Activities of the Friends

MEETINGS

Bancroft Awards Dinner

On Wednesday, April i8, approximately 300 members of our
organization and their guests met for the culminating event of the
academic year—the Bancroft Awards Dinner which was held in
the Rotunda of Low Memorial Library. Ambassador Francis
T. P. Plimpton, \'ice Chairman of our association, presided.

During the program. Vice President Lawrence H. Chamberlain
announced the winners of the prizes for the three books judged
bv the Bancroft Prize Jury to be the best published in 1961 in the
fields of American History, American Diplomacy, and Interna¬
tional Relations of the United States: The Transformation of the
School by Lawrence A. Cremin, Charles Francis Adams by Martin
Duberman, and To the Farewell Address by Felix Gilbert. He
presented a $4,000 check to each of the authors, who responded
with short addresses. Ambassador Plimpton presented certificates
to Mr. Harding LeMay of Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated, to Mr.
Craig l^'ylie of Houghton Mifflin Company, and to Mr. Herbert S.
Bailey, Jr., Director of Princeton University Press, the publishers,
respectively, of the three award-winning books. The principal
speaker for the occasion was Dr. Richard B. Morris, Gouverneur
Morris Professor of History at Columbia University and Director
of the John Jay Papers project, who took as his subject "John
Jay Abroad".

The Bancroft Awards Dinner Committee was made up of Mrs.
Francis Henry Lenygon, Chairman, and Mrs. Arthur C. Holden.

The prizes, which are provided by funds from the Bancroft
Foundation, are among the richest available to historians. The
Friends take pleasure in helping to enlarge public knowledge of
their importance.

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