Obituary: John Jay Tepaske (1929–2007)

Professor John Jay TePaske, one of the leading historians of colonial Spanish America, died December 1, 2007. He was 77 and had retired in 1988 after a long and productive career at Duke University. John is survived by his wife Neomi, his daughters Susan TePaske-King and Maranna TePaske Daly, three grandchildren, and his brother Robert.

John was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on December 8, 1929, the son of Leo TePaske and Leona Kloote TePaske, and the grandson of a Dutch immigrant blacksmith, Evert TePaske. Of Evert’s eleven children, Leo, the next to youngest, became an engineer, a vocation that John Jay initially intended to pursue when he enrolled at Michigan State University. Eventually, however, he was drawn to the study of history, and a course with Harold Fields on Latin American History convinced him to concentrate on the Spanish Empire. He was accepted for graduate study at Harvard and Duke. The latter’s offer of financial assistance convinced the young scholar to enroll there to study with Professor John Tate Lanning. Financial aid was crucial because John Jay had met Neomi Gray at a college party and in romantic fervor had proposed marriage to her, contingent upon his receiving funding from one of the schools.

The Duke scholarship thus enabled the practical young student to satisfy both his romantic and academic yearnings. Neomi provided additional financial support by teaching second grade in a local elementary school, while John studied with Lanning. He completed his M.A. in 1953 with a thesis (“The Life of Appleton Oak-smith: Its Latin American Aspects”) that examined the Filibusterer War of nineteenth-century Nicaragua. At that point the Korean War disrupted John’s studies: likely to be drafted, he enlisted for a two-year stint in the U.S. Army (1953–1955). Corporal TePaske spent much of his term of service teaching English on a military base in Missouri and then returned to Duke to work on his doctorate. He taught for a year at Memphis State University, while finishing his dissertation (later published as The Governorship of Spanish Florida, 1700–1763 [1964]).

Receiving his Ph.D. in 1959, he took a position at Ohio State University. He remained there for eight years and was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 1964. A Ford Foundation Fellowship in 1962–1963 permitted him to do post-doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became immersed in colonial financial history, an interest that consumed much, but not all, of his scholarly energy for more than forty years. He also established lasting friendships with Woodrow Borah, Dauril Alden, and other historians. That period also brought invitations to teach as a visiting professor at Western Reserve University (1964), University of Washington (1965), and the University of Texas, Austin (1967).

In 1967 John returned to Duke University to join the faculty there. Promoted to professor in 1969, he established a distinguished record of teaching, scholarship, and service to his discipline. In 1969 he received Duke’s Distinguished Teaching Award. John was the sole editor of eight volumes, co-editor of another seven, and also authored 20 book chapters and 14 scholarly articles. Over his career he garnered prestigious fellowships, including grants from the Tinker Foundation (1975–77), the National Endowment for the Humanities (1976), the Social Science Research Council (1986), the Bank of Spain (1986), and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1995). At the same time, he served his discipline diligently. He wrote countless book reviews, evaluated many book and article manuscripts, chaired the Conference on Latin American History (1980–81), was vice-president of the American Historical Association’s Professional Division (1986–89), and served on the editorial boards of the Anuario de Estudios Americanos, The Americas, and the Hispanic American Historical Review.

Perhaps given his early interest in engineering, it was not surprising that John advocated the use of quantitative methods in historical research. Much of his scholarship focused on the colonial treasury system and what it revealed about the economy of the Spanish Empire. He and Herbert Klein organized a team of researchers that compiled the extant...