courses in history and government from such notable professors as Frederick Jackson Turner and Paul Reinsch. Turner had a particularly profound impact on Schafer, and later when Turner's ideas came under attack during the 1930's, Schafer was one of Turner's most adamant defenders.
Schafer completed his M.A. in 1900, after which he was appointed to the history faculty of the University of Oregon. In 1904 he was named professor and head of the History Department. In 1906 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Schafer continued in his position at the University of Oregon until 1920, although during World War I, he served in Washington, D.C., as vice-chairman of the National Board for Historical Service. In 1920 he returned to Madison as superintendent of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
While at the University of Oregon, Schafer published several volumes of research on Oregon history (The Pacific Slope and Alaska, 1905, and A History of the Pacific Northwest, 1905 and 1918), but it was while directing the Wisconsin Historical Society that he developed into a mature scholar. Schafer believed that generalizations on state and national history could only be made after intensive study of local conditions. By studying the behavior of the people in small communities, it was possible, Schafer asserted, to make generalizations on state and national history. Toward this end, in his “Wisconsin Domesday” project, which was revised and completed during his years at the Historical Society, Schafer attempted to examine in detail the development of regional society and economy. The results were published by the Historical Society in the four-volume Wisconsin Domesday General Studies. Schafer was also recognized as a leader in the fields of agricultural and immigrant history. Studies in these and other studies were published in numerous articles and editorials in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, of which he was editor from 1922 to 1941, and as History of Agriculture in Wisconsin (1922), Yankee and Teuton in Wisconsin (1922-23), Four Wisconsin Counties, Prairie and Forest (1927), Life of Carl Schurz (1929), The Wisconsin Lead Region (1931), A Social History of American Agriculture (1936), and Who Elected Lincoln? (1941).
Schafer was highly regarded by his colleagues, serving as president of the Mississippi Valley Historical Society, 1927-1928, and the Agricultural History Association, 1931-1932. He also received an honorary LL.D. from the University of Oregon in 1933 in recognition of the service he had rendered to that university and state as a teacher and writer on Oregon history. In 1936 he was invited to give a series of lectures for the Commonwealth Fund at the University of London on the history of American agriculture.
Joseph Schafer died on January 27, 1941 after a long fight against cancer.
