The papers of Lewis W. Rathgeber mostly relate to politics in Pennsylvania and on the national level. The papers consist mainly of newspaper clippings, with some correspondence and other items.

Size: 10 linear inches (about 1,600 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: No donation of copyright was received with this collection. Documents created by U.S. government employees in the course of their official duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in any other documents in this collection presumably belongs to the creators of the documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Philip Nicolaus (2008) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

Lewis W. Rathgeber (also known as Lewis W. Rathgeber, Jr.) was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania on March 22, 1922. He graduated from Lock Haven State Teachers College and the University of Pittsburgh, eventually earning a doctorate. Rathgeber worked as a teacher and as an official with the Veterans Administration, the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and the Pennsylvania Department of Public Instruction. He was also active as a Democratic Party official in Pennsylvania. In 1948, he served as an alternate delegate from the Fifteenth Congressional District to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

From July 1957 to August 1963, Rathgeber served as president of Mansfield State College in Mansfield, Pennsylvania. He moved to Florida in 1973 and served as director of admissions at Florida Keys Community College. Rathgeber died in Florida on December 30, 1994.

The papers of Lewis W. Rathgeber mostly relate to politics and political campaigns in Pennsylvania and on the national level. The collection also contains some information about Rathgeber’s life and career as a government official, educator, and Democratic Party activist. The collection is largely comprised of newspaper clippings, mostly from Rathgeber’s home-town newspaper, the Lock Haven Express, other Pennsylvania newspapers, and the New York Times. The papers also include correspondence, financial records, photographs, and other items.

The papers are arranged in two series, a Chronological File and a Scrapbook File. The Chronological File is predominantly made up of newspaper clippings collected by Rathgeber from 1936 until 1963, concerning such politicians as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Thomas Dewey and Adlai Stevenson. The Scrapbook File consists of the contents of scrapbooks compiled by Rathgeber. One of the scrapbooks features information on the life of Rathgeber, and the others mostly relate to Presidential campaigns, especially the 1948 contest between Truman and Dewey, and the Democratic and Republican National Conventions that were held in Philadelphia that year.

The collection also contains some of Mr. Rathgeber’s personal correspondence and some materials relating to his work for the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania.

CHRONOLOGICAL FILE, 1936-1963

• 1936-1939
• 1940
• 1945
• 1947
• 1948
• 1949
• 1950
• 1951-1953
• 1954-1956
• 1957
• 1958
• 1959
• 1960
• 1961
• 1962

• 1963
• Undated

SCRAPBOOK FILE, 1935-1958

• Scrapbook, 1935-1940
• Scrapbook, 1943-1949
• Scrapbook, 1946-1948
• Scrapbook, 1946-1949
• Scrapbook, 1958

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