George Lincoln Burr - Scholarly and Teaching Pursuits

Scholarly and Teaching Pursuits

Burr’s most noted contributions came from his teaching and service work. He served as co-editor of the American Historical Review from 1905–1915 with J. Franklin Jameson, was a member of the American Historical Association, and served as its President in 1916. He served as historical consultant for the U. S. Commission appointed by U.S. President Grover Cleveland to settle a boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana. The commission included two university presidents, Andrew Dickson White of Cornell and Daniel Coit Gilman of Johns Hopkins, and White suggested that Burr be appointed to research the history and geography of the disputed territory. This assignment took Burr to archives in The Hague and London and he was also sent thousands of pages from the Venezuelan government, and in the end this effort occupied much of his time from 1896–1899. His friend and colleague J. Franklin Jameson pronounced the Venezuela Boundary Commission report “as fine a piece of historical research and criticism as ever was buried in a government report.”

At Cornell, Burr is most remembered as a teacher who took great pains to encourage his students. He dined frequently at the Cornell women’s dining hall, to demonstrate his support for women’s education and to encourage student interest in history. His biographer, Roland Bainton, credits Cornell in general and Burr in particular with populating the history faculties at Vassar and Wellesley, and identifies Burr as a key consultant to Stanford University (due to his friendship with and respect for David Starr Jordan)and the University of California in the vetting of candidates. Among the students in whom he took an interest were Jessie Fauset, Winifred (Sprague) Humphrey, and Charles A. Beard.

Students and colleagues who have explicitly acknowledged Burr's influence include:

• Lois Oliphant Gibbons – Professor, Western College for Women, now Miami University
• Elizabeth Donnan – historian of the slave trade in America, author of the four-volume Documents Illustrative of the Slave Trade to America
• Louise Fargo Brown – the first woman to win the AHA Baxter Prize, in 1911, for her work The Political Activities of the Baptists and Fifth-Monarchy Men in England during the Interregnum
• Leo Gershoy – professor at New York University (NYU) 1940–1975, and in whose name the AHA awards an annual prize for the best new book on 17th or 18th-century European history, and in whose name an annual lecture is given at NYU
• George Matthew Dutcher – Professor of History at Wesleyan University
• George H. Sabine – Professor of History, Ohio State University
• Edward M. Hulme – Professor of History, Stanford University 1921–1937, and author of two books (see below) which explicitly state they are based on outlines "printed but not published" by George Lincoln Burr

Burr married Cornell graduate Mattie Alexander Martin in August 1907. She died after giving birth in January 1909, as did the child.