John Edwin Pomfret

John Edwin Pomfret (September 21, 1898 – November 26, 1981) was the director of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery from 1951 to his retirement in 1966. He was the twentieth president of the College of William & Mary, serving from 1942 to 1951. There he collaborated with Colonial Williamsburg in founding the Institute of Early American History and Culture. Pomfret resigned in 1951 in the wake of a grade changing scandal involving the college's football team. The college's board of visitors, fractured and fractious, censured Pomfret, although he had no knowledge of the misconduct when it was occurring. A number of board members wanted bigtime football. Pomfret wanted to deemphasize football. He had been planning to resign to go to the Huntington. During the scandal, he told the Huntington board that he would withdraw his acceptance of its offer. The Huntington, after investigating the situation at William & Mary, told him to come ahead. Before taking up his duties at William & Mary, he was a dean at Vanderbilt and an associate professor of history at Princeton. A distinguished scholar, he was the author of a number of books. His papers from his time as president can be found at the Special Collections Research Center at the College of William and Mary. A full account of his career and an assessment of his personality by Allan Nevins will be found in Pomfret's festschrift, The Reinterpretation of Early American History, edited by Ray Allen Billington (The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, 1966).