Thomas J. Wertenbaker

Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker (February 6, 1879 - April 22, 1966) was a leading American historian and Edwards Professor of American History at Princeton University.^[1] Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, he received his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from the University of Virginia, gaining a reputation for his doctoral dissertation, Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia (1910), followed by Virginia Under the Stuarts (1914), and his master work, The Planters of Colonial Virginia (1922).^[1]

In 1910, Princeton President Woodrow Wilson brought him there as a preceptor. Wertenbaker was a member of the history department for 37 years and its chairman from 1928 to 1936. He was an effective and popular undergraduate teacher, and also carried the majority of the burden of graduate teaching for many years.

He was president of the American Historical Association in 1947, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and professor at the University of Oxford, visiting professor at the University of Göttingen and the University of Munich.^[1] He was also a newspaper editor and an amateur architect.

Selected works

• Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia (doctoral thesis) (1910)
• Virginia Under the Stuarts, 1607-1688 (1914)
• The Planters of Colonial Virginia (1922)
• The Founding of American Civilization: The Middle Colonies (1938)
• Torchbearer of the Revolution: The Story of Bacon's Rebellion and Its Leader (1940)
• The Old South: The Founding of American Civilization (1942)
• The Puritan Oligarchy: The Founding of American Civilization (1947)

References

External links

• The Molding of the Middle West, 1947 Presidential Address at the American Historical Association
• Thomas J. Wertenbaker at Find a Grave
• "Bacon's Rebellion, 1676", at manybooks.net
• Works by Thomas J. Wertenbaker at Project Gutenberg