Harold Syrett

Harold Coffin Syrett (October 22, 1913-July 29, 1984) was an American executive editor of The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, and the fourth President of Brooklyn College.

Biography

Syrett was born on President Street in Brooklyn, New York, to Frank H. and Dorothy (Provost) Syrett. He majored in economics at Wesleyan University (Bachelor of Arts, 1935), where he was catcher on the baseball team, and studied at Columbia University (Master of Arts, 1938; Doctor of Philosophy, 1944).

For over 20 years beginning in 1955 Syrett was the Executive Editor of The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 19,000 documents, published by the Columbia University Press in 26 volumes from 1961 to 1979.

He was a professor of American History in Columbia University's history department from 1941 to 1961. Syrett was Dean of the faculty at Queens College from 1962 to 1965 (as well as acting president in 1964). He was Vice Chancellor of the State University of New York from 1966 to 1967.

Syrett was President of Brooklyn College for two years, from 1967-69. He resigned due to ill health.

He taught history at the City University of New York from 1969-1979, when he retired.

Syrett was the author of The City of Brooklyn, 1865-1898: a political history (1944), Interview in Weehawken: the Burr-Hamilton duel, as told in the original documents (1960), American Historical Documents (1962), Modern Hungarian Poetry (1977), and Andrew Jackson: His Contribution to the American Tradition. He co-authored A History of the American People (1952). He also edited The Gentleman and the Tiger (1956), the memoirs of George B. McClellan Jr., the Union Army American Civil War general.

He lived in Craryville, New York. Syrett died of hepatitis, the result of a blood transfusion during a hip operation, at the age of 70 years old on July 29, 1984, at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, New York.