Edwin A. Grosvenor

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Edwin A. Grosvenor (August 30, 1845 – September 15, 1936) was an American historian and author. He served as the head of Amherst College’s history department and led the Phi Beta Kappa society from 1907 to 1919. He was admired by writer Thomas Wentworth Higginson as “one of the most cosmopolitan of Americans.” His son Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor became the first employee and longtime editor of National Geographic Magazine.

Grosvenor was born in West Newbury, Massachusetts, to Edwin Prescott Grosvenor and Harriet Sanborn Grosvenor. He went to Brown High School in Newburyport and graduated from Amherst College in 1867, where he was class poet and salutatorian. After graduation, he worked as a tutor at Robert College in Constantinople (now Istanbul). He earned a Master of Arts from Amherst and was ordained as a minister in 1872.

In 1872 he returned to Robert College with his young wife and began teaching there. He later taught at Amherst College from 1892 to 1914 and remained professor emeritus until his death in 1936. His two-volume work Constantinople was praised as an important English-language study of the city, with The New York Times saying he was uniquely suited to the task.

Grosvenor received honorary degrees from Wabash College, Alfred University, Marietta College, and the College of William & Mary. He was elected to the American Antiquarian Society in 1896 and was active in other scholarly societies, including the Authors’ Club.

On October 23, 1873, he married Lilian Hovey Waters of Millbury, the daughter of Col. Asa Waters. The couple lived for a time in the Waters Mansion in Millbury. They had twins born on October 28, 1875: Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor and Edwin Prescott Grosvenor. Edwin A. Grosvenor passed away in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1936 at the age of 91.