11, young DeForest showed an interest in the American Indian, selecting the topic for his composition theme in that year. In the years which followed DeForest was to become the foremost authority on Connecticut Indians, but in the interim, he traveled halfway around the world.
   He visited his brother Henry, who was a medical missionary in the Near East, residing in Beirut early in 1846. After about a year he returned to Connecticut.
    He was then 21 years of age and economically secure. He began his massive study of the Connecticut Indians. In his researches, he was aided by the librarian at Yale College Library, documents in the state archives, and a thorough search of the records of local towns which had dealings with Connecticut Indians.
    In addition, DeForest corresponded with historians throughout the state. He then spent the year 1850 attempting to get his work sanctioned by the Connecticut Historical Society. This sanction was attained, and DeForest took his work to the Hartford publisher, William James Hamersley.
    Arrangements for the book completed, he left the country and went to London and Florence. While in Europe he hoped to prepare himself to become a historian or biographer. He became discouraged and returned to Connecticut to begin a new career as a novelist, poet and essayist. His earliest work in the novel form was Witching Times, which showed his continuing interest in history. It was about the Salem witch trials. His final novel, A Lover's Revolt, was also historical, concerning the American Revolution.
    Edmund Wilson, writing on DeForest's contribution to American literature, said, "It is curious that the first and the last of his novels, the least read of all his little read fictions, should today have come to seem the most interesting."
    Deforest was an important beginner of American realism - but he was ahead of his time, and this tendency of his contributed to his failure to achieve popularity.
    Deforest married Harriet Silliman Shepard, daughter of Professor Charles Upham Shepard. He was a geologist with professorships at Amherst and the Medical College in Charleston, South Carolina. DeForest made yearly visits to the south to visit his wife's family. Their only child, Louis Shepard DeForest, was born in Charleston in 1857.