James L. Cabot

James Lawrence Cabot (January 7, 1962 -) is an American historian and author.

Family
James Cabot is the great-great-grandson of Francisec Kabat (the original spelling of the surname), who was a native of Rastenburg in the former German province of East Prussia. At 6 ft. 8 in. in height he was said to be the tallest man in the Prussian Army at the time of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. He emigrated to America with his family in 1879, settling in Manistee, Michigan, where he was a sawmill worker and police officer. His son, Lawrence Cabot, followed the lumbering industry to Ludington, Michigan, in 1908.

Early life
James Cabot was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 7, 1962, the only son of James and Karen Cabot (née Kleinschmidt). He was raised in Ludington mainly by his grandparents, Frank and Bernice Cabot. His grandfather was a 41-year employee of the Pere Marquette Railway and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, and from him James gained a great interest in history, both of northern Michigan and of Germany.

By the age of seven he was reading histories of the Second World War, and in high school history, writing, and literature were his strongest subjects. He was graduated from Ludington High School in 1980. Later he attended West Shore Community College but left without a degree. His mobility has been restricted by his inability to drive a car owing to congenital astigmatism which renders him extremely nearsighted.

Since October 1, 1987, he has been parish secretary, librarian and historiographer of Grace Episcopal Church, Ludington.

Newspaper columnist
Cabot wrote a weekly historical column in the Ludington Daily News between March 20, 1980, and October 9, 2004. Between 1985 and 1991 he contributed a number of articles to Soundings, the quarterly journal of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society. In collaboration with George C. Wilson of the Ludington Public Library, he contributed historical sketches of Ludington and Scottville, Michigan, to Our Towns Revisited, a compilation published in 1989 by Eastern Michigan University.

He wrote a number of historical articles for special editions of the Daily News commemorating the centennial of Scottville in 1989 and the bicentennial of the United States Coast Guard and its predecessor, the Revenue Cutter Service, in 1990. Cabot wrote extensive historical articles for the Daily News annual special edition, "Update '91", which focused that year on the history of cross-lake steamship service between Ludington and Wisconsin ports between 1875 and 1991. The edition appeared a few months before the car ferry line was purchased by its present owner, Lake Michigan Carferry Service.

Between 1992 and 2004 Cabot published each summer in the Daily News a series of weekly illustrated history features. He was assisted in this project by news writer-photographer Jane I. Gray until her untimely death in June 2001.

Cabot was elected a director of the Ludington Mural Society at its organization in September 2002. The society has been responsible for the placement of 10 historical murals on buildings in the Ludington area.

Researcher
Cabot has been known best as a historian and researcher of Michigan's lumber era. In this he was greatly assisted by Doris Foster Lessard, the granddaughter of an early lumberman, who provided a great deal of information and photographs before her death in April 1991. From this nucleus he has assembled extensive biographical files on Michigan lumbermen and a collection of photographs from the lumber era. Much of this material appeared in his first book, published in 2005.

In addition to northern Michigan and Germany, his major areas of historical interest include lumbering, shipping and railroads of the Great Lakes; European royalty; military and naval history; the Pacific Mail Steamship Company; and Wells Fargo & Company. He is also interested in the biographies of persons with ties to Ludington, such as Clara Ward, Princesse de Caraman-Chimay (1873-1916).

A byproduct of his historical research has been the acquisition of a great deal of genealogical information. Before her death in 1991, Doris Foster Lessard named him official biographer of her branch of the Foster family, descendants of Reginald Foster (1595-1681), who came to Massachusetts from Exeter, England, in 1638.

In his own family, he has discovered that two of his maternal relatives in Germany, Maria Kleinschmidt and Charlotte Kleinschmidt (née Peters) were SS Aufseherinnen (see Female guards in Nazi concentration camps). Another maternal relative, Major Walter Kleinschmidt, was an officer of the German General Staff who served as quartermaster of LVI Panzer Corps under Erich von Manstein during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

In November 2005 Cabot published Ludington: 1830-1930, an illustrated history of the city during and immediately after the lumber era. He is currently engaged in work on a history of the Kaiserliche Marine, the Imperial German Navy of 1871-1918.

Politics
Despite his family's long association with the Democratic Party -- Francisec Kabat was named to the Manistee police force in 1887 as a Democratic political appointee -- Cabot has embraced conservatism as being more compatible with America's interests and traditions. He especially favors Michael Savage's program of "Borders, Language, Culture". In 2008 he has been vocal as an activist in support of the Republican presidential ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

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