During his long tenure in Minnesota he fought hard for the state's history, helping organize county historical societies, founding a quarterly periodical, and moving the Historical Society from the basement of the State Capitol to its own building.

[2] In 1931, Buck was appointed professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, and when the U. S. National Archives were established in 1935 he was tapped to be Assistant Director, then in 1941 the second Archivist of the United States.

[4] As might be expected from such a career, Buck's gifts lay in organization, with a particular talent for bibliography; he became an international authority in archival economy.

thesis, Harvard, 1911), which at his death was still considered the classic treatment of the subject; The Agrarian Crusade (1919); and, with his wife Elizabeth Hawthorne Buck, The Planting of Civilization in Western Pennsylvania (1939).

He had been in poor health the last few years of his life, and he died soon after a fall in which he broke his hip, in Washington, D.C.[6]