The New International Encyclopædia/Shea, John Dawson Gilmary

SHEA, shā, John Dawson Gilmary (1824-92). An American historian. He was born in New York, educated at the Columbia Grammar School, and admitted to the bar. He gave himself chiefly to historical research, mainly in connection with French colonization and Jesuit missions in America. He published prayer-books, school histories, the Catholic Almanac, and edited the Historical Magazine (1859-65). Among his scholarly historical treatises may be named: The Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley (1853); History of the Catholic Missions Among the Indian Tribes of the United States (1854); Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi (1862); Novum Belgium: An Account of the New Netherlands in 1643-44 (1862); The Operations of the French Fleet Under Count de Grasse (1864). Mention should also be made of the three volumes of his unfinished History of the Catholic Church in the United States, as well as of his Indian grammars, translations of Charlevoix and similar writers, and his editions of early American historical tracts.