Harriet Chappell Owsley

Harriet Chappell Owsley (July 26, 1901 – July 2, 1999) was an American historian and archivist who studied the U.S. South region. She was curator of manuscripts at the Tennessee State Library and Archives and was co-editor of the first volume of The Papers of Andrew Jackson.

Biography

Born in Waco, Texas, she studied at Birmingham-Southern College and George Peabody College for Teachers. After she married historian Frank Owsley, the family lived on the campus of Vanderbilt University from 1920 to 1949.

The couple later lived and worked in Alabama and England. In 1963 she and a team of assistants started processing the manuscript collection at the Tennessee State Library. She was one of the co-editors of the first volume of the collected letters of U.S. president Andrew Jackson. Robert V. Remini made a point to credit her in the introduction to his Essays about Andrew Jackson: "Since I first met her in the manuscript room of the Tennessee Historical Library, she has assisted me in countless ways to find, decipher, transcribe, and edit Jackson manuscripts. She has read drafts of several of my books and offered criticisms and advice based on her long experience and expert knowledge of Tennessee history. She assisted her late husband in his research and writing, and I know from my own personal experience how much she must have contributed to the excellence of his distinguished monographs."

In 1991, she published a memoir/biography of her late husband.

Harriet Chappell Owsley died in Nashville in 1999.

Selected works