Willson H. Coates papers

Willson H. Coates (1899-1976) was one of six children born to Canadian missionaries living in Japan. He graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1920, earned his masters as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1926. He arrived at the University of Rochester in 1925 as an instructor in the History Department and was promoted to associate professor in 1935, and then to full professor in 1947. In 1965 he was named professor emeritus.

Throughout his thirty-one years here, Professor Coates was widely regarded as an expert in modern British history. He was co-founder and editor of Journal of British Studies and author of many books, including The Journal of Sir Edmonds D'Ewes, The Emergence of Liberal Humanism, and The Ordeal of Liberal Humanism. He was a member of numerous professional organizations and served as an educational consultant for the United States government at Lucknow University in India. Coates also did brief terms as a visiting professor at Sarah Lawrence and Trinity Colleges.

Professor Coates's work extended beyond the classroom as well. From 1944 to 1946 he was a panel member for the National War Labor Board, which arbitrated disputes between unions and employers to ensure wartime productivity. His reputation in the Rochester community earned him a position on the Police Advisory Board in 1963, which he chaired from 1965 to 1970. The purpose of the P.A.B. was to investigate claims of police brutality.

Willson Coates was married to award-winning artist Hilda Altschule. At the time of his death in 1976 he was working on a book about his parents' missionary work as well as additional unpublished diaries of D'Ewes and other seventeenth-century Parliamentarians.