O'DANIEL, VICTOR FRANCIS

Educator, historian; b. Cecilville, Ky., Feb. 15, 1868;d. Washington, D.C., June 12, 1960. His parents, Richard Jefferson and Sarah Ann (Hamilton) O'Daniel, sent him to public and parochial schools near Cecilville. He then studied at St. Rose Priory, Springfield, Ky., where he entered the Order of Preachers on March 21, 1886, and at St. Joseph's Priory, Somerset, Ohio. After ordination on June 16, 1891, at Columbus, Ohio, he took further studies in theology (1893–95) at the Dominican house of studies at Louvain, Belgium, and received the lectorate in theology. Upon returning to the United States, he was professor of theology at St. Rose's and St. Joseph's priories (1895–1901), and at the Dominican houses of study in Benicia, Calif. (1901–06) and Washington, D.C. (1906–13). He held the office of novice master for various periods during his teaching career.

As first archivist of St. Joseph's province, a post he held from 1907 to 1960, O'Daniel organized the Dominican archives in Washington, assembling a valuable collection of materials, much of which would otherwise have been lost. In 1909, when the order awarded him a master's degree in theology, he did extensive research in Europe, especially in the Dominican archives in Rome. He devoted himself exclusively to historical work after 1913. In 1915, with Peter guilday, he was cofounder of the Catholic Historical Review and was an associate editor from 1921 to 1927. In addition to the historical studies which he wrote for this journal, O'Daniel's works include The Dominican Province of St. Joseph: Historical-Biographical Studies (1930), The Dominicans in Early Florida (1942), and biographies of such Dominicans as Edward D. Fenwick, Charles H. McKenna, and Richard Pius Miles.

Bibliography: w. romig, ed., The Book of Catholic Authors 4th ser. (Grosse Pointe, Mich. 1947). "V. F. O'Daniel," Dominicana 26 (1941) 111–112, 237–243; 45 (1960) 283–284.

[w. a. hinnebusch]