Virginia history lost one of its leading archivists and supporters
yesterday. Here is the obituary from the Charlottesville Daily Progress,
February 20, 2003:
Francis L. Berkeley
Francis Lewis Berkeley Jr., University Archivist and
Professor Emeritus of the University of Virginia, died
Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2003, at his home in Charlottesville.
A native of Albemarle County, he was born April 9, 1911,
the son of the late Francis Lewis Berkeley and his wife,
Ethel Crissey Berkeley.
He was married in 1937, to Helen Wayland Sutherland,
whose death in 1993 ended a marriage of 56 years.
In addition to his parents and wife, he is preceded in
death by his brother, Edmund; and his sisters, Cynthia B.
Williams and Helen Berkeley.
He was a retired captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve and a
veteran of World War II, Having served at sea the
throughout the four wars of the war, participating in the
final campaigns in the Pacific as the commanding officer
of a tank landing ship.
Educated at the University of Virginia, he received his
bachelors degree in 1934, and the M.A. in American
History several years later. As a student, he was active in
the Jefferson Society, and was gratified to become its
secretary, a post once let by Edgar Allan Poe and by
Woodrow Wilson, among others. He was a member of
Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Kappa, and the Raven
Society, and a former member of the Colonnade and
Farmington Country Clubs of Charlottesville, the
Centenary Club in New York, and the Athenaeum in
London. He was also a member of the Walpole Society
and a frequent host to the Societys spring meetings in
Virginia and other southern states, and Bermuda in the
years when he was the only member south of the
Potomac.
Appointed in 1938, the universitys first curator of
manuscripts, he devised a cataloguing system based on
the British Museums Catalogue of Additional
Manuscripts, a system that proved indispensable in the
immense post war expansion of the manuscripts
collections. He also began the creation of a central
archives for the University, bringing together in the
newly constructed Alderman Library the non-current
records from the storerooms of the widely-scattered
administrative and departmental offices.
In the post war years, Virginias historical, literary, and
business records were aggressively collected by research
libraries in North Carolina and several middle western
states which had once been Virginia Counties. To counter
this development, Mr. Berkeley launched a massive five
year campaign to keep Virginias manuscript resources in
Virginia. Millions of documents were added to the
Universitys collections, as summarized in his published
Annual Reports.
Mr. Berkeley had an avid interest in colonial America and
an acute awareness of Virginias poverty in
documentation of that era, the result of the destruction
of the parish records in Bacons Rebellion of 1677, the
Civil War losses of Virginias eastern counties records,
and the burning of the General Court Records in
Richmond in 1865. In 1951 through 1952, with the aid of
Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, he undertook a
county-by-county recovery of public and private
manuscripts in England and Scotland relating to Virginia
between 1580 and 1780. His field notes, sent weekly to
the Alderman Library, were reproduced and distributed
to Americas Colonial Historians.
Upon returning to Virginia, he organized the Virginia
Colonial Records Project, directed by a committee of
representatives from Virginias four research libraries and
funded by state and federal grants relating to Virginias
impending 350th Anniversary. Nearly 20 million Virginia
documents for the years 1580 through 1780, were
recorded and microfilmed by the committees agents in
London. The films are available to the public at the
University of Virginia Library, the Virginia Historical
Society, and the Library of Virginia in Richmond, and at
Colonial Williamsburgs research library.
For 30 years Mr. Berkeley was a trustee of the Virginia
Historical Society and chair of its Library Committee,
participating in removal of its library and headquarters
from the crowded Lee House on East Franklin Street to
the Spacious Battle Abbey in Richmonds west end.
For an even longer period he served the Thomas
Jefferson Foundation as a trustee in other capacities, in
which he accomplished several dramatic improvements in
management of Monticello and the birthplace farm,
Shadwell, and in the upgrading of the quality of both
additional trustees and staff.
In partnership with the late Professor Frederick D.
Nichols, Mr. Berkeley worked energetically in the years to
accomplish a restoration of Jeffersons Monumental
Rotunda. Located at the Universitys center, it had been
the center of academic life in the 19th century. Denuded
of all its oval rooms after the fire of 1895m its interior
was converted into a single vast room, a huge book
stack. With the books removed to the new Alderman
Library building in 1938, it remained for 35 years unused,
a place of dust and cobwebs.
The pleas of Messrs. Nichols and Berkeley were to
restore Jeffersons great oval rooms to the main floor
and the famous Dome Room above. The Board of Visitors
finally approved the project, provided the funds were
obtained by Berkeley and Nichols from non-University
sources. This they accomplished in 1973, with 3 million
dollars from a federal grand matched by the Cary
Langhorne Trust. The restoration was completed in the
bicentennial year, 1976, celebrated by a luncheon for
Queen Elizabeth in a Dome Room virtually identical with
the Dome Room in which Lafayette had been entertained
during his "Farewell Visit" of 1824.
Mr. Berkeley received the 1973, Raven Society Award for
distinguished service to the University. He was a Fellow
of the Society of American Archivists, and was active in
many other professional organizations, he was elected to
numerous honorary memberships, including the
American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts
Historical Society, and the Colonial Society of
Massachusetts.
As a University administrator, Mr. Berkeley was
executive assistant to President Colgate Darden and to
his successor, President Edgar F. Shannon Jr. He also
served as secretary of the University governing Board of
Visitors. The University Press of Virginia was established
on Mr. Berkeleys initiation, and he insisted on its being a
state-wide press sheltered by the University but
dedicated to service as a scholarly publishing house
serving all of Virginias learned institutions.
Mr. Berkeley also helped to establish the two principal
documentary publications of the new press, "The Papers
of James Madison" and "The Papers of George
Washington." Until his death, Mr. Berkeley served on the
editorial advisory boards of both of these continuing
publications, and also on the advisory committee of the
Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University.
Portraits of Mr. Berkeley hang in the Alderman Library
and in the Berkeley Room of Monticellos new Jefferson
Library.
Funeral services in the University of Virginia Cemetery
will be private. A memorial service will be scheduled at a
later date.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made
to the Alderman Library at University of Virginia, P.O.
Box 400113, Charlottesville, Va. 22904.
Hill & Wood Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
--
Susan Lee Foard
Editor, University Press of Virginia
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