By Jeremy Dibbell

Noted historian and Thomas Jefferson scholar Merrill Peterson died on Wednesday, 23 September in Charlottesville, VA. Peterson was 88. The author or editor of some 37 books (including Jefferson in the American Mind, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, Lincoln in American Memory, Starving Armenians: America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1930, and the Library of America compilation of the writings of Thomas Jefferson), Peterson also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Armenia at the age of 76. He taught history at the University of Virginia from 1963 until 1987.

Peterson was elected the 717th corresponding member of the MHS on 24 May 1984.

The Charlottesville Daily Progress has a full obituary.