Although he published only one book, Josiah Gregg created what several historians and literary critics have called a classic. Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies (1844) not only influenced and guided scores of travelers during the 1840s and 1850s but also has provided reliable information for historians, ethnographers, botanists, geographers, and other scholars from the mid nineteenth century to the present. While Commerce of the Prairies remains among the most useful contemporary narratives for scholars of the Southwest, the Mexican War, and the Santa Fe trade, it has gradually claimed a place as a literary classic as well. Scholarship on Gregg has been greatly aided by the work of Maurice Garland Fulton, who discovered Gregg's diary and letters and published the two-volume Diary and Letters of Josiah Gregg (1941-1944). Biographical information about Gregg prior to the publication of Fulton's work was both limited and largely undocumented.

Born in Overton County...