The Founding Years of the OAH

It all began in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1907. A series of forces converged, and out of it came the forerunner to the Organization of American Historians, the Mississippi Valley Historical Association. The evolution of “the Association,” as it was called before the name change in 1964, occurred within a variety of contexts that provided for the birth and growth of the OAH. These contexts contain stories centering on several events that took place in Lincoln at the Nebraska State Historical Society and the University of Nebraska, at first, and then at other universities and historical societies within the Mississippi Valley and beyond (1).

Most historical societies seem prone to controversy and problems of leadership. Nebraska’s was not an exception in the 1890s. In part, the problems of the Nebraska State Historical Society (NSHS) stemmed from the desire of its board of directors to maintain a rather sleepy introspective status, collecting prominent Nebraskans’ archives and occasional artifacts. This attitude ran directly counter to the aggressive attitudes of politician J. Sterling Morton who had recently returned to his home state after serving in Washington, D.C., as President Grover Cleveland’s secretary of agriculture (2). Morton, a strong Democrat from a generally Republican state, had a penchant for stirring things up, particularly through his participation on various boards of organizations and in his newspapers, first the Nebraska News and then, after his stint in the nation’s capital, The Conservative, both printed in Nebraska City. In large part responsible for Arbor Day, Morton, the ever energetic promoter, decided that the Nebraska State Historical Society wasn’t doing enough “history,” so he hatched a plan to publish and market a four-volume history of Nebraska. To manage this undertaking, he hired Clarence S. Paine, a young, aggressive entrepreneur from neighboring Iowa. For this act, Morton has been dubbed the “spiritual godfather” of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, although Morton, who died in 1903, did not live to see its founding (3).

Born in 1867 in Eden Prairie Township, Minnesota, Clarence Paine as a teen worked on the family farm and in a lumbering camp. After completing a business college course, he established his own business college in Boone, Iowa. He loved history so much, he later reflected, that he began to work with the nearby Iowa Historical Department (IHD) located in Des Moines. For many decades, Iowa’s state archives were administered by the IHD, while the privately incorporated State Historical Society of Iowa maintained a separate library and collections in Iowa City. In 1897, at age thirty, Paine and his wife Clara relocated to Nebraska, where he took a job working for Morton on the Nebraska history project (4).

J. Sterling Morton

Morton quickly saw in Paine a man every bit as energetic as he was. Paine impressed him, and once Morton became a member of the board of directors of the Nebraska State Historical Society, he worked to have Paine elected as the society’s secretary—essentially its director. That move eventually occurred in January 1907, and Paine was charged by a new and more activist board with shaking up the historical establishment in Nebraska and the region. Paine at once began the task of reinvigorating the society with a number of new initiatives in the public history arena. He also installed his wife as librarian for the society’s collections.

Almost immediately, Paine foresaw the need to consult with other historical societies. Perhaps he felt at sea with his new responsibilities, although he seemed by all accounts a rather confident individual. He more likely wanted to consult and share common problems and to embark on mutual projects. Toward that end, on July 29, 1907, he sent out letters, each personal and different, to the historical societies of the cities of Chicago and St. Louis and to the state historical societies of Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, and Montana, plus the historical society of New Mexico Territory. He urged them to send a representative to a meeting he would host in Lincoln in October for the purpose of creating an organization where they could meet to discuss the historical issues of the day. In each letter of invitation, he urged the creation of “a permanent organization for the advancement of historical research, and the collection and conservation of historical materials in these western states” (5). Nowhere do the words “Mississippi Valley” appear in these letters.

