Ohio History Journal

Historical News

 

 

 

A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY of the President's Civil War Centennial Com-

mission was held in Washington, D.C., on January 14-15, 1958. Major

General U. S. Grant, 3d, chairman of the commission, presided at the

sessions, and Dr. Bell I. Wiley, the distinguished Civil War historian of

Atlanta, Georgia, made the keynote address.

The purpose of the commission is to lead the nation in a fitting celebra-

tion of the centennial of the Civil War. At the meeting a thirteen-point

program was outlined, giving particular attention to state and local observ-

ances. Civil War History was designated the official organ of the commission.

Over two hundred representatives of historical and patriotic organizations

were in attendance. Robert S. Harper, public information officer of the

Ohio Historical Society and author of Lincoln and the Press, represented

both the Society and Governor O'Neill.

 

The University of Pennsylvania has announced the appointment of

William Charvat, professor of English at Ohio State University, as the

Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach Fellow in Bibliography for 1957-58. He will

deliver three lectures at the university in April 1958 on the general theme,

"Literary Publishing in America, 1790-1850." Dr. Charvat was for some

years a member of the board of editors of the Ohio Historical Society.

 

A Committee to Preserve the National Capitol has been formed to

oppose congressional plans to rebuild the central portion of the east

front of the United States Capitol and extend the portico. Julian E. Berla

of the American Institute of Architects is chairman of the committee, and

Wilbur H. Hunter, Jr., director of the Peale Museum in Baltimore, is

executive secretary. The purpose of the committee is to preserve the

historical and architectural integrity of the facade of the building.

The American Institute of Architects, the Society of Architectural His-

torians, and the American Association for State and Local History are

opposing the proposed alteration. The Committee to Preserve the National

Capitol is seeking to get the matter before the American people and is

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HISTORICAL NEWS           153

 

appealing to the congressional committee not to carry out the projected

changes in the east front.

 

The fifth annual Institute on Historical and Archival Management will

be offered by Radcliffe College and the department of history of Harvard

University during the six-weeks period from June 23 through August 1.

The institute will be directed again by Lester J. Cappon, director of the

Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Virginia.

The course is designed for those in or looking toward careers in archival

and historical institutions. The class, which will be limited to fifteen, will

be conducted as a seminar.

Two full-tuition scholarships ($200 each) are available. Inquiries should

be addressed to the Institute on Historical and Archival Management, 10

Garden Street, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts.

 

A multi-volume history of the Supreme Court of the United States,

made possible by a bequest of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes to the

United States, has been authorized by an act of congress and is now in

preparation by a group of scholars. The work is under the general direction

of a permanent committee, whose ex-officio chairman is L. Quincy Mumford,

librarian of congress. Professor Paul A. Freund of the Harvard Law

School has been named as editor-in-chief.

The participating scholars will be grateful for information on relevant

materials not in recognized collections, including letters to and from

justices, accounts of justices on circuit, comments on supreme court cases,

and memorabilia of lawyers associated with supreme court litigation.

Information and inquiries may be sent to Joseph P. Blickensderfer,

Administrative Editor, Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell

Holmes Devise, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.

 

William D. Overman, librarian and archivist of the Firestone Tire and

Rubber Company, was elected president of the Society of American Archi-

vists for the year 1958. Dr. Overman was also recently elected secretary

of the Summit County Historical Society.

 

Late in 1957 the American Jewish Archives published Bertram W. Korn's

The American Reaction to the Mortara Case, 1858-1859, as Volume II of

its Publications.

 

The Anthony Wayne Parkway Board was awarded first place in the

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154     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

special report division and second place in instructional material in Ohio

history by the Legislative Digest and Review in a competition with other

state agencies.

A Surgeon's Mate at Fort Defiance: The Journal of Joseph Gardner

Andrews for the Year 1795, edited by Richard C. Knopf, historian of the

parkway board, has been published by the Ohio Historical Society in book

form after appearing in the Quarterly.

 

Richard G. Arms has been appointed director of the Historical and

Philosophical Society of Ohio. Mr. Arms, who has degrees from Amherst

College and Harvard University, was for many years head of the English

department and assistant headmaster at the Cincinnati Country Day School.

Lately he has been administrator of civic affairs at the General Electric

Company's Evendale plant in Cincinnati. Mr. Arms succeeds the late

Virginius C. Hall, whose death occurred last June. Mrs. Alice P. Hook,

librarian of the society, served as acting director in the interim.

The annual spring meeting of the Historical and Philosophical Society

is scheduled for Thursday evening, April 24, 1958, at the Taft Museum.

The spring exhibition of the society will be opened in connection with

the April 24 meeting and will continue for two months.

