Thomas H. LeDuc Papers

Thomas "Tom" Harold LeDuc, former professor of history at Oberlin College and an authority on the history of public lands, was born on December 1, 1912 in Keeseville, New York. He received the A.B. degree from Columbia University in 1934, the A.M. from Toronto University in 1936, and the Ph.D. from Yale University in 1943. Before coming to Oberlin College as an Acting Associate Professor of History in 1948, Le Duc taught history at Dartmouth, Amherst, Hamilton, Sarah Lawrence, the University of Rochester, and the University of Nebraska. At Oberlin, he was appointed full professor in 1952 and made chairman of the department of history in 1961. Professor LeDuc taught American history, with his advanced courses being in constitutional history, foreign relations, and economic development.

LeDuc received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in the Humanities from 1947-1948. In 1951, on leave from Oberlin, he conducted research at the University of Nebraska on the development and diffusion of scientific knowledge in the Great Plains environment, supported by a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Also that year he taught at American University, representing Oberlin in the “Washington Semester.” In 1952 he was visiting lecturer at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Several years later, in 1955-56, LeDuc was visiting professor of history at the University of Wisconsin while on leave from Oberlin; during this time he also investigated and wrote on the Western land grants. In 1955, he received the Edward Prize for an article titled “State Disposal of the Agricultural College Land Scrip” published in Agricultural History. In 1960, Leduc was one of four American social scientists invited to tour and lecture in Israel as a guest of Hebrew University of Israel. On leave in 1962, he travelled to Austin, Texas, to continue research and writing on several topics in American history, and gave a series of ten lectures on topics in American history research at Claremont College’s Institute of History and Political Economy.

LeDuc appeared as a speaker or panelist at many professional conferences or meetings, including the American Historical Association; the American Studies Fellows meeting at Pepperdine College in California; the Conference on the Nature and Writing of History at the University of Kansas; the Business History Conference at the Marquette University College of Business Administration; and the Ohio Academy of History. LeDuc played an important role in the building of the Oberlin College Library’s Americana collection, and was an early and persuasive advocate for the creation of the College Archives in 1966. He cut an interesting figure at Oberlin, usually dressed in a suit, a six-gallon Stetson hat, tall cowboy boots and a string tie, reflecting his specialty in the history of the American west.

Tom LeDuc married his wife Katherine while at Oberlin; they had a son, Andre, and a daughter, Louise. He retired from Oberlin on January 31, 1978, and relocated to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he lived until his death on September 13, 2002 at the age of 89.

Sources Consulted

Faculty file for Thomas H. LeDuc (28/3).

Obituary, Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Vol. 98, No. 3, Winter 2002-03, p. 45.

Note written by Anne Cuyler Salsich.