Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

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Use Restrictions

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Preferred Citation

Papers of Edwin A. Alderman, Accession #1001, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The papers in MSS 1001 were given to the University of Virginia Special Collections Department by Mrs. Edwin A. Alderman, on November 7, 1940. Over the years, various other accessions have been interfiled into these papers; these MSS numbers include: MSS 801; MSS 827 (Gift from Joseph L. Vaughan, May 3, 1940); MSS 1206 (Gift from Joseph L. Vaughan, August 12, 1940); MSS 1315; MSS 1383; MSS 1551 (Gift from the University of Virginia President's Office, November 6, 1942); MSS 1736; MSS 2056 (Transfer from the Preparations Division, December 14, 1944); MSS 2636 (Transfer from the University of Virginia President's Office, March 4, 8, 1947); MSS 2649-a; MSS 2739; MSS 3087 (Loaned by Mrs. Wayne M. Rule, January 10, 1949, until a photostatic copy was made, and then the original was returned on January 13, 1949); MSS 3558 (Gift from Allie Gregory, September 20, 1950); MSS 3571 (Gift from Allie Gregory, October 10, 1950); MSS 5438; MSS 6752 (Transfer from the University of Virginia President's Office, March 20, 1962); and MSS 7606 (Gift of Thomas Fullbright, June 23, 1964).

Biographical Information

Edwin Anderson Alderman (1861-1931) served as the President of three universities. The University of Virginia's Alderman Library is named after him, as is Edwin A. Alderman Elementary School in Wilmington.

Alderman graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1882. He became a schoolteacher in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and then superintendent of the school district there.

In 1891, Alderman and Charles Duncan McIver successfully pressed the North Carolina Legislature to establish the Normal and Industrial School for Women, now known as the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Alderman taught there until 1893, when he became a professor at the University of North Carolina; he was named president of that institution in 1896. He moved on to take the same position at Tulane University in 1900, before moving again to the University of Virginia in 1904. There he stayed for 27 years, until his death in 1931 from a stroke in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, while en route to deliver a speech in Illinois. He is buried at the University of Virginia Cemetery.

Alderman was a noted public speaker, and won fame for his memorial address for Woodrow Wilson, delivered to a joint session of Congress on December 15, 1924.

In 1904, the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia invited Alderman, then president of Tulane University, to become the first president of the University of Virginia. Since its founding in 1819, Mr. Jefferson's University had been governed by its Board of Visitors, but increasing discord between Visitors and the faculty, as well as the rising administrative burden of dealing with expanding academic departments and burgeoning student enrollments, led to the decision to move forward with the creation of the office of the president.

Alderman was not the first choice for the new office. After considering other candidates, including Virginia Law graduate Woodrow Wilson, the Board of Visitors had first invited its former member George W. Miles, a colonel who had served on the staff of Virginia Governor James Hoge Tyler. The faculty opposed Miles' nomination and he was forced to withdraw. Other candidates were proposed, including Francis Preston Venable (who had succeeded Alderman as president of the University of North Carolina), but Alderman was unanimously chosen as the consensus candidate on June 14, 1904. He began to serve in the fall of 1904 but was not formally inaugurated until April 13, 1905 (Thomas Jefferson's birthday, which was then as now celebrated as Founder's Day).

The University changed in several significant ways under Alderman's guidance. First, he focused new attention on matters of public concern, creating departments of geology and forestry, adding significantly to the University Hospital to support new sickbeds and public health research, created the Curry School of Education, established the extension and summer school programs, and created the first school of finance and commerce at the school. He then restructured existing programs, separating the former "academic department" into the College of Arts and Sciences and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, in accordance with a growing move to standardize college educations by the Association of American Universities. The enrollment of the school greatly increased under his administration, as well, going from 500 regular session students in 1904 to 2,200 in 1929.

Alderman also laid the financial groundwork for the University's future, during the first years of his presidency establishing its first endowment fund and leading the fundraising of almost $700,000 to meet a $500,000 challenge grant from Andrew Carnegie. By the end of his presidency the endowment would increase to $10 million.

He spent two-thirds of his long term at the University of Virginia physically disabled after a bad bout with tuberculosis.

Information taken from Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Alderman

Scope and Content

The papers consist of personal and official correspondence, drafts of speeches, scrapbooks, photographs, clippings, memorabilia, and other papers, ca. 1863-1959, ca. 25,000 items (29 Hollinger boxes, 2 card file boxes and 5 Oversize boxes, ca. 21.5 linear feet). The correspondence and other papers chiefly relate to Alderman's work at the University of Virginia, but also includes his education and early associations; his work in the public schools and at the Woman's College at Greensboro, North Carolina; his presidency of the University of North Carolina, and Tulane University; his activities with the Southern Education Board, the Association of American Universities, and other organizations. Includes drafts of most of his noted orations; several bibliographies of his writings, correspondence, and scrapbooks kept by his wife, Bessie Green Hearn Alderman.

Correspondents and persons mentioned include Charles Francis Adams, Henry Adams, Felix Adler, James Rowland Angell, Nancy Astor, Charles B. Aycock, Karl Bitter, Nicholas Murray Butler, Richard E. Byrd, Grover Cleveland, Calvin Coolidge, J.L.M. Curry, Frank B. Dancy, Josephus Daniels, Westmoreland Davis, Charles W. Eliot, Alfred William Erickson, John H. Finley, Thomas Staples Fuller, Williamson Whitehead Fuller, and Carter Glass. Also, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, William Dean Howells, and Jean Jusserand, Franklin K. Lane, [Philip Henry Kerr] the Marquis of Lothian, Hamilton W. Mabie, Charles D. McIver, A. T. Mahan, John S. Mosby, Edward P. Moses, M.C.S. Noble, Thomas Nelson Page, Walter Hines Page, George F. Peabody, John J. Raskob, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, William Howard Taft, Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy, Oswald Garrison Villard, Booker T. Washington, Joseph R. Wilson, and Woodrow Wilson.

Speeches and addresses by Alderman form a large part of the collection and are in various stages of construction from notes, manuscripts, and typescripts, to a printed version, often printed in whole or in part in The Alumni Bulletin or as a separate publication. Whenever possible, all versions of the same speech can be found together in a single folder under the date of the original speech even though the published version came later.

Arrangement

Series I: Correspondence (Boxes 1-11), Subseries A arranged alphabetically by name of correspondent and Subseries B: Topical Correspondence. Series II: Topical Files (Boxes 12-17); Series III: Speeches, Articles, and Addresses (Boxes 18-29) by Edwin A. Alderman arranged chronologically by the date originally delivered or published if known. Many of his speeches delivered after he became President of the University of Virginia can be found in printed form in the University of Virginia Alumni Bulletin (LH1.V6 A4) either in the issue current with the speech or the next issue following his speech and in several volumes of the Rare Book bound pamphlet series (F221, volumes: 23-26 and 41-47). Many items appear to have been previously removed from a scrapbook and have vestiges of glue and paper remaining on them. Series IV: Scrapbooks and Note cards (Boxes 29-31, and Alderman Oversize Boxes 1- 5).