John Roy Musick (1849-1901) was an American author who also wrote under the pseudonyms Benjamin Broadaxe/Broadax, Ebenezer Slypole, and Don Jenardo. He was a successful writer of newspaper articles, poetry and historical novels. He was born in Kirksville, Missouri where he received a Bachelor of Scientific Didactics from the First District Normal School in 1874. He taught a term at the school before he started pursuing his legal studies. In 1875, while studying law, Musick published The Tattler; a newspaper that he continued to publish for about six months in Kirksville. In 1876, he passed the Bar exam and took up the practice of law which he eventually abandoned in 1882 to devote himself full-time to writing. His best-known work is the Columbian Historical Novels (13 volumes) (1892-1901) which displays the history of the United States of America through a fictional narrative mode. Amongst his other works are: Calamity Row; or, The Sunken Records (1887), The Bad Boy and His Sister (1887), Mysterious Mr. Howard (1896), Stories of Missouri (1897), Lights and Shadows of our War with Spain (1898), and John Hancock: A Character Sketch (1898).