The following essay discusses John Hay and his collaborator, John George Nicolay.

John George Nicolay and John Milton Hay produced one of the best and most comprehensive histories written in America in the nineteenth century. Nicolay was born in Essingen, Bavaria, but came to America in 1838 with his parents, John Jacob and Helena Nicolay, and four other Nicolay children. The family lived in Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri before settling in Pike County, Illinois, where John Jacob Nicolay and his sons operated a flour mill. By the late 1840s both of Nicolay's parents had died. Nicolay spent one year as a clerk in a White Hall, Illinois, store before going to work as a printer's devil for the Pittsfield (Illinois) Free Press, which was Whig in politics.

In 1851 in Pittsfield Nicolay met and became a friend of his future collaborator, John Hay, who was preparing for college at a...