The society's January Bulletin featured a series of heretofore unpublished

letters from Andrew Jackson to Moses Dawson, a key political figure in

Cincinnati and Ohio in the Jacksonian era. The letters, which were edited

by John J. Whealen of Xavier University, are part of a collection of Daw-

son papers owned by the Xavier University library. Subsequent issues of

the Bulletin will reproduce additional parts of the collection, including

letters to Dawson from William Henry Harrison, Martin Van Buren, James

K. Polk, and other prominent men of the period.

 

The Martha Kinney Cooper Ohioana Library Association has issued a

literary map of the state of Ohio listing the names of 173 Ohio authors

and locating the birthplaces of many of them. The map is three feet wide

and two feet high and is printed in four colors.

 

A number of physical improvements have been made at the Rutherford B.

Hayes Library and in the house and grounds of Spiegel Grove.

The library recently acquired two Civil War diaries kept by Michael

Deady of the Cleveland, Ohio, area, who served under Hayes in the 23d

Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

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HISTORICAL NEWS          155

 

Watt P. Marchman, director of the Hayes Library, served as guest

editor of a recent special Ohio issue of Civil War History.

 

David C. Riede, of the department of history at the University of Akron,

gave a talk on "National Socialism and the Catholic Church" at the State

University of Iowa on January 24, 1958.

 

Robert B. Boehm of the history department at Defiance College received

his Ph.D. degree at Ohio State University in December 1957. His disserta-

tion is titled "The Civil War in West Virginia--The Decisive Campaigns

of 1861."

The present history staff at Defiance is composed of Erwin J. Urch,

chairman, Dr. Boehm, A. Douglas MacNaughton, and Eugene R. Andrews.

 

The Ohio-Indiana Chapter of the American Studies Association has

elected Kenneth E. Davison of Heidelberg College as secretary-treasurer

for 1958.

 

Paul I. Miller, chairman of the history department at Hiram College,

who is lecturing at the University of Ceylon during the year 1957-58, will

return to this country by way of Europe, where he will spend the summer

with his family.

 

Robert A. Archer, instructor in history at Kent State University, has

been awarded a 1958-59 Danforth teacher's grant and will resume work on

his doctorate at Harvard University next fall.

 

Landon Warner, chairman of the history department at Kenyon College,

has been appointed to the acquisitions committee of the Rutherford B.

Hayes Library in Fremont by the trustees of the Rutherford B. Hayes and

Lucy Webb Hayes Foundation. He replaces the late Dr. A. T. Volwiler of

Ohio University.

 

Fred B. Joyner of the Miami University department of history has been

appointed chairman of the Sydnor Award Committee of the Southern

Historical Association.

Dwight L. Smith was reelected to the executive committee of the Ameri-

can Indian Ethnohistoric Conference.

Harris G. Warren, chairman of the department, presented a paper,

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156     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

"Cultural Vignettes of Old Claiborne," at the annual meeting of the

Mississippi Historical Association on March 8.

 

Frederick B. Artz of the Oberlin College department of history, who is

on sabbatical leave for the second semester of the current academic year,

is studying and writing in Europe. Dr. Artz donated to the Oberlin College

library his excellent collection of medieval and early modern maps.

Bernard Silberman will go to Japan next year on a Ford Foundation grant.

George Kren of the University of Wisconsin was appointed instructor

for the second semester, 1957-58.

After two years of lecturing and studying in the Philippines and India

on a Fulbright grant, Ellsworth Carlson returns to Oberlin this summer.

Dr. Carlson's 173-page book, The Kaiping Mines, 1877-1912, was issued

last year by the Chinese Economic and Political Studies of Harvard Uni-

versity and is being distributed by the Harvard University Press.

 

President Eisenhower has reappointed Wilfred E. Binkley, chairman of

the department of history at Ohio Northern University, to a four-year term

on the National Historical Publications Commission.

 

Miss Susan Habashy, employed during the current school year as a

teaching fellow in history and government at Ohio University, is conduct-

ing special seminar classes on the history of the Ottoman Empire and the

Middle East.

 

Marion C. Siney returned to her teaching duties at Western Reserve

University at the beginning of the second semester this year after eight

months abroad, primarily in the Scandinavian peninsula, doing research on

Swedish foreign policy during World War II.

 

At Youngstown University, David M. Behen has been appointed head of

the history department, replacing Clarence P. Gould, who retired on

September 1, 1957, after having served many years in that position.

New members of the department are A. W. Skardon, Jr. (M.A., Uni-

versity of Chicago), who holds an assistant professorship, and Alfred D.

Low, formerly of Marietta College, who is an associate professor.

Elbert B. Smith, whose biography of Thomas Hart Benton, Magnificent

Missourian, was published last February by Lippincott, has accepted a

position as associate professor of history at Iowa State College.

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HISTORICAL NEWS          157

 

Vern Bullough had two articles published in the past year in the Bulletin

of the History of Medicine: "Medieval Medical University at Paris" (May-

June 1957) and "Medieval Bologna and the Development of Medical Edu-

cation" (January-February 1958).

Bookman Associates-Twayne Publishers have published Alfred Low's

Lenin on the Question of Nationality.

 

Karol Marcinkowski, chairman of the history department at Wilberforce

University, will spend a year in Europe doing historical research and lectur-

ing at a Polish university.

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