Education In Transition: The History of Northern Illinois University Correspondence: G, 1966-1969

INTRODUCTION The Earl W. Hayter Papers were donated to the Northern Illinois University Archives in several accessions beginning in 1969.  Literary rights in all materials which are not under copyright are dedicated to the public.  There are no restrictions on access to the collection. SCOPE AND CONTENT The Hayter Papers are organized in four series: personal papers, correspondence, subject files, and research and publications.  Among the personal papers there are many family photographs, a genealogy, several oral history interviews, social correspondence, and a four hundred-page autobiography in typescript.  Professor Hayter maintained a broad correspondence with colleagues--both on campus and in the historical profession nation-wide over the forty years he was active in teaching, research, and publication.  Both of his major publications, The Troubled Farmer and Education in Transition, are well documented in the collection [copies of these two books are located in UA 33, Box 2].  A copy of every article published may also be found in the last series. The only significant gap in the papers relates to Professor Hayter's classroom teaching.  There are a few student research papers found in this collection, but little in the area of lectures, syllabi, examinations, and class rolls.  Overall this is an unusually balanced and strong collection which documents nearly a half-century of work in academic history.  The papers are especially important to documenting the history of Northern Illinois University. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Earl Wiley Hayter was born February 25, 1901 near Ridgeway, Ohio.  In 1906 his family migrated to the plains of North Dakota to begin farming.  He attended one-room elementary schools near Bartlett and a high school in Lakota.  In 1919 Hayter became a telegrapher for the Burlington Railroad at various depots across Montana and Wyoming. In 1922 Hayter resumed his education at Grand Island College in Nebraska and then moved on to the University of Nebraska where he completed a baccalaureate degree.  On June 3, 1927 he married Beulah Dale Overman and commenced three years of public school teaching back in North Dakota near Bartlett.  As the Great Depression set in Hayter went to Grand Forks to pursue graduate work in history and, after completion of an M.A., he moved on to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois for his doctoral program. After completing his doctoral degree in 1934 Hayter accepted a teaching position at McKendree College in southern Illinois.  Two years later Dean Romeo Zulauf offered Hayter a one-year, temporary appointment at Northern Illinois State Teachers College.  Following his retirement from Northern thirty-three years later, President Rhoten Smith named Hayter University Historian and commissioned him to write the official history of the University.  Education in Transition: The History of Northern Illinois University, was published in 1974, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the institution.  Professor Hayter died June 8, 1994 at the age of 93.