George Herbert Ryden papers

George Herbert Ryden was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1884. He graduated from Augustana College in 1909. Ryden went on to earn his master’s and doctorate, and taught at Bethany and Dartmouth Colleges. During the Russian revolutions, he was appointed as the commissioner of the American Red Cross efforts in southern Russia, and helped some of the royal family to safety. When he returned to the United States, Ryden became a professor of history at the University of Delaware. He would later become head of the history and social sciences department. Ryden also became the Delaware state archivist. He died in 1941, and his family bequeathed half of his prodigious library to the Denkmann Memorial Library. The materials in this collection include a large amount of correspondence, biographical information, materials about the history of Delaware, speeches, articles, and research materials about Samoa.