Boyd Murphree
As the Political Archivist, my responsibilities include curating the P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History’s political manuscript collections, consulting with researchers and students in the use of the collections, working with potential donors to acquire new collections, assisting UF faculty with the use of political collections in their classes, reaching out to the local community about our collections, and creating presentations and publications focused on political papers.
My background in Florida political history began with my dissertation, a comparative study of two Civil War governors and their states during the war: Florida and Georgia. During 1998–2012, I was an archivist with the State Archives of Florida in Tallahassee, where I assisted researchers using the archives’ large collection of Florida gubernatorial papers. In 2020, the University Press of Florida published The Governors of Florida, a history of Florida’s governors from 1821 to 2019, which I co-edited with Robert A. Taylor. The book won the 2020 Florida Book Award’s Philip and Dana Zimmerman Gold Medal Prize for Florida Non-Fiction. I look forward to assisting you with your research and educational work in Florida Political Papers.