Mark M. Heald Papers

Mark Mortimer Heald (1892-1971)

Mark Heald, history professor at Princeton and Rutgers, was born on February 20, 1892, in Canton, Illinois. He was the son of Edward Aiken (1862-1938, OC ex- 1883) and Mary Eudora Chaffee Heald (1861-1916). He had three siblings, Charles Hobart (1884-1911), Dean Aiken (1887-1957), and Mary Chaffee (1895-1995). Mark received his A.B. from Oberlin College in 1914 and studied (interrupted by World War I) at the University of Minnesota, where he was a teaching fellow from 1916‑17. He later received an A.M. from Columbia University.

Heald was a tutor in history at Oberlin College’s Academy (1914-16), and an instructor in English at Oberlin College (1914-15). Heald and his wife, the former June K. Kilts (1892-1984), were married by Oberlin College President Henry Churchill King (1858=1934) on the afternoon of Mr. Heald's graduation in 1914. They seem to have enjoyed an active social life for two years (1914-16) while Heald taught at the Oberlin Academy. Heald took up graduate work at the University of Minnesota, in 1915-17. In the fall of 1917 he became a history teacher in Milwaukee, where the War caused much anguish because of the large population of German ancestry.

Mr. Heald enlisted in the U.S. Army in early 1918, at 26, and saw active service in World War I as a sergeant in the infantry on five main sectors of the Western Front. He served briefly in the Occupation in Moselkern, Germany, and was stationed as a student for a semester at the University of Montpellier, France, before returning to the U.S. and leaving the Army. During most of Mark Heald’s service overseas, June Heald worked in wartime offices in Washington, D.C. After the war, Mark Heald worked for Herbert Hoover (1873-1964) in the U.S. Food Administration.

Heald served as the director of the Junior Division at the Perkiomen School in Pennsburg, PA for two years (1920-22) and taught at Princeton University (1924-26). He joined the faculty at Rutgers University where he became Professor of History and Political Science, and taught there for twenty-nine years (1926‑55). The Healds’ only child, Mark Aiken Heald (1929-2020), was born in 1929. In the summer of 1947, Mark M. Heald was a guest professor at Fresno (California) State College.

In 1949, the Healds were among the founders of the Princeton Unitarian Fellowship, which grew into the present Unitarian Church of Princeton. Mark Heald was active in Scouting and was the first director of the Princeton Study Center. After retiring from Rutgers, Heald taught at various institutions, among them Fisk University in Nashville, TN (1956‑58), Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA (1958‑59), and at Trenton (NJ) State College for six months (1958-59).

Mark Heald died on January 16, 1971 at his home in Princeton, NJ. Much of the Heald family went to Oberlin, including his son, Mark Aiken, Oberlin College class of 1950; his daughter‑in‑law, Jane P. Dewey Heald, class of 1952, a cousin, C. William, class of 1953; a sister‑in‑law, Mrs. Kenneth M. (Frances Kilts) Holaday, class of 1922; and a niece, Mrs. Jack R. (Judith Holaday) Carlson, class of 1949.

Jane Kilts Heald (1892-1984)

June Kilts was born in Canton, Illinois, to Stanton Eugene Kilts (1869-1950) and Phoebe Dell Story (1872-1959) on June 10, 1892. She had two siblings, Frances Eva (1899-1982) and Henry Ray (1907-1910). She and her future husband Mark Heald grew up together in Canton. After they graduated from high school in 1911, Mark matriculated at Oberlin College while June remained in Canton to help her family. When her family fell on hard times, June went to visit her grandmother in California. Her parents moved to Chicago and she helped her mother to manage a boarding house there.

June left Illinois and married Mark on the same day of his graduation in 1914. They stayed in Oberlin while Mark taught at Oberlin College and the Oberlin Academy. After Mark joined the military to fight in World War I, June took a bureaucratic position in Washington, D.C. She was continually promoted, and her sister Frances eventually went to Washington as well. Her position allowed her to amass a significant collection of wartime posters which her family sold in the 1980s.

Jane Kilts Heald died in Media, PA on April 16, 1984.

Written by Emma Larson ‘21

Sources Consulted

A photograph and biographical information about Mark M. Heald are included in the digital collection “Oberlin College and Military Service in World War I,” presented by the Oberlin College Archives at http://cdm15963.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/ww1.

Oberlin Alumni Magazine, February 1971, p. 37.

William E. Bigglestone’s unpublished “[preliminary] Guide to the Oberlin College Archives,” prepared as individual entry sheets in a three-ring binder during the early 1980s.

Mark M. Heald student file (RG 28), Oberlin College Archives.

Mark A. Heald, “The Letters of Mark Mortimer Heald in World War I” (single-page manuscript), November 2, 1998 (Heald case file).

Mark A. Heald and Jane Dewey Heald, “Archives of Mark Mortimer Heald, Oberlin College, class of 1914” (single-page manuscript), November 2018 (Heald case file).