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Max Farrand

Farrand, Max, 1869-1945

Portrait of Max Farrand taken from the American Historical Association.Max Farrand was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1869. He attended Princeton University, graduating with the undergraduate class of 1892. He continued at Princeton to earn his PhD in 1896. A scholar of American history, Max Farrand was an authority on the Constitutional Convention of 1787, editing and publishing the three volume Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (1911) as well as several other books on the development of the United States and the drafting of the Constitution.  He began his career teaching first at Princeton, then Wesleyan University, Cornell, and Stanford. He left Stanford in 1908 to begin tenure as chair of Yale’s History Department where, in 1913, he met the university’s landscape gardener, Beatrix Jones. The two fell in love and married later that year.

Max and Beatrix Farrand lived together on the East Coast until 1926, when Henry E. Huntington died and Farrand received the position of Director of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. He worked there until his retirement in 1941. During those years, Farrand also served as the President of the American Historical Association.

Upon retiring from the Huntington Library, Max and Beatrix Farrand returned to the family home, Reef Point, in Bar Harbor, Maine. His health began to fail in 1943, and after a long period of illness, he passed away at Reef Point on June 17, 1945. To commemorate her husband, Beatrix named the library at their home the Max Farrand Memorial Library. 

 

References:

Carder, James N., Editor. A Home of the Humanities: The Collecting and Patronage of Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2010.

"Dr. Max Farrand Called to Yale: Head of History Department at Stanford University to Go East." San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA), February 28, 1908.

LoBiondo, Maria. “Beatrix Farrand: Landscape Architect.” In Princeton: With One Accord. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University's Office of Development Communications, 1998. http://www.princeton.edu/~gradcol/perm/farrand.htm

"Max Farrand." American Historical Association. Accessed August 8, 2014. http://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/presidential-addresses/max-farrand

Special to the New York Times. "Dr. Max Farrand, Library Authority: Former College Professor Dies at 79--Was Noted for His Research on Constitution." New York Times (New York, NY), June 18, 1945.