Biography:

Historian; University professor. Born– August 25, 1890, Collirene (Lowndes County).  Parents– Thomas Hines and Anne (Rast) Abernethy. Married– Ida Erckman Robertson, December 6, 1917. Education– College of Charleston, A.B., 1912; Harvard University, M.A., 1915, Ph.D., 1922.  Military service, U.S. Army, World War I. Taught at Marion Institute, 1912-1914 and 1919; Women’s College of Alabama, 1916-1917; Vanderbilt University, 1921; University of Chattanooga, 1922-1928; University of Alabama, 1928-1930; University of Virginia, Richmond Alumni Professor of History, 1930-1961; University of Texas, 1961-1962; University of Arizona, 1963-1964.  Contributed to many professional journals and anthologies. Member American Historical Society; founder and president, Southern Historical Society; member Virginia Historical Society. Honors; Litt. D., Washington and Lee University, 1947; Phi Beta Kappa Award for best historical work, 1961, for The South in the New Nation.  Honored by a festschrift entitled The Old Dominion; Essays for Thomas Perkins Abernethy, edited by Darrett B. Rutman.  Died Charlottesville, Virginia, November 12, 1975.

Source:

American Authors and Books; the Dictionary of Alabama Biography; and Contemporary Authors Online.

Publication(s):

The Antecedents of the Abernethy Family in Scotland, Virginia, Old Alabama. Charlottesville, Va.; s.n., 1966.

The Burr Conspiracy. New York; Oxford University Press, 1954.

The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815-1928. Montgomery, Ala.; Brown Printing Co., 1922.

From Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee; a Study in Frontier Democracy. Chapel Hill, N.C.; University of North Carolina Press, 1932.

Historical Sketches of the University of Virginia. New York; Appleton Century, 1937.

Notes and Suggestions, Commercial Activities of Silas Deane in France. S.l.; s.n., 1934.

The South in the New Nation, 1789-1819. Baton Rouge, La.; Louisiana State University Press, 1961.

Southern Frontiers of the War of 1812.  Tuscaloosa; University of Alabama Press, 1967.

Three Virginia Frontiers. Baton Rouge, La.; Louisiana State University Press, 1940.

Western Lands and the American Revolution. Charlottesville, Va.; University of Virginia, Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, 1937.

Co-author;

The Pursuit of Southern History.  LSU Press, 1964.

Editor;

Jefferson, Thomas.  Notes on the State of Virginia.  New York; Harper and Row, 1964.

Contributor;

Bugg, James L., ed.  Jacksonian Democracy; Myth or Reality.  New York; Holt, 1962.

Jones, Edward T. The American Plutarch. New York; Scribner, 1964.

Wyman, Walker D. and Kroeber, Clifton B., eds., The Frontier in Perspective.  Madison:  University of Wisconsin Press, 1957.

Papers;

The papers of Thomas Perkins Abernethy (including professional and personal material) are held in the Special Collections of the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia.