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A history lesson for historian Archivist refutes claims of prize-winning author
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
A history lesson for historian Archivist refutes claims of prize-winning authorSam McManis Saturday, March 2, 2002
Martinez -- Don't let her lilting voice and prim, schoolmarmish demeanor fool you. You mess with Betty Maffei, you dis her volunteer staff at Contra Costa Historical Society, you have the temerity to cast aspersions on their filing acumen, and you're in for a world of hurt, my friend. Since 1984, Betty has toiled in happy and orderly obscurity, cataloging criminal and civil court records, probate documents and lovingly preserving sepia photographs and misty watercolored memories of the way we were. She is nothing if not thorough. Ask Betty about the first settler in Concord, and she'll not only tell you his name but his horses' breeding histories and what songs the traveling party sang round the campfire on the wagon trip. But now this unassuming archivist finds herself part of a roiling academic debate that has made national headlines and may ruin the career of a hotshot history professor whose controversial book on pre-Civil War gun ownership won a major literary award in 2001. Author Michael Bellesiles claims he found voluminous gun-ownership records at the Contra Costa History Center, but Maffei blew the whistle and exposed him as yet another historian who fudges on the truth. "It's gotten really strange," Maffei said. "This is not the type of publicity we seek." Nor, doubtless, is it what Bellesiles, Emory University historian and 2001 Bancroft Prize-winning author of "The Arming of America: The Origins of the National Gun Culture," sought. Bellesiles (Bell-EEL), whose statistic-saturated book posited that no American "gun culture" existed before the 1850s, barely had time to bask in his laudatory reviews -- quoth the revered New York Review of Books: "Bellesiles will have done us all a service if his book reduces the credibility of the fanatics who endow the Founding Fathers with posthumous membership in what has become a cult of the gun" -- before jealous academic snipers took aim. It's open season on historians these days, what with Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin fending off plagiarism charges and the distinguished Joseph Ellis charged with lying about his personal history. Now Bellesiles' so- called smoking-gun stat -- that, by 1790, only 14.7 percent of American men owned guns and that ownership only rose to 32 percent by the late 1850s -- is being called fabricated. He was able to duck early charges that he invented footnotes and distorted data from back east. He was even able to slough off misquoting the Militia Act of 1792 without losing face or tenure. But then Bellesiles ran up against Contra Costa's beacon of truth and reliability, Betty Maffei. The Bay Area's entry into this academic maelstrom came in September, when Northwestern University's James Lindgren checked probate records Bellesiles cited from San Francisco Superior Court from 1849-50 and 1858-59. The problem: All of the pre-1860 probate records were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. Gee, you may have heard of that natural disaster, Mr. Historian? After Lindgren leaked his findings to the Boston Globe in September, Bellesiles responded on Emory's Web site: "I was not hallucinating when I read the San Francisco probate files. They are housed in the California History Center." Yeah, that's the ticket, Mike! And Bellesiles added that the Center recently moved from Pleasant Hill to Martinez and "it doesn't have a Web site." Well, maybe that's because there's no such entity as the California History Center. Told that, Bellesiles changed his story again, saying he viewed San Francisco's records at the Contra Costa Historical Society in 1993. Reporters and academic debunkers then flooded Maffei's office with phone calls. She told them, in her officious manner, that (a) her repository keeps only Contra Costa probate records, not San Francisco's; (b) she pored over every log all visitors must sign from 1993 to 2000 and there was no record of Bellesiles; and (c) she would have remembered such a prominent scholar visiting her humble alcove. Bellesiles, responding again on Emory's Web site, dissed Maffei's crew big time, saying "the staff appeared unaware they had probate materials in their collection." Maffei was steamed but last month allowed Bellesiles access to all her probate records, on which bequests of guns often are listed. Bellesiles made 26 copies of probate records that day, but Maffei thought it strange that he "failed to copy the verso where the identifiers for the court cases are." Bellesiles sent those copies to reporters as proof of his "San Francisco probate data." Earlier this month, reporters faxed copies of the records back to Maffei to double-check. She confirmed that all 26 records were from Contra Costa estates involving Contra Costa residents, signed by Contra Costa judges. No San Francisco connection. "I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt," Maffei said, "but facts are facts." Maffei posted a detailed rebuttal on the historical society's Web site (yes, it does have one, www.cocohistory.com). Bellesiles' department chair at Emory, James Melton, read the posting and sent Maffei an apology for Bellesiles' behavior. On Feb. 13, Emory Dean Robert A. Paul announced that the university has undertaken an investigation into Bellesiles' scholarship, saying "questions remain about his research." The investigation could cost Bellesiles his tenure and his Bancroft Prize. But Maffei already feels vindicated. "Our reputation wasn't at stake -- his was," Maffei said. "Maybe he thought no one would check a small history center. But he was just a rude young man." You go, Betty. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/02/MN13172.DTL