Cappon, Lester Jesse, 1900-1981

<br> Lester Jesse Cappon (September 18, 1900 – August 24, 1981) was an American historian and documentary editor, and served as archivist for Colonial Williamsburg, Inc.</br>
<br>Cappon was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1900, the son of local businessman[1] Jesse Cappon and his wife, Mary E. Geisinger Cappon.[2] He graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1922 where he was a member of Sigma Pi fraternity and Phi Beta Kappa.[3] He later received his masters and doctoral (1928) degrees in history from Harvard University.[4] He was married with two children and was a member of the Episcopal Church.[3]</br>
<br>He began his career as a history professor and archivist at the University of Virginia, and later worked as an archivist at the College of William and Mary and for Colonial Williamsburg.[5] While at William and Mary, he was the Director of the Institute of Early American History and Culture and editor of The William and Mary Quarterly.[3] Cappon wrote several books including Virginia Newspapers 1821-1935 and The Bibliography of Virginia History Since 1865.[3] He was deeply involved professionally, and helped found the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and the Association for Documentary Editing (ADE). He served as president of the SAA from 1956 to 1957 and president of the ADE from 1979 to 1980.[6][7] At the end of his career, Cappon became a research fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago. He died in Chicago on August 24, 1981.[8]</br>

Lester Jesse Cappon, white male, born to Jesse Cappon (Manufacturer) and Mary E. Geisinger at 3 PM, Tuesday September 18, 1900. Has sister Estelle Cappon.

L.J. Cappon, Archivist, Dies

WILLIAMSBURG -- Lester Jesse Cappon, 80, first archivist for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, died Monday in Chicago.
Cappon, a native of Milwaukee, became in 1945 the first editor of publications of the Institute of Early American History and Culture, an organization sponsored by the College of William and Mary and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. In the same year he became the foundation's first archivist.
He became the institute's director in 1954. He retired from that position in 1969.
He co-edited with former city councilwoman Stella Neiman "The Virginia Gazette Index, 1736-1780."
He also edited "The Atlas of Early American History," which was published in 1976 by the Princeton University Press.
He taught at the University of Virginia from 1930 to 1945. He received a doctorate from Harvard in 1928.
Survivors include a son, Stanley Bernet Cappon, of Somerset, Ky.
Burial will be at Greenwood Cemetery in Charlottesville at 11 a.m. Monday. A memorial service will be held at Bruton Parish Church at 3 p.m. Tuesday.

Daily Press [Newport News, VA], August 26, 1981, page 42

"As Ben Franklin’s World fans already know, a special additional episode of the show downloaded today just for subscribers. In this special episode, the history of the Omohundro Institute is brought to life through a look at the work of former OI Director and William and Mary Quarterly Editor Lester J. Cappon. (You can still catch the bonus show by subscribing to our free podcast via your favorite provider. Just look for Ben Franklin’s World in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. You could also download the free custom app we have for the show. It’s available in your favorite app store for both iOS and Android devices.)

The OI is the product of discussions that took place in the early 20th century among a group of historians who thought that American History was overly concerned with the post-Civil War period. The roster of founding Council members includes numerous leading historians of the day and, in keeping with its aim to support historical scholarship, leading archivists as well.

Part of that generation of scholars who were trained simultaneously as historians and archivists, Lester Cappon shared many interests and beliefs with these scholars. After he received his PhD in History from Harvard in 1928, he went on to become a history professor and the director of multiple archives, including Special Collections at the University of Virginia, before joining the OI in 1954. His work included road trips throughout the Commonwealth, attempts to locate and acquire manuscript materials that often required convincing people to let go of documents for the sake of the materials’ preservation and the benefit of the wider world.

As an archivist, Cappon believed that producing strong documentary editions was an important way to share the early American past with a broader public as well as to make more information available for historians. As an editor, he worked to convey the humanity behind the letters and papers by taking care to replicate the writer’s choices of annotation and to consider their editorial decisions as well as the stories each writer told when grouping work into volumes or folios. He was the driving force behind The Adams–Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson & Abigail & John Adams. Through his work, we get the back and forth between the Adamses and Jefferson and this, along with their lively writing styles, helps make them human to us. It is no wonder then perhaps that the book remains one of the OI’s most popular publications even now, nearly six decades after its debut.

Even after Lester Cappon left the OI (to become Editor-in-Chief of the Atlas of Early American History at the Newberry Library in 1969), the OI remained a passionate producer of documentary editions and continues to publish collections of great use to the public and historians alike.

Since publishing its first documentary edition in 1947—Robert Beverley’s 1705 work The History and Present State of Virginia (ed. Louis Wright)—the OI has published 26 different documentary projects. These include a second edition of Beverly published in 2013 with an introduction by Susan Scott Parrish, 2012’s The Memoir of Lieutenant Dumont, 1715–1747 (Gordon M. Sayre and Carla Zecher, editors) and multiple multi-volume works spanning decades, such as The Papers of John Marshall (Charles F. Hobson and Joan S. Lovelace, editors).

Now in its 75th year, the OI’s interest in documentary editing has expanded to include a number of digital projects, as well as an ever-broadening conversation about those whose lives and voices elude easy documentation, including early American women, enslaved people, and Native Americans."

Cappon was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of a prosperous
businessman. He started in music, earning a diploma from the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in 1920, but he was also interested in history and earned degrees at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and at Harvard University, acquiring a Ph.D. in 1928. Cappon came to the University of Virginia in 1925 where he worked on Virginia historical publications and newspapers funded by the university’s Institute for Research in the Social Sciences. Cappon had a long career as both an archivist and historical administrator, working as an assistant professor of history and an archivist at the University of Virginia from 1930 until 1945, when he moved to Williamsburg. His teaching career in the Department of History at the University of Virginia and at the College of William and Mary spanned nearly forty years. Cappon ‘retired’ to the Newberry Library in 1969, where he edited the Atlas of Early American History and held posts as a research fellow until his death.
Cappon is remembered by some documentary editors and
historians for a set of essays about the history of editing, the scholarship at the Newberry Library, and as an early president of the Association for Documentary Editing (ADE). Cappon was an important player in the formative era of American documentary editing standards, and his interesting career as a historian, archivist, and scholarly publisher reveals the various strands that went into the formation of documentary editing standards. Indeed, Cappon played significant roles in establishing the American archival profession and was one of the strongest advocates for historical scholarship as a critical piece of the knowledge required by archivists. Cappon was one of a small number of people who served as president of several major professional associations—in his case, the Southern Historical Association (1949), the Society of American Archivists (1957), and the ADE (1979).