Herman Vandenburg Ames was born on August 7, 1865 in Lancaster, Massachusetts, United States. He was the youngest of the three children of the Reverend Marcus and Jane Angelina (Vandenburg) Ames. He was descended from William Ames, who emigrated to America from Somersetshire, England, and was in Braintree, Massachussets, in 1640.
Ames attended Amherst College, where he was graduated in 1888. Then he pursued graduate work at Columbia and Harvard and obtained the degrees of Master of Arts (1890) and Doctor of Philosophy (1891) in American history at Harvard. He also received a Doctor of Letters honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1925, and a Legum Doctor honorary degree from LaSalle College (Canada) in 1927.
Ames began his career at the University of Michigan and from 1891 to 1894 he acted as instructor in history for a year and then as acting assistant professor of American history. The year 1894-1895 he spent abroad in travel and study at the Universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg, where he gained a knowledge of European institutions and methods. In 1896 he became assistant professor of history at Ohio State University. While there he revised and published his doctoral dissertation, The Proposed Amendments to the Constitution of the United States during the First Century of Its History (1897). The work was a success and led directly to his appointment in 1897 as instructor in American history at the University of Pennsylvania, where he later became assistant professor of history and finally professor of American constitutional history (1908-1935). Greatly interested in the movement then stirring in the history department of that institution to improve the teaching of history by bringing students into contact with primary sources, he edited State Documents on Federal Relations: The States and the United States (1900, 1906).
In 1907 he was appointed dean of the graduate school of arts and sciences of the University of Pennsylvania, a position he filled with ability and distinction until his retirement in 1928. During the two decades of his deanship the enrollment of this division of the university grew from about 300 upwards to 1, 600 students, and the faculty from 60 to approximately 225 members. But numbers or size were of less concern to him than the maintenance of high standards and winning for the graduate school its rightful place in the economy of the university. Toward this end his organizing ability, wisdom, and dignity, coupled with his own deep interest in historical research, contributed greatly. Investigation and research in American constitutional history had an especial appeal to him, though increasing administrative duties more and more interfered with his own writing. By way of compensation he found solace in directing the research of scores of graduate students.
From 1902 to 1912 Ames was chairman of the American Historical Association's public archives commission and director of its publications, contributing much to the effort to preserve the archives of states of the Union. His annual reports published by the association afford excellent evidence, not only of his own industry and scholarship, but of the able direction he gave to this pioneering enterprise of American scholarship for the conservation and use of archival records.
In addition to the works already mentioned, he published Outline of Lectures on American Political and Institutional History during the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods (1898 and later editions), and with Winfred Trexler Root, Syllabus of American Colonial History (1912).
Ames was widely known for his invaluable contribution in historical research, and for his monograph "The Proposed Amendments to the Constitution of the United States During the First Century of Its History. " In 1897 this work was awarded the first Justin Winsor Prize of the American Historical Association.
(Excerpt from Outline of Lectures on American Political an...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
Ames was a member of the Presbyterian church.
Ames' view of the United States Constitution was one of a liberal. In his view on history, he was both presentist and relativist; he characterized the daily customs and behavior of early American settlers as "barbarous" compared to contemporary standards, and credited the growth of democracy with the development of more liberal social norms. As an instructor of history, Ames supported its use to ardent support for the government's policies during World War I.
Ames was president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Historical Societies, 1912; president of the Middle States and Maryland Association of History Teachers, 1909-1910; chairman of the committee on international relations of the American Council on Education, 1919-1924; governor general, Order of Founders and Patriots of America, 1919-1921, and an active member of several other historical and patriotic societies.
Ames was unusually liberal of his time with both students and colleagues, many of whom became and continued his warm friends. In his personal mannerisms, it was said that Ames had a keen sense of humor.
Ames was unmarried.
