Wesley Frank Craven

Wesley Frank Craven was an American historian born in Conway, North Carolina, on May 19, 1905, and he died on February 10, 1981. He earned his A.B. from Duke in 1926 and then completed both his A.M. and Ph.D. at Cornell in quick succession, beginning a scholarly career that would make him especially well known for his writing on early American and colonial history.

His books include The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century and The Colonies in Transition, 1660–1713, works that helped generations of readers understand the political and social development of colonial America. He was also associated with Princeton, where he later became professor emeritus, and he coauthored Princetonians, 1784–1790: A Biographical Dictionary.

Craven also played an important role in military history. Along with James Lea Cate, he edited the seven-volume The Army Air Forces in World War II, a landmark official history of the U.S. Army Air Forces. That combination of colonial scholarship and large-scale documentary history made his career unusually wide-ranging and lasting.