Richard van Wyck Buel Jr.

Richard Van Wyck Buel Jr. died in Essex, CT on November 22, 2023. He was a scholar of American History who spent his career at Wesleyan University. He was born on July 22, 1933 in Morristown, New Jersey, the second child and only son of Richard Van Wyck Buel and Frances Worthington Thompson Buel. He attended Groton School, Amherst College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with the class of 1955, and Harvard University, where he earned a doctorate in history in 1962. For the next forty years he taught American History at Wesleyan University and published six books.

His first books were Securing the Revolution and Dear Liberty. He wrote The Way of Duty with his wife Joy Day Buel, which was a Book of the Month Club dividend. An episode of the book was turned into the film “Mary Silliman’s War,” for which he served as the principal historical advisor, released on national cable in 1994. Next he wrote In Irons, the only macroeconomic history of the American Revolution. Afterwards came America on the Brink, a History Book Club dividend. His final book was Joel Barlow, a biography a revolutionary ideologue in Europe who contributed to the French Revolution, written with the support of a fellowship from the Andrew J. Mellon Foundation. He assembled two editions of The Historical Dictionary of the Early American Republic, the second edition in collaboration with Jeffers Lenox, and edited three other books for the Acorn Club: Connecticut Observed, Original Discontents and The Peopling of New Connecticut. At Wesleyan, he chaired the History Department from 1977-1980 and for 22 years he served as associate editor of History and Theory. He twice received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. He retired in 2002 but maintained an office at Wesleyan for the next decade. In retirement, he taught an American Intellectual History course in Wesleyan Prison Education Program.

He was president of the New England Historical Association and served on the Connecticut Humanities Council and on the Connecticut Historical Commission. After the state legislature reorganized the Historical Commission in 2003, he joined the newly constituted Connecticut Historical Preservation Council. For many years, he also was active as a member of the Connecticut Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History, serving as its president for a term.

In his later years, he became involved with the capital campaign that financed the expansion of the Essex Library then led the effort to restore the Library’s endowment after the 2008 recession. In addition to a four-year term on the Library’s Board, he was a member of two local music boards, Chestnut Hill Concerts and Musical Masterworks, and was president of the Essex Meadows Foundation. An avid dinghy racer, for many years he raced a Blue Jay at the Pettipaug Yacht Club, where he served as commodore in 1990-1991. In 2005 he joined the Essex Yacht Club, and for more than a decade raced in its fleet of Ideal 18s. He also served as a volunteer for Middlesex Hospice.

He married Joy Day on June 6, 1964. After Joy died in 1987, he married Marilyn Ellman in 1992, who predeceased him in 2014. He is survived by his daughter, Margaret, her husband John Coppens and two granddaughters, Alexandra Joy Callahan and Riley Elizabeth Callahan; his step-daughter, Elizabeth Frankel, her husband Donald T. Rave III, and their son, Haskel Patrick Rave; and the cherished companion of his last years, Kay Knight Clarke.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Essex Meadows Scholarship

Foundation at 30 Bokum Road, Essex, CT 06426. His memorial service will be held

at First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, January 15th, 2024 at 11 AM. All who

would like to celebrate Dick’s life are welcome.