Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1848
Francis Russell was a Dorchester native who became a published historian. Here is his obituary published in the NY Times, March 22, 1989 [Photo is courtesy of Bowdoin College Archives, Brunswick, Maine].
Francis Russell, 79, a Historian and a Harding Biographer, Dies
By Albin Krebs
Francis Russell, a historian and prolific writer whose publication in 1968 of a biography of Warren G. Harding became a cause celebre when relatives of the former President succeeded in preventing Mr. Russell from printing some of Harding’s love letters, died of a heart attack yesterday in Falmouth (Mass.) Hospital, on Cape Cod. He was 79 years old and lived in Sandwich, Mass.
In addition to the controversy over the Harding biography, ”The Shadow of Blooming Grove,” Mr. Russell was embroiled over a quarter of a century in arguments with other historians over his contention that he had solved the Sacco-Vanzetti case. His first book about the case, ”Tragedy in Dedham,” was published in 1962.
In 1986 he summed up his findings in another book called ”Sacco & Vanzetti: The Case Resolved.” He wrote that of the two anarchists involved in a holdup in Braintree, Mass., in which two men were murdered, only Nicola Sacco was guilty and Bartholomew Vanzetti was innocent.
Francis Russell was born in Boston on Jan. 12, 1910. He was a graduate of Bowdoin College and received a master’s degree from Harvard in 1937.
Mr. Russell wrote articles for several magazines in the United States and abroad, before joining the Canadian Army in 1941. He was discharged as a captain in 1946 and published his first book, ”Three Studies in 20th Century Obscurity,” in 1954.
Over the years, Mr. Russell turned out a steady string of books, marked by careful historical research combined with a distinctive and entertaining narrative style. These volumes included ”The American Heritage Book of the Pioneer” (1961), ”Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill” (1963), ”The Making of the Nation” (1968), ”Forty Years Ago” (1970), ”A City in Terror” (1975), ”The President Makers from Mark Hanna to Joseph P. Kennedy” (1976), ”The Secret War” (1981) and ”The Knave of Boston” (1987).
In the early 1960’s, when Mr. Russell was living in Ohio and working on a magazine article and a biography of Harding, he was given access to more than 250 letters written by Harding to Carrie Phillips, the wife of James Phillips, a department store owner in Marion, Ohio.
He realized upon reading the letters, many of them ardent, that they gave conclusive proof that Harding had affairs with not one, but two married women while he was President. Many years before, Nan Britton had published a book maintaining she had been Harding’s mistress from 1916 to 1922 and had borne him a son.
Mr. Russell used the letters in his magazine article and in his Harding biography, ”The Shadow of Blooming Grove,” a reference to Harding’s birthplace in Ohio.
In 1964 Dr. George T. Harding 3d, a nephew of the deceased President, sued, contending that portions of the letters already published had embarrassed Mr. Harding’s descendants and would continue to do so. He won a court order forbidding Mr. Russell to use the letters, and when the book was published in 1968, blank spaces appeared in portions intended to be quotes from the letters.
Mr. Russell is survived by his wife, the former Rosalind Lawson, and by a daughter from a previous marriage, Sara Russell, of Hyde Park, Mass. A funeral service is to be held tomorrow at 11 A.M. at All Saints Church in Dorchester, Mass.
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