Nathan Welby Fiske, the father of Helen Hunt Jackson, was born on April 17, 1798 in Weston, Mass. He graduated with high honors from Dartmouth College in 1817. From there he went to New Castle, Maine where he had charge of the Academy there for one year. After this he returned to Dartmouth where he tutored for two years. He entered the Theological Seminary at Andover in the autumn of 1820, where he spent three years, and closed his preparatory studies for the ministry in the fall of 1823. His was not a career in the ministry, however. He spent only one year preaching in Savannah, Ga., among seamen and others not connected to any organized Christian congregations. After turning down an invitation from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to do missionary work in China, he accepted the appointment of Professor of Languages at Amherst College and began his duties in 1824. He was successively Professor of Latin and Greek Languages, 1824-25; Professor of Greek Language and Literature and Belles Letters, 1833-36; Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics, 1836-47. He died of dysentery in 1847 in Jerusalem, where he had gone for his health.

The bulk of his collection is comprised of notes by Fiske on Greek Language and Literature, Mental and moral philosophy and American History, in which he apparently had an interest.

This collection is organized into five series:

• 1. Correspondence
• 2. Notes for Lectures on Greek Literature & Philosophy, Mental Philosophy, Sacred History, Ancient Geography, American History
• 3. Published Works
• 4. Works about Fiske
• 5. Miscellaneous