Benjamin Franklin De Costa

Benjamin Franklin De Costa combined clerical work, editing, and historical scholarship in a career concentrated on early exploration and cartography. After religious study in New Hampshire, he served Episcopal congregations, worked as a Civil War chaplain, and edited periodicals including The Christian Times and The Magazine of American History. The Northmen in Maine appeared in 1870 during a sustained debate over Norse voyages and the interpretation of Icelandic sagas. De Costa used the book to challenge geographical claims advanced by J. G. Kohl and to argue for his own reading of the evidence connected with Maine. It followed The Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen and preceded further studies such as Columbus and the Geographers of the North and Verrazano the Explorer. The Northmen in Maine therefore belongs to a connected program of historical argument rather than an isolated curiosity. De Costa’s editorial work and interest in old maps helped shape the documentary approach he brought to these disputed narratives.