Ryden, George Herbert, 1884-1941

American National Red Cross worker in Russia, 1918-1920.

George Herbert Ryden was a history professor at the University of Delaware and the Delaware State Archivist. He was also involved with the American Association of University Professors at the local, regional, and national levels. Ryden held positions with the Swedish-American Historical Foundation and its Philadelphia museum.

George Herbert Ryden was a history professor at the University of Delaware and the Delaware State Archivist. He was also involved with the American Association of University Professors at the local, regional, and national levels. Ryden held positions with the Swedish-American Historical Foundation and its Philadelphia museum. Ryden was born in 1884 in Kansas City, Missouri. After working as a clerk at the Kansas City Southern Railway Company for three years, he attended Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. He received a degree in history and economics in 1909, and then attended Yale University where he earned a master's degree in European and American History in 1911. Ryden served as an assistant in the history department at Yale until 1918.

From January through June 1918, Ryden lectured on the diplomatic background of World War I to soldiers. He continued his lectures and other military activities in Italy and Paris beginning in July 1918. Transferred as a major to the American Red Cross, Ryden worked on post-war civilian relief in Russia.

After teaching a citizenship class at Dartmouth, Ryden joined the University of Delaware's faculty in 1922. Through President Walter Hullihen's new sabbatical system, Ryden returned to Yale for 1926–1927 to complete his doctorate. His expanded thesis, "The Foreign Policy of the United States in Relation to Samoa," was published as a book by Yale University Press in 1933.

Ryden was named head of Delaware's Department of History and Political Science in 1928. He also taught at the University of Kansas during the summers of 1930 and 1936, as well as at the University of Minnesota in the summer of 1932.

George Ryden was appointed State Archivist of Delaware in 1930. He also served on the Historic Markers Commission, the Delaware Swedish Tercentenary Commission, the Delaware Dutch Tercentenary Committee, and the Delaware Statues Commission.

Ryden was president of the University of Delaware chapter of the American Association of University Professors from 1929 to 1931. He later was a regional coordinator for an AAUP membership campaign and ultimately served as National Chairman of the AAUP's Committee on Organization and Conduct of Local Chapters.

Ryden was a founding member and served as the first president of the Delaware History and Social Science Club in 1933. It was affiliated with the Middle States Association of Teachers (which later became the Middle States Council for the Social Studies), of which Ryden later served as president.

The child of Scandinavian immigrants, Ryden held several positions in the Swedish-American Historical Foundation and its Philadelphia museum. These positions included both corresponding and recording secretary of the museum's Board of Trustees. Ryden died in October 1941 in Chicago's Augustana Hospital.

"Ryden, U. of D. Staff Member, Dies in Chicago." October 13, 1941. Journal Every Evening . Wilmington, DE.

Biographical Note

George H. Ryden (1884-1941) was an American National Red Cross worker in Russia from 1918 to 1920. A native of Kansas City, he interrupted his academic career to serve with the American Expeditionary Forces in Italy during World War I, was with the Red Cross in the southern Russian city of Novorossisk in 1920, seeking to aid refugees during the civil war that followed the Russian Revolution. While there he played a key role in helping the family of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, the sister of the recently murdered Czar Nicholas II, escape to Turkey and subsequently to Europe. Ryden, a historian, later became the state archivist of Delaware