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 [log in to unmask] 434-924-6067 U.S. Postal Service: P.O. Box 400318, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4318 UPS, Fed Ex, Airborne, and any other delivery services: 210 Sprigg Lane, Charlottesville, VA 22903 Fax: 434-982-2655 To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html