Randall, Ruth Painter

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RANDALL, Ruth Painter

Born 1 November 1892, Salem, Virginia; died 22 January 1971, Urbana, Illinois

Daughter of Franklin V. and Laura Shickel Painter; married James G. Randall, 1917

Ruth Painter Randall, whose father wrote books on American and English literature, grew up in an academic atmosphere. She received a B.A. from Roanoke College, Virginia, in 1913, and an M.A. from Indiana University in 1914. After marrying a well-known Lincoln historian, Randall began writing. She shared her husband's research and collaborated with him on two chapters of his monumental biography of Lincoln. Although she was a Southerner, her mature life was devoted to the study of Lincoln.

Just as this work caused historians to reevaluate Lincoln's presidency, Randall's Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage (1953) altered the view of Mary Todd Lincoln shaped by many detractors. This substantial work of historical research is scrupulous in its accuracy and original in presenting new materials. The result is a balanced judgement of the Lincolns' personalities and their private life.

After this first biography, Randall avoided footnotes but always explained that her studies had been fully documented and provided long bibliographies. She continued her exploration of the family life of the Lincolns in Lincoln's Sons (1956), which both follows the lives of Lincoln's heirs and considers the president's role as a father, and in The Courtship of Mr. Lincoln (1957). Randall also wrote articles about Lincoln in American Heritage, Saturday Review, and the New York Times Magazine, and she contributed radio and television sketches for the American Story series and the Lincoln Story series. Her study of the Lincoln circle was extended with a biography of Colonel Elmer Elsworth (1960).

Several appealing books for children occupied Randall's last years. With Lincoln's Animal Friends (1958), Randall reached an audience of young readers aged nine to 12. I, Mary (1959) and Lincoln's Sons (1956), both feature Mary Todd Lincoln.

As a writer of children's literature, Randall continued to choose as subjects women whose lives had been exciting and difficult, such as the daughter of the politician Thomas Hart Benton (I, Jessie, 1963) and the wife of General George Armstrong Custer (I, Elizabeth, 1966). I, Ruth: Autobiography of a Marriage (1968) reiterates the traditional virtues of American family life and the wife's supporting role; the sensibility is pre-World War I.

Randall wrote with a clear sense of purpose. Clarity of style, meticulous attention to details, evocative descriptions of the historical moments and places, and sensitivity to emotions make her history very readable. She not only reached specialist historians but had a wide public audience as well.