Creator: Sheats, W. N. (William Nicholas), 1851-1922.
Collection number: 2999
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Abstract: Correspondence, 1911-1922, of William N. Sheats, Florida superintendent of public instruction, 1893-1905 and 1913-1922, with Florida politicians, educators, campaign workers, personal friends, and others, concerned mainly with Sheats’s successful campaigns for election as state superintendent of public instruction in 1912, 1916, and 1920. Campaign issues were the textbook system, records of the candidates, personalities involved, and the hiring of native Florida teachers, with the race issue and anti-Catholicism injected at intervals. Other papers concern the superintendent’s office, Sheats’s family, educational bills before the legislature, job appointments, and the Florida parole board. Items before 1911 are scant. Volumes include notebooks and personal accounts, 1872- 1875; scrapbooks, 1903-1922; and a copy of O. L. Parker’s master’s thesis, “William N. Sheats, Florida Educator” (University of Florida, 1949).
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Papers of Sheats, Florida superintendent of education, documenting race issues in Florida politics, 1912-1920.