Papers of Albert Bushnell Hart.

Albert Bushnell Hart (1854-1943), American historian, writer, and editor, taught history and government at Harvard University and Radcliffe College from 1883 to 1926.

Hart was born on July 1, 1854 in Clarksville, Pennsylvania to physician Albert Gaillard Hart and Mary Crosby Hornell Hart. He had a brother, Hastings Hornell Hart, and two sisters, Helen Marcia Hart and Jeannette M. Hart. The family moved to Ohio in 1860, eventually settling in Cleveland, where Hart graduated from West High School in 1871 and worked for several years as a bookkeeper. He attended Harvard College 1876-1880, receiving his B.A. in 1880, and spent a year studying modern constitutional history in the Graduate Department of Arts and Sciences. Hart moved to Germany for further postgraduate work in 1881, studying at University of Berlin and École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and receiving a Ph.D. in history from the University of Freiburg in 1883.

Hart returned to Harvard as an instructor of American history in 1883, where he established the political and constitutional history course known as History 13. In 1887, Hart was promoted to assistant professor of history, and he earned tenure in 1897. In 1910, he was appointed Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and was the Department of Government’s first chair following its split from the Department of History (formerly the Department of History and Government). Hart was dissertation advisor to W. E. B. Du Bois (Ph.D. 1895) and Carter G. Woodson (Ph.D. 1912), the first two Black students to receive doctorates at Harvard. Hart retired from teaching in 1926 but maintained an office on campus in Widener Library where he continued to write and publish.

Hart studied, lectured, and published on the teaching of American history in high school and college, particularly early in his career. His works include Guide to the Study of American History (1896; second edition, 1912), co-authored with Harvard colleagues Edward Channing and Frederick Jackson Turner; Essentials in American History (1905); and the five-volume series American History Told by Contemporaries (1897-1929).

Hart edited and contributed to historical anthologies and series such as Epochs of American History (three volumes; 1891-1893); American Nation (28 volumes; 1904-1918); and the five-volume Commonwealth History of Massachusetts (1927-1930). Hart also was editor of the American Historical Review and founder and editor of The American Year Book, and he helped launch the Dictionary of American Biography. He also frequently wrote for newspapers and magazines, including Current History.

Hart traveled and lectured extensively about history and current events. He was a popular speaker at universities, alumni clubs, social clubs, high schools, professional organizations, historical societies, teachers’ associations, and churches. Hart traveled to the South to research slavery and race relations, presenting his studies in a series of lectures at the Lowell Institute in 1908 which were later published as The Southern South in 1910.

He served as president of the American Historical Association in 1908-1909 and the American Political Science Association in 1910-1911. Hart additionally was a member of the Association for the Study of Negro Life & History, National Security League, and Massachusetts Historical Society, among other groups, and a trustee of Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, DC. He was a commissioner and official historian of the George Washington Bicentennial Commission in the 1930s. He was also a governor of Mooseheart, a school run by the Loyal Order of the Moose.

Hart met Theodore Roosevelt, who became a lifelong friend, when they were Harvard freshmen. He supported Roosevelt’s 1912 and 1916 presidential campaigns and later was involved in the Roosevelt Memorial Association.

Hart married Mary Hurd Putnam Hart on July 11, 1889 in Manchester, New Hampshire. The couple adopted twin sons, Albert Bushnell, Jr. and Adrian Putnam (born January 26, 1897) in December 1897. The family split their time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and their summer house in Dublin, New Hampshire. Mary died on October 28, 1924. Hart died on June 16, 1943.