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PROVENANCE

These papers were in the possession of the University Archives before 1970.

 

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Herman Vandenburg Ames, professor of American constitutional history and dean of the Graduate School at the University of Pennsylvania, was connected with the University of Pennsylvania for thirty-eight years. Born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1865, he was the son of Rev. Marcus Ames and Jane Angeline Vandenburg Ames. His father's family traced its American roots to the Mayflower as well as to Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1636; his mother was a descendent of the New York Knickerbocker family. After his early education at Phillips' Academy in Andover, Ames graduated from Amherst College and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard. After studies in Leipzig and Heidleberg, Ames taught at the University of Michigan and Ohio State University before becoming an instructor in American history at Penn in 1897.

Ames was named an assistant professor of American history in 1903, and professor of American constitutional history in 1908. He also served as Dean of Penn's Graduate School from 1907 until 1928. In 1925 he was awarded the honorary degree of Litt. D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Author of a number of scholarly books and articles on topics in American history, Ames received the Justin Winsor prize of the American Historical Association for his Proposed Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Professor Ames served as chair of the Public Archives Commission of the American Historical Association for ten years, as president of the History Teachers' Association of the Middle States and Maryland, and as secretary of the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland. He was also a member, from 1906 to 1913, of the National Conference Committee on Standards of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

Ames lived with his sister, Ella V. Ames, on St. Mark's Place in West Philadelphia at the time of his death on February 7, 1935.

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