Presidential Address
Popular Discontent with Representative Government
In Memoriam
From the American Historical Review 10:2 (January 1905)
George Frisbie Hoar (August 29, 1826–September 30, 1904), ex-president of the American Historical Association, died at his home in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the early part of October, at the age of seventy-eight. Mr. Hoar was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1826, graduated from Harvard College and the Dane Law School (Harvard), served in the Massachusetts legislature, was elected a member of the House of Representatives of the Forty-First Congress, and in 1877 was elected United States Senator. His interest in American history was always keen, and while his public duties prevented him from devoting any appreciable time to historical research or writing, he was an important member of such organizations as the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the New England Historic-Genealogical Society, and the Virginia Historical Society. He served one year, 1895, as president of the American Historical Association and was henceforward a life-member of the council of the Association. Most of his historical contributions are to be found in the publications of these societies. In 1882, in the annual report of the council to the American Antiquarian Society, he contributed an account of the materials for historical research in the city of Washington, which, while slight and containing some errors, remained for years the principal source of information. Among other of his articles published by the same society may be mentioned Government in Canada and the United States Compared (1891), and The Obligations of New England to the County of Kent (1885). His principal service to historians, however, lay in the writing of his own biography, Reminiscences of Seventy Years (1903).
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