Nelson Burr ’27 *34

NELSON BURR DIED Jan. 10, 1994. "Nellie" performed a monumental service to our class by writing a detailed 20-year biographical history of us in 1947 and updating it several times in subsequent volumes. He died at Mt. Sinai Hospital in his native Hartford, Conn., after living for some years at the Seabury Retirement Center in Bloomfield.

Nellie came to Princeton from Hartford H.S. At Princeton, he earned a Phi Beta Kappa and was member of Clio. He received an M.A. in history from Princeton Graduate School in 1928 and a Ph.D. in 1934. He taught history at N.Y.U. for two years. His thesis on "The History of Education in New Jersey" was published by the Univ. Press in 1942. In that year, he joined the staff of the Library of Congress as a research assistant, a post he held for many years. Among his numerous publications was HISTORY OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE U.S. and a two-volume CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RELIGION IN AMERICA, published by the Univ. Press in 1961. In 1968, he retired from the Library of Congress and moved to West Hartford, becoming a trustee of the local historical society and town historian, publishing numerous historical treatises, and becoming a member of many historical societies.

Nellie never married. He is survived by two nephews, Wilbur Griswold and Albert Griswold Jr., and a niece, Cora Levick. To them, the class extends its sympathy in the loss of its unique and beloved historian and my predecessor as class secretary.