Background
Charles McLean Andrews was born on February 22, 1863, in Wethersfield, Connecticut. He was the son of William Watson and Elizabeth Byrne (Williams) Andrews.
300 Summit St, Hartford, CT 06106, United States
Andrews received his Bachelor of Arts from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, in 1884.
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, United States
Andrews received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1889.
Andrews studied at West Hartford High School.
Charles McLean Andrews was born on February 22, 1863, in Wethersfield, Connecticut. He was the son of William Watson and Elizabeth Byrne (Williams) Andrews.
Andrews received his Bachelor of Arts from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, in 1884 and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1889.
In 1884 Charles McLean began teaching at West Hartford High School. Dissatisfied, Andrews left in 1886 to enter graduate school at Johns Hopkins. There he worked under Herbert B. Adams, a leading figure in the movement to professionalize history and an exponent of the "germ" theory of history, which traced American political institutions from German origins. In keeping with his mentor's interest, Andrews studied towns in Connecticut. However, his dissertation, The River Towns in Connecticut (1899), questioned some of Adams's assumptions.
Andrews took his first teaching position at Bryn Mawr in 1889. His continued research to test the germ theory resulted in The Old English Manor (1892). The following year Andrews's interest shifted back to American colonial history, although he continued to teach and to write textbooks in European and world history. Andrews continued to teach at Bryn Mawr, taking a leave sponsored by the Carnegie Institution in 1903-1904 to work on a guide to manuscripts in the British Museum.
In 1904 he saw publication of his Colonial Self-Government, 1652-1689. By 1907 Andrews's reputation was such that he was asked by Johns Hopkins to fill Adams's chair, which had been vacant 6 years. He moved to Johns Hopkins and published with Francis G. Davenport the Guide to the Manuscript Materials for the History of the United States to 1783 in the British Museum and Other Depositories (1908), a work Andrews believed would make him famous.
Unhappy at Johns Hopkins, Andrews moved to Yale to become professor of American history, edit the Yale Historical Series, and teach graduate courses in American colonial history. In 1912 another of his works, The Colonial Period, appeared. This book anticipated many of Andrews's later ones, emphasizing the interaction between England and the Colonies and the progressive antiquation of British colonial policy as compared with the innovative nature of colonial institutions.
Seven years later Andrews combined his insights in social history and popular culture in two volumes, The Fathers of New England and Colonial Folkways. His Colonial Background of the American Revolution (1924), regarded as one of his best books, maintains that an understanding of British colonial policy is essential to understanding the American Revolution. After his retirement from Yale in 1931, Andrews continued to labor on his final major work, The Colonial Period of American History (4 vols., 1934 - 1938). He failed to complete three additional volumes planned.
(Four Essays in American Colonial History)
1924(Volume 4)
1938(Volume 2)
1936With Herberg Levi Osgood, Andrews formed the “imperial school” of colonial history. They believed that previous colonial history had been too provincial, and had ignored the colonies’ position as part of the British Empire. Colonials, Andrews explained in his paper “American Colonial History, 1690-1750,” were part of a larger whole, and regarded themselves as an integral part of the Empire. The paradigm shift in their attitudes determined the direction of the next generation’s study of colonial history.
Rigorous attention to detail, careful analysis of sources, and complete impartiality were essential elements of Andrews’ scholarship. The study of history was important to Andrews, because it is the telescope and microscope of social man’ and teaches us to be humble, to be practical. History teaches that no nation develops in isolation; that institutions grow from historical roots. It gives perspective and proportion and in the end makes us less jingoistic, judgmental and intolerant. His scholarship relied on sources as a starting point; historical research answers questions, sources pose questions.
Quotations: "A nation's attitude toward its own history is like a window into its own soul and the men and women of such a nation cannot be expected to meet the great obligations of the present if they refuse to exhibit honesty, charity, open-mindedness, and a free and growing intelligence toward the past that has made them what they are."
Andrews was active in the American Historical Association, serving as acting president at the death of Woodrow Wilson, and then president in 1925. He held various other memberships including the American Philosophical Society, the Royal Historical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Phi Beta Kappa. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1907, and elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1918.
Andrews also served on the Winsor Prize committee, the Public Archives Commission, the committee on legal history, and the executive council.
Quotes from others about the person
“Andrews’s shortcomings and his strengths seem obvious. His was probably not a great mind, but it was an educated, disciplined, tenacious, and intellectual honest one. His intangible legacy is twofold. First is his insistence that all history be based on facts and that the evidence be found, organized, and weighed. Second is his injunction that colonial America can never be understood without taking into account England. He will be required reading in graduate seminars as long as that institution, which he helped to popularize, exists.” - Kross
Andrews married Evangeline Holcombe Walker, on June 19, 1895. They had two children, Ethel and John.