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Robert Digges Wimberly Connor Edit Profile

archivist historian

Robert Digges Wimberly Connor was an American historian and the first Archivist of the United States.

Background

Robert Digges Wimberly Connor was born on September 26, 1878 in Wilson, North Carolina, United States. He was the third son and fourth of twelve children of Henry Groves Connor, a prominent state legislator and judge, and Kate (Whitfield) Connor. From his father young Connor acquired a deep and lifelong interest in the history of his native state.

Education

After attending the public schools of Wilson, he entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from which he graduated with Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1899, having served in his senior year as editor-in-chief of all three student publications.

Career

Connor had hoped to take graduate work in history at Johns Hopkins University, but lack of funds precluded this, and he began a career in public school education. Starting as a high school teacher in Winston, North Carolina, he moved in 1902 to Oxford as superintendent of schools and in 1903 became principal of the Wilmington high school.

In his next post, as secretary (1904 - 1907) of the educational commission established during the administration of Gov. Charles B. Aycock, Connor conducted a statewide campaign for improved schools, higher teacher salaries, and better school libraries.

He was secretary of the North Carolina Teachers Assembly from 1906 to 1912. Meanwhile, in 1903, Connor had committed himself to a second career when he accepted the unsalaried secretaryship of the newly created North Carolina Historical Commission. Founded at the instigation of the State Literary and Historical Association, the commission sought to collect and preserve the state's historical records. Through Connor's efforts, encouraged by his study of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, established in 1901 under the leadership of Thomas McAdory Owen, the commission's authority and its appropriations were enlarged in 1907, at which time Connor was appointed its first full-time, salaried secretary. Over the next fourteen years, Connor laid the essential foundations of what was later characterized as "a model historical agency". During these years he also found time to undertake historical writing of his own. His Cornelius Harnett: An Essay in North Carolina History (1909) was well received, and his Makers of North Carolina History (1911) was for many years a basic public school text.

Connor had kept in close touch with the University of North Carolina, serving as secretary of its board of trustees (1915 - 1920) and president of its alumni association (1917 - 1921). In 1920 he was called to a professorship there and in preparation spent a year of graduate study in history at Columbia University. He took up his duties as Kenan Professor of History and Government in the fall of 1921. His carefully prepared lectures, presented with "clarity and wit, " made him one of the university's most popular teachers. In 1929 Connor produced his most ambitious scholarly work, the two-volume North Carolina: Rebuilding an Ancient Commonwealth, the best standard history of the state published to that time. Connor was called back to archival work in 1934 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him the first archivist of the United States. He had been recommended for the post by the historian J. Franklin Jameson, whose long campaign had brought the National Archives into being, and by the executive committee of the American Historical Association. An experienced administrator, Connor recruited an able staff (resisting political patronage pressures), worked out the organization of the new agency, and set high professional standards.

His qualities of personal force and tact enabled him to establish good relations with Congress, thus ensuring adequate appropriations, and with the various government agencies which he had to persuade to part with their records--in some cases, as with the War and State departments, a difficult task.

Connor also worked closely with the president in establishing the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, the forerunner of subsequent institutions in the presidential library system administered by the National Archives. Connor resigned in 1941 and returned to the University of North Carolina to occupy the newly established Craige Professorship of Jurisprudence and History. This position he held until his retirement in 1949.

He maintained his interest in the archival profession, serving as president of the Society of American Archivists, 1941-1943, and as chairman of the North Carolina Historical Commission, 1942-1943, and of the executive board of its successor, the State Department of Archives and History, from 1943 until his death.

He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Durham, North Carolina, at the age of seventy-one and was buried in the Chapel Hill Cemetery.

Achievements

  • He served as president of the Society of American Archivists.

Works

All works

Connections

On December 23, 1902, he married a fellow teacher, Sadie Hanes of Mocksville, North Carolina; they had no children.

Father:
Henry Groves Connor

state legislator, judge

Mother:
Kate (Whitfield) Connor

Spouse:
Sadie Hanes

teacher