On October 17, 1907, seven men gathered in Lincoln to create what would become the Organization of American Historians. Six historical societies and one state archives agency sent representatives: William S. Bell came from the Montana Historical & Misc. Library; Warren Upham from the Minnesota Historical Society; Benjamin F. Shambaugh from the State Historical Society of Iowa; George M. Martin from the Kansas State Historical Society; Francis M. Sampson from the State Historical Society of Missouri; Paine from the Nebraska State Historical Society; and Edgar R. Harlan of the Iowa Historical Department. They first had a luncheon at the Commercial Club with Lincoln’s mayor and fifteen other prominent Nebraskans. While we do not have a list, it seems likely that NSHS board members and University of Nebraska officials attended.

After lunch, an open meeting was held at the new Temple Theatre on campus to which the public was invited. Here George L. Miller, president of the NSHS, gave an address, and Shambaugh from Iowa offered a prepared response. Then Harlan spoke and a panel of Bell from Montana, Martin from Kansas, and Sampson from Missouri commented. At the conclusion of this public meeting, the seven representatives walked to University Library. There, at their private meeting, they elected Francis Sampson from the State Historical Society of Missouri president and Edgar Harlan from the Iowa Historical Department secretary, and they adjourned until the following day when Clarence Paine would present a draft of a proposed constitution (6).

On October 18, 1907, the delegates returned to University Library and the NSHS headquarters where Paine introduced his constitution. Not unlike when Oregon’s Provisional Government adopted the Iowa Constitution in 1847, mainly because someone had a copy of it, Paine based his constitutional draft on the constitution of the Pacific Coast Branch (PCB) of the American Historical Association (AHA). The new organization, named the Mississippi Valley Historical Association (MVHA), was to meet twice a year, once at the annual AHA meeting each December and again at an annual MVHA gathering in May or June. After discussion of the draft constitution, they came to a consensus to vote on it with possible revisions at the December 1907 AHA meeting to be held in two months in Madison, Wisconsin. The only newspaper taking note of this seminal event was the Lincoln Star. It reported on October 18, 1907, that “The Mississippi Valley Historical Association was organized, tentatively, this morning at a meeting of secretaries of the societies of the Mississippi Valley states” (7). It reported the new officers and where the meeting occurred but offered no comment.

Clara Paine

No doubt there was a flurry of activity in Clarence Paine’s office for the next two months as he helped the nascent organization prepare for its initial business meeting. The correspondence between Paine and Reuben Gold Thwaites, secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, who was also a member of the AHA Council and a respected editor and compiler of colonial documents, is most enlightening. Thwaites revealed that there was, as historian James L. Sellers has written, a “delicate problem” (8). The AHA opposed the creation of a new, independent history organization. It wanted the MVHA to become a midwest branch of the AHA, not unlike the PCB. Moreover, the AHA sought to restrict membership in the MVHA to historical societies only. There would not be membership dues, as they should be paid to the AHA. Instead, institutions could pay a fee for joining the proposed branch. Paine shared this news with the other founders. In the Age of Progressivism, most were not impressed.

That December at the Madison meeting, a new development occurred. Professors came to the MVHA meeting, and from the start, they played an active role. Especially prepared to be supportive was Clarence W. Alvord, a young faculty member of the University of Illinois. At Madison, Alvord joined Paine and Harlan to revise the constitution. They successfully lobbied for the defeat of the affiliation with and restrictions proposed by the AHA. Alvord argued that the AHA “underemphasized” the history of the American South and West, and that their new organization could remedy this oversight. Moreover, he said that enough work had already been done in “the military and political fields” (9). New areas needed investigating, such as studies in economic life, immigration, agriculture, urban history, family history, rural life, legal history, the history of technology, leisure, architecture and the fusion of cultures and folkways. Alvord was clearly ahead of his time (10).

Once they approved the constitution, the membership elected Thomas M. Owen, secretary of the Alabama Historical Society, president; Alvord vice president; and Paine secretary/treasurer. George Martin from the Kansas Historical Society and Thwaites were chosen to be members of the first executive committee along with any former presidents, which already included one, Francis Sampson. The association approved five objectives that involved communicating among and publishing helpful bibliographies for historical societies. Finally, Warren Upham of the Minnesota Historical Society invited the now official Mississippi Valley Historical Association to hold its first annual meeting at the Tonka Hotel on Lake Minnetonka in June of 1908. The members accepted. Because the association delegated responsibility for organizing the program to the president, Owen was now officially in charge (11).

