Up for auction "Yale University" Charles Seymour Hand Signed 5.5X3 Card Dated 1959. 

ES-7973E

Charles

Seymour (January 1, 1885

– August 11, 1963) was an American academic, historian and President of

Yale University from 1937 to 1951. As an academic

administrator, he was instrumental in establishing Yale's

residential college system. His writing focused on the diplomatic

history of World War I. Seymour was born in New Haven, Connecticut,

the son of Thomas Day Seymour, who

taught classics at Yale, and Sarah Hitchcock Seymour. His paternal grandfather,

Nathan Perkins Seymour, was the great-great grandson of Thomas Clap, who was President of Yale in the 1740s. His

paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Day, was the grandniece of Jeremiah Day, who was Yale's president from 1817 through 1846.

An ancestor of his mother, the former Sarah Hitchcock, was awarded an honorary

degree at Yale's first graduation ceremonies in 1702. Seymour

was awarded a Bachelor of Arts at King's College, Cambridge in

1904; and he earned a second B.A. from Yale in 1908. He went on to earn a Ph.D. from

Yale in 1911.[1] In 1908, he was also tapped as a member of

the Skull and Bones Society

and in 1919 he was founding member of The Council on Foreign Relations Seymour's teaching experience

began at Yale in 1911 when he was made an instructor in history. He was made a

full professor in 1918; and when he eventually left teaching, he had risen

amongst the faculty to become Sterling Professor of

History (1922–1927). He taught history at Yale from 1911 though 1937, when he

became president of the university. Seymour

served as the chief of the Austro-Hungarian Division of the American

Commission to Negotiate Peace in 1919. He was also the U.S.

delegate on the Romanian, Yugoslavian, and Czechoslovakian Territorial Commissions in 1919. In

1933, he delivered the Albert Shaw Lectures on Diplomatic

History at Johns Hopkins University on the subject of American

Diplomacy during the First World War. Seymour served for ten years as the

university's provost (1927–1937). During this period, Yale College was re-organized into a system of ten residential

college, instituted in 1933 with the help of a grant by Yale

graduate Edward S. Harkness, who

admired the college systems at Oxford and Cambridge. Seymour became

the first Master of Berkeley College. At

age 52, Seymour succeeded James Rowland Angell as

the university's 15th president in October 1937. After his retirement in July 1950, he would be

succeeded by Alfred Whitney Griswold. After

his retirement as president, Seymour continued his involvement with the

university as curator of the papers of Edward M. House at the Yale University Library. He

died in Chatham, Massachusetts in

1963 after a long illness. His son, Charles Seymour, Jr., was a professor

of art history at Yale. Quote: "We

seek the truth and will endure the consequences."