Bernard Knollenberg

Distinguished Alumni Bernhard W. Knollenberg, Class of 1908

Born November 26, 1892, on South Fourth Street, Richmond Indiana and was the grandson of George H. Knollenburg, (local store owner).

Knollenberg graduated from Richmond High School in 1908. Bernard W. Knollenburg attended Earlham College where he got his A. B. in English in 1912. He then attended Harvard where he received his A. M. degree in 1914 and an LL.D. in 1916. He passed the bar in Hawaii and practiced law until the US entered World War I. He served as a naval intelligence special assistant for the Ninth Naval District.

He married in 1920. His wife died and then he married Mary Lightfoot Tarleton in 1934. He was the father of Fred and George H. Knollenberg. After graduating from Yale in 1938 with an A.M. degree,  he practiced law in Hawaii, Indiana, Massachusetts, and New York, retiring in 1938.

Knollenberg became a construction expert for the U.S. Treasury Department in 1939. He returned to Earlham and got his second law degree in 1944. For six years, he served as Yale’s librarian, expanding their collection of books.

He is credited with fifty-four works and 154 publications and was known as an authority on the Revolutionary War.  His works are still in print with his two best known being, Origins of the American Revolution 1759-1766, which was printed in forty-seven editions, and Growth of the American Revolution 1766-1775, printed in twelve editions. He also penned the following: George Washington, The Virginia Period, 1732-1775, Washington and the Revolution, a Reappraisal: Gates, Conway, and the Continental Congress, Pioneer Sketches of the Upper Whitewater Valley, Quaker Stronghold of the West, George Washington’s Newburg Address, Franklin, Jonathan Williams, and William Pitt– a letter of January 21, 1775, John Adams, Knox, and Washington, and Did Samuel Adams Provoke the Boston Tea Party and the Clash at Lexington?

Bernhard W. Knollenberg died July 6, 1973, in Old Lyme, Connecticut. He was selected as a Distinguished Alumni for Richmond High School in 1987. (Information supplied by Honors English Student, Thomas Wuertemberger, 2008, Class of 2009)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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