About the OI

Join us at the American Historical Association meeting in New York on Saturday, January 4, 2025, for “Remembering Barbara Oberg: A Life in Letters.” The session will take place from 3:30-5 in the Murray Hill Room at the Sheraton Times Square, 811 7th Avenue, and is co-sponsored by the Omohundro Institute, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and the American Philosophical Society.

Please note that the session is not listed in the AHA program. It is open to all.

September 14, 2024—It is with great regret that we note the passing of scholar, friend, Omohundro Institute stalwart, and champion-of-the-field extraordinaire Barbara Oberg.

Barbara leaves behind a remarkable record of intellectual achievement. She famously served as Editor of both the Benjamin Franklin Papers and the Thomas Jefferson Papers during her long career at Princeton University. In those capacities, she shepherded more than 20 volumes into print, ensuring that these foundational collections became widely accessible. Her own scholarly interests included early national political and women’s history. She was the editor, most recently, of Women in the American Revolution: Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World (2019).

Barbara was also an insightful and incisive leader. Keenly aware of the importance of institutions for scholarship, she was devoted to the organizations that support early American history, including the OI. From 2010 to 2023, she served on the OI’s Executive Board, presiding as Chair from 2014 onward. Her steady counsel, exceptional generosity, and subtle wit helped us flourish even as we navigated shifts in leadership and sponsorship and moved into our new home. We are profoundly grateful to her for her help.

The OI is not the only organization to have benefitted from Barbara’s keen intellect and energetic engagement. She helped steer the American Philosophical Society, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and the Society of Documentary Editors. Indeed, at “A Life in Letters: A Celebration of Dr. Barbara Oberg”—a 2023 symposium jointly organized by the OI and the American Philosophical Society—historians, editors, and cultural leaders gathered in Philadelphia to discuss the ongoing importance of Barbara’s work.  At “Barbara Fest,” as we called it, speakers and audience members alike testified to her profound impact on the organizations they cared most about.

History, as many of the historians who people it and the organizations who serve it know, in Barbara’s debt.