Thomas J. Wertenbaker

Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia; Or, the Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion (Dodo Press) Thomas J. Wertenbaker

Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker (1879-1966) was a leading American historian and Edwards Professor of American History at Princeton University. Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, he received his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from the University of Virginia, gaining a reputation for his doctoral dissertation, Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia (1910), followed by Virginia Under the Stuarts (1914), and his master work, The Planters of Colonial Virginia (1922). In 1910, Princeton President Woodrow Wilson brought him there as a preceptor. He was a member of the history department for 37 years and its chairman from 1928 to 1936. He was an effective and popular undergraduate teacher, and also carried the majority of the burden of graduate teaching for many years. He was president of the American Historical Association in 1947, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and professor at the University of Oxford, visiting professor at the University of Gottingen and the University of Munich. He was also a newspaper editor and an amateur architect.