In the next five months, Paine and Alvord fast became friends. Their correspondence indicates a rapid meeting of the minds as well as some worry about the organization. There was concern about AHA maneuvering. Alvord wrote Paine, “I am aware that there was a good deal of opposition on the part of members of the AHA to forming a new association in the [W]est, and we cannot expect cordial support from that association” (12). Still enthusiasm abounded. Benjamin Shambaugh printed a report on the Madison meeting along with the new MVHA constitution in the 1908 issue of a new journal he edited, the Iowa Journal of History and Politics (13). Then a bombshell hit. In early May, Owen informed Alvord that he was not going to attend the annual meeting and that he had not lined up a program. He complained that the meeting was too far north and too expensive. He was not impressed that historians of the American West had not responded to his entreaties. Owen went so far as to predict that the association would “die before it is really born.” He concluded that “Perhaps Thwaites was right. We have started a movement that can have no life” (14).

Clearly, Owen was not presidential material. Alvord quickly informed Paine, and Alvord as vice president took over. In six weeks, he put together a program of nine papers, and he presided over all of them. At the Minnesota meeting, attendance was modest, coming from eighteen states and Canada. Paine reported that eighty members had joined the MVHA; dues were $1 each (15). The papers, including one by Alvord, were deemed sufficiently important for Shambaugh to publish in the next issue of the Iowa Journal of History and Politics in a special section entitled Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association.

The next crisis came in 1909 when the AHA refused to cooperate with the MVHA. In 1908 the AHA had allowed the MVHA to include some of their program with the AHA’s, but the following year the AHA refused even to communicate with the MVHA about anything having to do with its meeting. Thus, the MVHA did not meet with the AHA in 1909 and instead held an emergency meeting in Lincoln. On January 18, 1910, Lincoln hosted the budding organization once again. Even though it was an impromptu affair, Clarence Paine managed to have three papers read, and plans for a May meeting in Iowa City were reportedly well-advanced. Benjamin Shambaugh, the host for the upcoming annual meeting, was chosen as the new MVHA president. Moreover, at the previous annual meeting at St. Louis in 1909, Paine had reported an alarming deficit of $62.03 to the membership; since then he had been actively recruiting members. By the third annual meeting in Iowa City in 1910, membership had increased to 453 and the treasurer’s report noted that the deficit had been overcome and a positive $73.00 balance achieved (16).

Other concerns in these early years involved structural issues. In 1913, the association decided that it needed to sponsor more research outlets, and it approved the creation of a new journal, the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, antecedent to the Journal of American History. Clarence Alvord became the founding editor, and the University of Illinois gladly supplied funds to support the new journal. There was some tension over whether to discontinue the Proceedings, but that confrontation was avoided by letting both publications continue briefly. Shambaugh wrote to Alvord that he favored phasing out the Proceedings and making the Review the primary research organ of the association, a position eventually adopted (17).

The association attempted to incorporate, and its officers sought federal approval which required a bill from Congress. Unable to move such a bill out of a congressional committee, Paine and others instead managed to incorporate the nonprofit organization in the state of Nebraska. Early, members of the association urged teachers to join them. In 1912 a special teachers section was approved, and wherever the annual meeting was held, local teacher organizations were invited to attend (18). More and more professors were joining the organization, and some of the historical societies were becoming less active. By 1915, professors constituted the majority of the membership, and the goals had become much broader with the infusion of new members. At this point, the association listed its primary concerns: the relationship of historical societies to departments of history, the teaching of history in the schools and the teaching of state history in universities and schools, the marking of historical sites, and the encouragement of quality publications by historical societies and the association (19). Moreover, the boundaries of the Mississippi Valley as initially designated were becoming more and more flexible. Historical organizations and individuals outside of the geographical region joined and participated in the annual meeting. Just as the purposes of the organization had expanded, so too would its range, scholarship, and membership. In many ways, by 1915 the MVHA’s evolution into the OAH was inevitable.

