Geoffrey T. Blodgett Papers

Geoffrey “Jeff” Thomas Blodgett was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on October 13, 1931, and grew up outside of Schenectady, New York. HIs parents were Harold W. and Dorothy Briggs Blodgett. He enrolled at Oberlin College in 1949, and received his BA in 1953, winning the George G. and Carrie C. Life Prize in American History. From his first year at Oberlin, he was a member of the Oberlin College football team, the Yeomen. An all-conference team player, he began as a halfback, and in his junior and senior years became the greatest end in Oberlin history as a starter. He was a supporter of football at Oberlin throughout his life. He believed that the sport would enhance, not detract from, a healthy diversity at the college.

After graduation, Jeff Blodgett served for two years in the US Navy before beginning graduate study at Harvard University. While writing his PhD dissertation in 1959, his Oberlin mentor, history professor Robert S. Fletcher, passed away suddenly at the age of 59, leaving a vacancy in American History. The Oberlin faculty arranged for Blodgett to succeed him in the position in the fall of 1960, the year of his attainment of his doctorate. He taught American political, intellectual and architectural history as the Robert S. Danforth Professor of History. His main research interest as a young scholar was conservative reform thought and behavior in the Gilded Age.

Blodgett’s teaching was described as superlative, and his scholarly work resulted in numerous articles as well as several books. His first book, The Gentle Reformers: Massachusetts Democrats in the Cleveland Era, was published in 1966 by Harvard University Press and dedicated to his former mentor. Blodgett was particularly interested in American architecture, born of his undergraduate coursework in the subject under art historian and the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s first director, Clarence Ward. In 1985 Kent State University Press published his book Oberlin Architecture, College and Town: A Guide to its Social History. The book garnered an award from the Western Reserve Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, and its popularity led to a second printing in 1990.

A few days before his death, he was able to hold the first printed copy of his last book, Cass Gilbert: The Early Years, in 2001. A collection of his essays, entitled Oberlin History: Essays and Impressions, was published posthumously by Kent State University Press in 2006. While Robert Fletcher had produced a two-volume history of Oberlin College up to the Civil War, and some expected Blodgett to bring that history forward in a similar format, he wrote extensively on Oberlin’s history in the more informal and wide-ranging essay style, including the recent period just before his death.

Blodgett was a fervid defender of the college’s original system of faculty governance, set out in the “Finney Compact” of 1835. That system was threatened, but ultimately upheld, when faculty and the administration clashed over faculty appointment procedures in 1973. With that experience in mind, Blodgett wrote historically contextual articles and college documents in 1992, when further challenges to faculty governance were posed by the Board of Trustees.

Jeff Blodgett was, in addition to a teacher and scholar, an avid traveller and accomplished photographer. He hung a memorable display of his photographs in the college library in Mudd Learning Center in April 2000, when his colleagues hosted a dinner in honor of his retirement the previous February.

In 2001, while dealing with a terminal illness, he received the game ball and a plaque after the triumph over Kenyon College that ended Oberlin’s ignominious losing streak. He died at home in Oberlin on November 15, 2001. He was survived by his wife, Jane Taggart Blodgett (Oberlin College Class of 1954), and their three daughters. Jane Blodgett passed away on November 29, 2021.

Sources Consulted

Graduates and Former Student Files (RG 28), Oberlin College Archives.

Blodgett, Geoffrey. “Observations on Governance at Oberlin: Another Look at its History.” Oberlin College Observer, October 29, 1992.

Kelly, Bruce, Gail Travis Guillet, and Mary Ellen W, Hern, eds. Art of the Olmsted Landscape. New York: Arts Publisher, Inc., 1981.

Koppes, Clayton. “A Tribute to a Scholar: Geoffrey Thomas Blodgett, ’53.”Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Spring 2002. Accessed online 7/31/2018.

Longsworth, Robert. Memorial Minute. Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Fall 2002. Accessed online 7/25/18.

“Teacher and Preservationist Jane T. Blodgett ’54 Dies,” Oberlin College Campus News, December 9, 2021. Accessed online March 25, 2022.

Note written by Anne Cuyler Salsich.