H. Morse Stephens

H. Morse Stephens (October 3, 1857 – April 16, 1919) was an American historian and professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley who helped to purchase the Bancroft Library, and who worked to build archives of California history, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and World War I. Henry Morse Stephens was born on October 3, 1857, in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Berkeley campus is named for him, as was the Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, chartered by the Grand Lodge of F. & A. Masons of California and Hawaii: Henry Morse Stephens #541, for which membership was open only to UC administrators, alumni, faculty and students.

[7] As a member of this committee, he worked until his death to gather as many accounts and as much historical material as he could that was related to the earthquake.

Morse collected over 800 individual accounts of the earthquake and fire as well as numerous newspaper articles, photographs, and other archival material.

Unfortunately, after his death, the archive was never incorporated into the Bancroft library collection, as he had intended, and was lost in the 1920s, perhaps in a 1923 Berkeley fire.