author

J. H. T. (John Hanson Thomas) McPherson

1865–1953

A historian and political scientist best known for History of Liberia, he wrote one of the early scholarly accounts of Liberia while building an academic career in the American South. His work reflects late 19th-century university history writing and a deep interest in politics, government, and colonization.

1 Audiobook

History of Liberia

History of Liberia

by J. H. T. (John Hanson Thomas) McPherson

About the author

Born in 1865, J. H. T. McPherson — John Hanson Thomas McPherson — became a trained historian at Johns Hopkins University. In the prefatory material to History of Liberia, he is identified as a Ph.D., a Fellow in History at Johns Hopkins in 1889, an instructor in history at the University of Michigan in 1890, and a professor of history and politics at the University of Georgia in 1891.

His best-known book, History of Liberia (1891), began as a doctoral dissertation and was described by McPherson as an abridgment of a much larger study he hoped to expand later. The book helped preserve an early academic treatment of Liberia’s founding, politics, and historical significance, and it remains the work most closely associated with his name.

Reliable biographical details beyond his academic appointments and major publication were limited in the sources I could confirm here, so this overview keeps to those points. No suitable verified portrait image was found from the pages available during this search.