Historian Susan Sommers, PhD, will present “Arthur St. Clair: Myth and History” at the 2019 St. Clair Lecture on Tuesday, February 5, at 7 p.m. in the Ferguson Theater (Smith Hall, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, 150 Finoli Drive, Greensburg, PA 15601).
The St. Clair Lecture, presented by Pitt-Greensburg, provides Westmoreland County residents, students, and visitors an opportunity to attend a presentation by a world-class scholar who focuses on an individual, period, or place important to the history of the region and the nation. This event is free and open to the public. Please call 724-836-7980 by Friday, February 1, to ensure a seat.
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Sommers, a professor of history at St. Vincent College, has built a body of scholarly work exploring freemasonry and politics in 18th century England and America. Her research has led her to compare the materials published in the 18th century and 19th century about Arthur St. Clair to her archival findings—resulting in an interesting comparison of “myth and history.”
Sommers summarizes her presentation as follows:
When William Henry Smith edited the gubernatorial papers of Arthur St. Clair in the early 1880s, he was faced with a dilemma. St. Clair, a major-general in the Revolution, president of the Continental Congress and governor of the Northwest Territory, was clearly an important historical figure, and by nineteenth-century standards, a hero. Smith needed a suitable biographical sketch to use as a preface for his impressive two-volume edition of St. Clair’s public papers. But curiously, St. Clair left very little evidence about his life before his 1760 marriage to Pheobe Bayard of Boston. So Smith did what many other biographers have done over the centuries—he invented an appropriately noble early life story for a man whose later life certainly seemed heroic. Since then, no one has seriously questioned Smith’s account. Surely he would have done due diligence with the records at hand, and produced the most truthful account possible, wouldn’t he?
Alas, the answer to that rather rhetorical question is no. We should take caution from the fact that from the first line of Smith’s biography, he cites as evidence Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem “The Lay of the Last Minstrel.” What follows is a sketch reliant on poems, legend, hearsay and family lore. It is a powerful piece of mythology, and one which speaks to the needs of its 1880s audience. Americans at that time were less concerned with factual evidence than with setting a heroic example. The nation was simultaneously looking back with admiration at the “greatest generation” of the War for Independence, and trying to mend the social fabric rent during the recent Civil War. The nation needed sterling examples of heroes to emulate, even if their stories were not, strictly speaking, true.
More than a century has passed since Smith faced his biographical dilemma, and both the nation and the science of history have changed. We ask different questions, use new and frankly better tools to investigate and answer them—and importantly, we have a more sophisticated view of what it means to be a hero. Today we seek heroes who reflect our own uncertainties and potential. Looking back, we find them in men and women, flawed as we all are, who made the best they could of decidedly unheroic situations. Join us then, as we delve into the archives to find evidence of Arthur St. Clair’s early life, and difficult choices.
The outgoing chair of the Westmoreland Historical Society, Sommers is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK) and an affiliate with King’s College (London). She also is the recipient of the Arthur St. Clair Historic Preservation Award (2008), the Thoburn Excellence in Teaching Award (2002), and the Quentin Schaut Faculty Award (2000). She serves as a general editor and a member of the editorial board for the Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism as well as a member of the Westmoreland County Historical Society editorial board. A member of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association and the American Historical Association, Sommers is a board member of the Regional Advisory Board for the European Union Center and the Center for West European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
Sommers holds a doctorate and master’s of arts degree in history from Washington University (St. Louis, MO). Her dissertation was entitled “Politics in Eighteenth-Century Suffolk.” She also holds an MA and BA in history from Southern Illinois University (Carbondale, IL).
A prolific author and presenter, Sommers has authored numerous articles for academic journals and publications as well as presenting at a variety of academic and scholarly conferences. She is the author of three books: “Thomas Dunckerley,” in British Freemasonry, 1717-1818, (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2016); Thomas Dunckerley and English Freemasonry (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012); and Parliamentary Politics of a County and its Town: General Elections in Suffolk and Ipswich in the Eighteenth Century (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002).