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John R. Wunder, scholar of U.S. legal history and the American West, is a professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Endnotes

1. This essay relies in part on a number of sources, both archival and published. See “Organization of American Historians Records, 1906-2003,” Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives, University Library, Indiana University Purdue-University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN [hereafter cited as OAH Records]; Nebraska State Historical Society Archives, Lincoln, NE; John D. Hicks, My Life with History: An Autobiography (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968); Gerald D. Nash, “John D. Hicks,” in John R. Wunder, Historians of the American Frontier: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988), 396-415; Mari Sandoz Papers, Personal Correspondence, University Archives/Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Love Library, Lincoln, NE [hereafter cited as Sandoz Papers]; William D. Aeschbacher, “The Mississippi Valley Historical Association, 1907-1965,” Journal of American History 54 (Sept. 1967): 339-53; Theodore C. Blegen, “Our Widening Province,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 31 (June 1944): 3-20, the presidential address at the 37th annual meeting of the MVHA in St. Louis, MO, Apr. 20, 1944; James L. Sellers, “Before We Were Members—The MVHA,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 40 (June 1953): 3-24; and “The Semicentennial of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44 (Dec. 1957): 494-518.

2. See J. Sterling Morton Papers and runs of the Nebraska News (Nebraska City, NE) and The Conservative (Nebraska City, NE), Nebraska State Historical Society Archives, Lincoln, NE; and James C. Olson, J. Sterling Morton (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1942).

3. Sellers, “MVHA,”6.

4. Ibid., 5-6.

5. Correspondence of C. S. Paine, Box 1, OAH Records, 1907, quoted ibid., 4.

6. Sellers, “MVHA,” 5.

7. Lincoln Star (October 18, 1907), as quoted in Sellers, “Semicentennial,” 494-95.

8. Sellers, “MVHA,” 7.

9. Blegen, 4-5, 8.

10. Ibid., 8.

11. Ibid., 4; Aeschbacher, 340; Sellers, “Semicentennial,” 496-97; and Sellers, “MVHA,” 8.

12. Letter, Clarence Alvord to Clarence Paine, Jan. 7, 1908,” OAH Records, 1908, quoted in Sellers, “Semicentennial,” 498.

13. Shambaugh, a native Iowan who obtained a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Iowa in 1893 and a Ph.D. from the Wharton School of Finance and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania in 1895, founded the Department of Political Science at the University of Iowa. He also was elected to the State Historical Society of Iowa board of curators in 1897 and had only recently become its superintendent in 1907. He had been made editor of the society’s journal, the Iowa Historical Record, that basically published reminiscences of Iowans and antiquarianism in 1900; but he changed the entire thrust of the journal to a modern scholarly periodical, including changing the name to the Iowa Journal of History and Politics in 1903. Shambaugh defined a state historical society as a “laboratory of scientific historical research.” Like Paine, Shambaugh was committed to creative communications with the public that even included doing a film documentary of the Marquette and Joliet 1673 trip down the Mississippi. Shambaugh would be the fifth president of the MVHA in 1911. See Alan M. Schroder, “Benjamin F. Shambaugh,” in Wunder, 611-13.

14. Sentence fragments from several letters from Alvord to Paine reporting on communications from Owen, beginning May 29, 1908, OAH Records, 1908, quoted in Sellers, “Semicentennial,” 499.

15. Blegen, 4; Aeschbacher, 340.

16. Sellers, “MVHA,” 11.

17. Sellers, “Semicentennial,” 500-502.

18. Aeschbacher, 350.

19. Ibid., 341.