Moulton, Gary E. 1942–

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Moulton, Gary E. 1942–

(Gary Evan Moulton)

PERSONAL: Born February 21, 1942, in Tulsa, OK; son of William Virgil (a salesman) and Cleo (a nursery supervisor; maiden name, Collins) Moulton; married Faye Whitaker Doss (an ombudsman), June 2, 1969; children: Kim Moulton Reynolds, Russell, Luanne. Education: Northeastern Oklahoma State College (now University), B.A., 1968; Oklahoma State University, M.A., 1970, Ph.D., 1973.

ADDRESSES: Home—420 Jeffery Dr., Lincoln, NE 68505. Office—Department of History, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 631 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588-0327. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer, editor, historian, public speaker, consultant, and educator. Southwestern Oklahoma State University, Weatherford, instructor, 1973–74, assistant professor, 1974–79, associate professor, 1979–88; University of Nebraska, Lincoln, associate professor of American history, 1988–, Thomas C. Sorensen Profes-sor of American History, 1999–, associate director, Center for Great Plains Studies, 2000–. Fort Clatsop National Memorial, Astoria, OR, scholar-in-residence, 1999; Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, Great Falls, MT, scholar-in-residence, 2000; Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, visiting scholar, 2000; International Center for Jefferson Studies, resident fellow, 2001; Hastings College, Hastings, NE, scholar-in-residence, 2001; University of Montana, Missoula, visiting professor, 2001. Member of board of directors of Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, 1980–. Military service: U.S. Army Security Agency, 1961–64; served in Vietnam and Thailand.

MEMBER: Association for Documentary Editing (meetings committee chair, 1996–2000, treasurer, 2002–), Western History Association, Westerners International (organizer and first sheriff of Lincoln Corral), Nebraska State Historical Society, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Phi Alpha Theta.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from National Historical Publications and Records Commission, 1975–79, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1980–85, American Philosophical Society, 1982–85, Nebraska Committee for the Humanities, 1982 and 1983, and Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, 1983; Wrangler Award from National Cowboy Hall of Fame, 1984, for Atlas of the Lewis and Clark Expedition; Award of Meritorious Achievement, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, 1988; J. Franklin Jameson Award, American Historical Association, 1990, for editing of the Lewis and Clark Journals; Fulbright Scholar Award, 1994; University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Distinguished Teaching Award, 1996, Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Award, 2002.

WRITINGS:

John Ross, Cherokee Chief, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1978.

(Contributor) H. Glenn Jordan and Thomas H. Holm, editors, Indian Leaders: Oklahoma's First Statesmen, Oklahoma Historical Society (Oklahoma City, OK), 1979.

(Contributor) R. David Edmunds, editor, American Indian Leaders: Studies in Diversity, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1980.

(Editor) Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, thirteen volumes, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1983–2001.

(Editor) The Papers of Chief John Ross, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1985.

(Editor, with Frederick C. Luebke and Frances W. Kaye) Mapping the North American Plains: Essays in the History of Cartography, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1987.

(Editor) The Herbarium of the Lewis and Clarke Expedition, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1999.

Lewis and Clark on the Middle Missouri, edited by James E. Potter, design and layout by Debra Brownson, Nebraska State Historical Society (Lincoln, NE), 2001.

(Editor and author of introduction) The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2003.

Contributor to Encyclopedia of Southern History.

Contributor to history journals and periodicals, including Nebraska History, Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Documentary Editing, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Western Historical Quarterly, Florida Historical Quarterly, and Montana: The Magazine of Western History.

SIDELIGHTS: A professor of history, Gary E. Moulton focuses on American history, documentary editing, Nebraska state history, and the development of the American frontier, particularly the pioneering discoveries of Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery. Lewis and Clark's explorations "make up probably the greatest adventure story in American history," commented a reviewer in the Atlantic Monthly. One of Moulton's major works as an editor and an academic is Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, a thirteen-volume set containing the complete journals of the noted frontiersmen and several members of the Corps of Discovery. The journals relate the events of the expedition as they happened, and both the hardships and the spectacular beauties encountered during the move westward. Included are stories of the sometimes fraught interactions with native Americans; descriptions of the vast herds of buffalo and the astonishing natural landscape; and the physical and psychological difficulties of making so arduous, but so necessary a trek. "Meticulously edited, with detailed (and absolutely necessary) footnotes, these volumes are a triumph of scholarly publishing," stated the Atlantic Monthly reviewer. Moulton has also edited a scholarly abridgement of the larger collection of Lewis and Clark journals. The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery provides a generous selection of journal entries, not only from Lewis and Clark themselves but from other members of the expedition. "This book will bring the expedition alive to a new generation of readers," remarked Margaret Atwater-Singer in the Library Journal. Reviewer Jay Freeman, writing in Booklist, called the abbreviated edition "a wonderful and inspiring reminder of the skill and bravery of those men" who risked their lives to chart the American frontier.

Moulton told CA: "I entered American Indian and western history, and finally historical editing, by the back door. In a graduate seminar in Oklahoma history I was assigned the topic 'Chief John Ross During the Civil War' and discovered that there was no biography of the man from which to 'glean' the necessary information. From that effort, I went on to develop a full-scale biography of Ross. In another seminar I did some work editing Will Rogers's daily telegrams and discovered the field of historical editing, flourishing in the 1960s. Having found a trove of Ross's letters and personal papers, I merged my two new interests and was able to persuade the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to fund a project to edit Ross's papers. With that work completed, I found that I could continue my editing endeavors and study of western history in a project just begun at the University of Nebraska to publish the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

"The discipline of historical editing is as old as or older than the craft of history itself, but only in recent times has it taken a separate and individual identity. Previously viewed as a step-child of the larger profession, historical editing has emerged since the 1950s as an important endeavor and field of study in its own right. Its 'renaissance' can be attributed partly to the large inflow of public and private funds and to the professionalization of its practitioners. In recent years this emerging profession has endeavored to give more attention to the training of editors, who were up to that time largely self-taught with a particular expertise in the person or institution whose papers were being edited. Historical editors, now more than ever, have much to teach documentary users about their sources, especially in terms of searching for, organizing, selecting, and transcribing those items. Moreover, editors' annotation and explication of documents has pointed writers toward new areas of research. The publication in recent years of great numbers of documents under rigorous standards of editing has enabled users to have a wider diversity of sources at their disposal and the completeness and accuracy of these works has been a boon to research. It has been my pleasure during the last decade to work as a historical editor, and I have found it to be an exciting field of research and a rewarding intellectual endeavor."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, April, 1979, review of John Ross, Cherokee Chief, p. 560.

Atlantic Monthly, January-February, 2003, review of Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, p. 169.

Booklist, March 1, 2003, Jay Freeman, review of The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery, p. 1136.

Library Journal, June 15, 1997, Stephen H. Peters, review of Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, p. 83; February 1, 2003, Margaret Atwater-Singer, review of The Lewis and Clark Journals, p. 102.