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The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic mourns the passing, on September 14, 2024, of historian Barbara B. Oberg. She was a scholar of the early republic and former SHEAR president, editor in chief of major documentary editing projects, dedicated affiliate and advocate of many partner institutions and societies, and invaluable friend.

While other scholars will remember Barbara’s contributions to their organizations, the focus here is on her contributions to the field of the early American republic. In 2018, SHEAR recognized her long and devoted connection and active involvement by awarding her the Distinguished Service Award. This honor cited not just her formal leadership as SHEAR president in 2003-2004, but her decades’- long commitment to the society. Barbara served on the editorial board of the Journal of the Early Republic from 1982 to 1986 and co-chaired, with Carol Berkin, the annual meeting program committee in 1986. She served two consecutive terms on the SHEAR advisory council from 1986 to 1993 and returned to the JER board 1999-2000. Over the years, Barbara wrote JER book reviews, chaired and commented at annual meeting sessions, and advised numerous committees and future leaders. The service award especially praised “her patience, grace under pressure, and attention to detail” that “enabled SHEAR to expand, grow, and embrace the future while also remaining true to its original mission.”

 

When SHEAR operations moved to Philadelphia and established its affiliation with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Barbara provided her talents as a diplomatic leader, smoothing the process, recruiting new talent in JER editors and finding a superb conference coordinator in Craig T. Friend. This is just one among many examples of Barbara’s indefatigable capacity to work with and empower others to assume new roles and responsibilities, and build networks and broad coalitions of support.

Barbara provided guidance and steady leadership during pivotal moments in her remarkable career. She assumed the position as general editor of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University in 1999 at a time when the Jefferson Papers Retirement Series had just launched at Monticello. She worked closely with J. Jefferson Looney to ensure a smooth transition and continued adherence to the high editorial standards first established at the project by Julian P. Boyd but allowing flexibility to adapt to new technologies and modern practices. Editorially, Barbara guided the direction of Jefferson’s transition to President of the United States after the tumultuous election of 1800 and drew on the expertise of the advisory board and her staff to decide how best to present some of the complex documents and issues that emerged in his two presidential terms.  Barbara also shepherded the transition of the Jefferson Papers into the digital age, believing in the importance of making documents available and accessible to modern audiences and worked carefully with Princeton University Press and the University of Virginia Press to bring to life the Rotunda and Founders Online editions of the edited letterpress Jefferson volumes.

Barbara’s initial scholarly focus in European intellectual history culminated in a dissertation at the University of California Santa Barbara on David Hartley, a member of the Opposition in the House of Commons during the American Revolution. She then came to embrace the early American republic as her intellectual home and had the distinction of editing papers of four of its key figures: Philip Mazzei (at Fairleigh Dickinson University), Albert Gallatin (at Baruch College at CUNY), Benjamin Franklin (at Yale University), and Thomas Jefferson (at Princeton University). Under her general editorship and collaborative leadership, eight expertly edited volumes of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin and thirteen volumes of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson were published and added to the corpus of the founding era documentary legacy. This scholarly output naturally supported the research and work of so many of Barbara’s fellow historians.

Shepherding these projects did not give her much time for her own research and writing, but along with her co-author and later editorial successor James P. McClure, Barbara wrote an important essay on the founding of the Jefferson Papers project, “‘For Generations to Come’: Creating the ‘Definitive’ Jefferson Edition.”  She also edited three volumes of collected essays:  Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Representation of American Culture, with Harry S. Stout; Federalists Reconsidered, with Doron Ben-Atar; and Women in the American Revolution: Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World.

In addition to her scholarship, Barbara had an exceptional gift for making connections and translating to a wider audience the mission and purpose of organizations about which she was passionate. All the while, she cultivated friends and donors, fostered talent, and created opportunities for those she worked with as well as junior scholars. She honed these collaborative and partnership-building skills over years of grant writing, hiring staff and serving on hiring committees, teaching seminars, advising graduate students, reading dissertations and senior theses, and editing volumes. Barbara’s warmth, enthusiasm, delightful sense of humor, and welcoming openness was evident in her big, broad smile, indicative of the joy she felt in being with people and bringing forth the best in them.

Some SHEAR members will recall Barbara’s presidential address, “A New Republican Order, Letter by Letter,” given in Philadelphia in 2004.  Among those in the audience to hear the speech, delivered on a day that also happened to be her wedding anniversary, was her ever-supportive husband and fellow historian, J. Perry Leavell, whose regular and welcome presence at SHEAR events made him an honorary SHEARite. This dynamic duo of a couple were much beloved. While SHEAR owes an incalculable debt to Barbara, we owe gratitude to Perry too for sharing Barbara with us.  Barbara’s networks were vast, and her mentees and friends were legion. Barbara’s intellectual curiosity, generosity of spirit, and joie de vivre despite life’s challenges set her apart. Her extensive contributions, gracious example, and collaborative spirit will never be forgotten.

~ Martha J. King

 

Works Referenced:

Oberg, “The Progress Toward the Perfection of Man: David Hartley and the Association of Ideas,” (PhD. diss, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1973).

Oberg et al., eds., Philip Mazzei: The Comprehensive Microform Edition of his Papers, and cloth-bound Guide and Index (Kraus-Thomson Publications, 1982).

Oberg, ed., The Papers of Albert Gallatin: A Microfilm Supplement (Scholarly Resources Publishers, 1985).

Oberg and Harry S. Stout, eds., Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Representation of American Culture (Oxford University Press, 1993).

Oberg and Doron Ben-Atar, eds., Federalists Reconsidered (University of Virginia Press, 1998).

Oberg et al., eds., Papers of Benjamin Franklin (Yale University Press, 1991-2000), Vols. 28-35

Oberg et al., eds., Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton University Press, 2002-2014), Vols. 29-41

Oberg,  “A New Republican Order, Letter by Letter,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring 2005), 1-20.

Oberg and McClure, “‘For Generations to Come’: Creating the ‘Definitive’ Jefferson Edition” in A Companion to Thomas Jefferson, ed. Francis P. Cogliano (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 491-509.

Papers of Thomas Jefferson (subscription-based digital edition) https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN.html

Papers of Thomas Jefferson (open access digital edition) https://founders.archives.gov/about/Jefferson

Oberg, ed., Women in the American Revolution: Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World (University of Virginia Press, 2019).