- T. Harry Williams
Thomas Harry Williams (
May 19 ,1909 --July 6 ,1979 ) was an award-winninghistorian atLouisiana State University inBaton Rouge whose career began in 1941 and extended for thirty-eight years until his death. A popular faculty member, Williams is perhaps best known for hisAmerican Civil War study, "Lincoln and His Generals", a "Book of the Month" selection from 1952, and his 1969 work "Huey Long" (the definitive study ofHuey Pierce Long, Jr. ), winner of both the National Book Award and thePulitzer Prize .Williams was born in
Vinegar Hill Township, Jo Daviess County, Illinois , to William D. Williams and the former Emma Necollins, and was educated in the schools of the village ofHazel Green, Wisconsin . Williams obtained hisbachelor's degree in 1931 from theUniversity of Wisconsin-Platteville (then "Platteville State College") in Platteville. He thereafter obtained his master's andPh.D. degrees from theUniversity of Wisconsin at Madison , in 1932 and 1937, respectively. He first instructed history in the extension division of UW from 1936-1938. He then accepted a professorship at theUniversity of Omaha inNebraska from 1938-1941. Then he came to LSU, where he was anchored for the remainder of his career. In 1952, he married the former Estelle Skolfield (1908-1999), and they had one daughter.Willliams was a
Guggenheim Fellow in 1957 and was the Harmsworth Professor of American History atQueen's College , a college ofOxford University inGreat Britain from 1966-1967. He was president of the Southern Historical Association from 1958-1959 and of theOrganization of American Historians from 1972-1973.On Williams' death, the LSU Board of Supervisors established the T. Harry Williams Chair of American History. There is also the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History at LSU. Williams guest lectured at more than fifty separate colleges in the United States and
Europe . He participated in countless Civil War Round Tables. In 1964, he received theHarry S. Truman Award in Civil War History. He received the Doctor of Humane Letters from Loyola University andTulane University , both inNew Orleans , in 1974 and 1979, respectively.A stimulating lecturer, Williams routinely taught overflow numbers of students in auditorium-sized classrooms. He was said to have been a stern taskmaster but a mentor to several generations of graduate students. He wrote more than twenty scholarly books, co-authored with Richard Current and Frank Freidel, a standard text in American history survey courses, edited seven works, and published more than forty articles and some 325 book reviews.
Other acclaimed works included: "Lincoln and the Radicals" (1941), "
P.G.T. Beauregard , Napoleon in Gray" (1955), "Romance and Realism in Southern Politics" (1961), McClellan, Sherman, and Grant (1962), and posthumously "History of American Wars" (1981).Williams is interred in Roselawn Cemetery in Baton Rouge.
References
* T. Harry Williams, "A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol. 2" (1988), pp. 851-852
External links
* [http://www.amazon.com/s/?search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=Harry+T+Williams Published Works of T. Harry Williams]
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