Robert Middlekauff

Few individuals were more devoted to Berkeley as an institution of learning and teaching than Robert Middlekauff, whose contributions to the university are too numerous to recount here. Dean of the Division of Social Sciences in the College of Letters and Sciences for three years and then Dean and Provost for two years, Middlekauff was Chair of the History Department for an extraordinary three terms. Middlekauff was active in fundraising for, among other things, the Berkeley Botanical Garden and the libraries. For his many services, he received the Berkeley Citation “for Distinguished Achievement and for Notable Service to the University,” in 1983.

His demanding administrative work, and his success in its execution, never interfered with his accomplishments as a scholar and his dedication to teaching both graduate and undergraduate students. As an eminent historian, Middlekauff received numerous recognitions, among them the coveted Bancroft Prize in American History for his brilliant portrait of the dominant and controversial family of colonial ministers, The Mathers, and the Commonwealth Club of California’s Gold Medal in Nonfiction for The Glorious Cause, his masterful and consummate narrative history of the American Revolution. Indeed, as a historian of early American history, Robert Middlekauff was among a very select group of important American historians that included his own Yale mentor, Edmund Morgan. His stature was recognized by his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, as well as by his appointment as Harmsworth Professor at Oxford, and by many other fellowships and honors.

While active as administrator and scholar, Bob never forgot his students and colleagues, who remember his warmth, humor, and unflagging interest in their work and well- being. Bob’s generosity as chair is often mentioned by colleagues in reminiscences about their experiences as young members of the department. He was an outstanding teacher who loved the free-flowing exchange of ideas in seminars for freshmen as well as graduate students. One of his fondest memories, recalled by Richard Johnson (one of those students), was of a graduate seminar on the sober subject of the 18^th Century colonial Great Awakening that resulted in so much hilarity and loud debate that the tumult aroused concern in neighboring faculty offices. Bob facilitated twenty-five doctoral dissertations on a wide range of subjects. He was so deeply admired that one of his graduate students asked him to officiate at her wedding, something Bob was honored and delighted to do, and which he recalled with great satisfaction.

Robert Middlekauff was born in Yakima, Washington on July 5, 1929. He received his BA in 1952 at the University of Washington to which he returned for an MA in 1957, after serving in the Marines during the Korean War. His interest in early American history was nourished there by Max Savelle. At Yale University, under the supervision of Edmund Morgan, his commitment as an historian of colonial and early America was confirmed, and the field would occupy his attention for the rest of his life. Well after his retirement as Preston Hotchkiss Professor of American History in 2000, it was the subject on which he continued working at the UC Berkeley Library. Middlekauff’s many books included Ancients and Axioms (1963), a study of secondary education in New England that was based on his doctoral dissertation; A History of Colonial America (co-authored with Max Savelle, 1964); The National Temper (edited with his Berkeley colleague, Lawrence Levine, 1972); The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (1971); The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (1982; revised edition, 2005); Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies (1996); and Washington’s Revolution: The Making of America’s First Leader (2015). He was researching the historiography of the revolutionary period at the time of his death. He had also spent many years reading and reflecting on the papers of Mark Twain at the Bancroft Library. Twain was a subject that intrigued and finally baffled him. He told Paula Fass that he could not finally figure Twain out – not the first scholar to find Twain both fascinating and elusive.

As part of his activities as an historian, Bob served on many editorial boards and on innumerable committees of the profession. Especially important was his work at Williamsburg’s Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. In addition to his Berkeley career and services, Bob was Director of the Huntington Library, Art Gallery, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California from 1983 to 1988, his only extensive stay away from the campus he loved.

After his retirement, Bob taught courses on the American Revolution for the Naval War College at naval bases from San Diego to Puget Sound and Hawaii. An avid bird watcher, he took every occasion when traveling to track and admire birds that were new to him. A voracious and wide- ranging reader, Bob also organized and led a book club with a devoted following in Berkeley. He often asked colleagues for new and interesting books they had read recently and he always read carefully books written by colleagues, even when their subjects were very distant from his own research interests.

Bob loved the university and the Berkeley campus. He loved the library; he enjoyed eating with colleagues at the Women’s Faculty Club; he admired the trees on campus and commented on their blooming habits. Reluctant to leave when it came time for him and his beloved wife, Beverly, to move to a retirement retreat in Pleasanton, he drove the considerable (and traffic-clogged) distance to campus whenever possible to go to the library and to see colleagues.

Bob’s devotion to Beverly, to whom he was married for 68 years, and to his children (Dr. Holly Middlekauff and Sam Middlekauff), and to his three grandchildren (Benjamin Katz, Haley Katz, and Coleman Katz), his son-in-law Michael Katz, and to his many nieces and nephews, was well known to his friends and colleagues. They will long remember his extraordinary kindnesses, sharp and dependable insights on their work, and delighted laughter at a good story. They and the campus community as a whole very much miss his humane presence and wry wit.

Robert Middlekauff suffered a stroke and died peacefully on March 10, 2021, at the age of 91.

Paula S. Fass
Richard R. Johnson
2021