Frederic A. Godcharles

Frederic Antes Godcharles (June 3, 1872 – December 30, 1944) was a Pennsylvania politician, historian and author, who served as soldier and as director of the State Library of Pennsylvania and State Museum of Pennsylvania.

Personal life Godcharles was born on June 3, 1872, in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, the first of five children of Elizabeth (born Burkenbine) and Charles Aiken Godcharles. His four younger siblings were Mary, Charles, Walter, and Elizabeth (the last three were born in Milton, Pennsylvania). He married Mary Walls Barber (1880–1952) in Washington, D.C., on June 15, 1904. They had no children. Godcharles was an avid trap shooter and placed fourth in a professional-amateur shoot. He and his wife moved to Maryland after his term as Director of the Pennsylvania State Library and Museum, and died in Leonardtown there after a brief illness, aged 72. and rose to the rank of captain.

Godcharles was a member of the Republican Party and served in both houses of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Godcharles represented Northumberland County in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1901 and 1902, and represented Union County in the Pennsylvania State Senate from 1905 to 1908. Other sources differ as to his service in the General Assembly: his obituary in The New York Times said he served in the "General Assembly in 1900 and the Pennsylvania Senate from 1904 to 1908", while The Political Graveyard says he was a member of the "Pennsylvania state senate, 1905-08" and a member of the Pennsylvania delegation to the 1908 Republican National Convention,

In 1920 Godcharles was living in Milton, Pennsylvania working as the editor of a weekly newspaper. and was mentioned as a probable nominee for the same office in 1930.

State librarian and museum director Godcharles served as Pennsylvania State Librarian and Director of the State Museum of Pennsylvania from 1927 to 1931. He had numerous duties outside the state library and museum. For example, in 1928 Godcharles presided at the dedication of a new museum at the birthplace of Henry Clay Frick in Scottdale, Pennsylvania. He served as the official representative for Pennsylvania Governor John S. Fisher and featured speaker at a Flag Day parade and ceremony in New York City in 1929. In 1930 Godcharles was a founding member of the "Society for Pennsylvania Archeology" (SPA) and was elected to its executive board.

Author Godcharles was the author of many works on Pennsylvania history and was awarded a D. Litt. His next book grew out of series of newspaper columns he wrote on Pennsylvania history, the self-published Daily Stories of Pennsylvania: Prepared for Publication in the Leading Daily Newspapers of the State (1924). The New York Times review noted it had "a story for each day of the year", many of them originally "widely published in Pennsylvania newspapers on the anniversary of the event or person concerned", and that "Mr. Godcharles succeeds admirably in choosing and bringing out essential facts and relating it all in a readable style."

In 1933 his five-volume Pennsylvania: Political, Governmental, Military and Civil was published, with volumes on Government (I), Political (II), Military (III), Physical (IV), and Biographical (V) history. In 1944 the four-volume Chronicles of Central Pennsylvania was published. He was an editor of an index to the thirty-two volume Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania Biography.