In a biographical article about John Dillon Brown in the first issue (1905) of Indiana Quarterly Magazine of History, Brown was called the “father of Indiana history”, who “not only ranks as Indiana’s first and best historian, but whose ideals, methods, character and accomplishment we deem worthy to keep continually in mind as a model to follow in historical work.”

While many histories from this time period were merely collections of stories from a variety of sources, Brown made a sustained effort to critically examine sources and customary stories, and weed out doubtful details and interpretations. One aspect of his approach was to make extensive use of direct quotes. He writes in the preface that readers …”will find many brief extracts from official documents, and many interesting passages, which have been copied from various manuscript journals, and from autograph letters which were written between the years 1778 and 1816.”