Edward Potts Cheyney was one of a small group of American academicians who developed professional standards in historical scholarship and teaching in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While his main influence was perhaps as a teacher at his beloved University of Pennsylvania, he also found time to be an active leader in the development of the American Historical Association. He was elected the president of that organization in 1923 and served as the editor of the American Historical Review from 1912 to 1920. He was also a prolific author of books, articles, and other works on English history and on the history of early modern Europe.

Cheyney was born in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. His father, Waldron J. Cheyney, was of English ancestry, an Episcopalian, and a businessman with mining and chemical interests. His mother, Fannie Potts Cheyney, was a member of the Society of Friends who traced her ancestry back...