author
Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
1879–1966
A major American historian of colonial America, he spent much of his career at Princeton and became known for writing lively, influential books about Virginia and the early United States. His work helped shape how generations of readers understood the country’s beginnings.
5 Audiobooks
Bacon's Rebellion, 1676
by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
Give Me Liberty: The Struggle for Self-Government in Virginia
by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
The Planters of Colonial Virginia
by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688
by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
Patrician and Plebeian Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion
by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
About the author
Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1879, he studied at the University of Virginia and went on to become one of the best-known American historians of his era. He taught at Princeton University from 1910 to 1947 and served as the second Edwards Professor of American History there.
His writing focused especially on colonial Virginia and the social world of early America. Among his notable books are Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia, The First Americans, 1607–1690, and The Founding of American Civilization: The Middle Colonies. Princeton’s archives describe him as internationally recognized, and he also served as president of the American Historical Association in 1947.
He died in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1966. Although a portrait image was not clearly available from the sources reviewed here, his reputation as a careful and widely read interpreter of early American life has endured.