“R. D. W. Connor and the Creation of Presidential Libraries”
By William E. Leuchtenburg
EDITOR’S NOTE: This keynote address (excerpted here) was delivered at the Noah Carolina Museum of History
on March 7, 2003, as a feature of the centennial celebration of the North Carolina Historical Commission, founded
on Mardi 7, 1903, and of its progeny, the Office of Archives and History. William E. Leuditenbtirg is William K.
Rand Jr. Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
On December 1, 1938, the archivist of the United States received a letter postmarked
Warm Springs, Georgia, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). The president wanted
the archivist to join him, and some people from other parts of the country, for lunch at
the White House ten days later “to discuss with me,” he said, “a matter which lies very
close to my heart.” The gathering could not take place sooner because on his way north
from Warm Springs to Washington, the president was going to stop at Chapel Hill to
deliver a major address at Woollen Gym, where he would receive an honorary degree.
It would be a meeting of two remarkable men. FDR, of course, was far better known,
and would continue to be. Every poll of historians rates him the greatest president of the
twentieth century. In December 1938 the achievements of the New Deal were behind
him; his role in leading the allied nations to victor)- in the greatest global war in history
still lay ahead. But the archivist of the United States was an outstanding figure, too, and his
accomplishments are not nearly as appreciated as they should be.
At the time the letter arrived, R. D. W. Connor had been archivist of the United States
for four years. He was, indeed, the only one who had ever held that post, for, strange as it
seems today, there was no National Archives as late as 1933 when FDR took office. Con¬
struction had begun under Herbert Hoover, after Congress had finally yielded to years of
lobbying by the historical profession, but was still rudimentary when Roosevelt defeated
Hoover. In short order the new president allotted Public Works Administration funds to
carry the project to completion. It is not surprising that it was under Roosevelt — and as
early as his second year as president — that the National Archives first became a reality
because the president had a keen interest in history. Not until 1934, however, did Con¬
gress create the post of archivist of the United States. As the bill was making its way
through both houses, Professor Connor, contentedly ensconced in his office in the history
department at the University of North Carolina, was so far removed from the Washington
scene that he was altogether unaware of the legislation. He also did not know that people
were talking about him.
Connor attracted this attention because he had made such an impressive record as an
archivist in North Carolina that he had acquired a national reputation. A native of Wilson,
he had been chosen secretary of the North Carolina Historical Commission, as the Office
of Archives and History was originally called, at its charter meeting in 1903. Four years
later, in an office in the east gallery of the Senate Chamber of the Capitol in Raleigh, he
began to create order out of records that had been, in his words, “stuffed away in dark
pigeonholes . . . or . . . thrown helter-skelter here and there, in leaky attics.” In later years,
he spent a summer studying British repositories, and it was he who named the North
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