Francis Willey Kelsey was an American scholar and archeologist. He served as Professor of Latin Language and Literature at the University of Michigan from 1889 to 1927.
Background
Francis Willey Kelsey was born on May 23, 1858 at Ogden, New York, United States, the son of Henry and Olive Cornelia (Trowbridge) Kelsey. The family is traced to William Kelsey who was at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1632. A New England tradition of simplicity, austerity, and piety received a touch of fervor from the part of New York State which was Kelsey's birthplace.
Education
Kelsey attended the Union School of Lockport and then the University of Rochester. He graduated with the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1880. After studying in Europe from 1883-1885, he received the Honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree from Rochester in 1886 and Honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1910.
Career
In 1830 Kelsey was appointed an instructor in classics at Lake Forest University, Lake Forest, Illinois. In 1889 he was called to a position of the same rank at Michigan, and within six months became the successor of Henry S. Frieze as head of the Latin department, which position he held until his death, thirty-eight years later.
Kelsey was no narrow philologist. His teaching was enriched by the archeologist's ability to recreate the classic life of antiquity, but he was prevented by his heritage and his times from being a romanticist. His first publications, following the fashion of that day, were textbooks: Cicero's De Senectute and De Amicitia in one volume, 1882, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura in 1884, Caesar's Gallic War in 1886, Xenophon's Anabasis (1889), Selections from Ovid (1891), Select Orations and Letters of Cicero (1892). Most of these passed through several or many editions: the Caesar, through twenty-one. He had an unusual interest in Lucretius, but, while printing the complete text, found it intolerable to discuss or annotate more than books I, III, and V.
Following the example of Frieze and his own tastes, he sponsored the University Musical Society and its associated activities to the end of his life. In the later nineties he turned to more important publication, editing with Percy Gardner a series of Handbooks of Archaeology and Antiquities to which he contributed Pompeii, Its Life and Art (1899), translated from the work of August Mau. He was occupied now with his teaching, editing, and revising, and a vast correspondence covering innumerable enterprises.
In the nineties he originated the Classical Conference. In the following decade he fought at Michigan and at large for the classics, then threatened with extinction; and published a symposium, Latin and Greek in American Education (1911). While the World War was in progress he undertook (1918) for the Carnegie Peace Foundation, with the help of others, a translation of Grotius' De Jure Belli et Pacis, and completed his share of the work, which was published in 1925. The great German Thesaurus Totius Latinitatis was at this time saved from extinction by funds contributed through him.
Although Kelsey published various philological and archeological articles which amply prove his ability as an investigator, his energy naturally flowed into the conduct of learned enterprises. The Humanistic Series (which he edited with Henry A. Sanders) was begun in 1904, and by 1932 numbered twenty-four volumes. Not only Latin and Greek, but Biblical, Orientalistic, musical, and other studies are represented: for Kelsey had a sympathy and understanding even larger than his interest. He spent thousands of hours in the drudgery of editing and printing. His taste was exquisite. The expeditions to the Near East began in 1920 and one of them was still at work twelve years later. They excavated at Antioch of Pisidia, Carthage, and Karanis (Egypt); and brought back papyri and manuscripts, photographs and varied archeological material. These enterprises were financed by men of affairs who saw Kelsey as one of themselves and made his concerns their own.
Membership
Kelsey belonged to the American Philological Association, serving as its president from 1906 to 1907, the American Historical Association, and the Archaeological Institute of America, serving as its president from 1907 to 1912. In later years he became a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Classical Association of Great Britain, the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, and the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
Personality
Kelsey had a perennial interest in his pupils, and a passion for bringing together the worker and the work. He loved work, and never learned the purposes of play. Great intelligence protected him where most men require a keener sense of humor. A seasoned traveler, his cosmopolitanism was one of understanding and toleration rather than of taste. He dignified his unchanging orthodoxy with a personal example of unselfishness, self-control, and disregard of affront. His unaccountable power over men might have carried him to the highest positions in politics or finance, or academic administration, had he been interested in these things. His habit of having his way and accomplishing his unfathomable purposes sometimes aroused resentment.