October 2, 1940 – August 26, 2024

Kenneth A. Lockridge, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Montana, passed away peacefully on August 26, 2024, in Visby, Sweden. Born in Los Angeles on October 2, 1940, the only son of Jack Kenneth Lockridge and Mildred Dorothy Luth Lockridge, Ken came to Yale from Whittier High School having developed already a strong interest in history.

Brilliant and erudite, Ken had a preference for solitude. With his focus on his Directed Studies work he was a Ranking Scholar through the Spring of 1961, and he won the History Prize in 1960. Though Ken roomed alone in Davenport the last two years, he could be outgoing when he was comfortable with his interlocutors. He was very engaged and starred in the Davenport Players productions, and served as their President senior year.

Ken’s Davenport neighbor for the last two years, Joe Lambert, reports that he and Ken had a very friendly relationship which was tinged with academic competitiveness though they were in very different fields. He notes that “Ken was the only person I knew at Yale who wrote out the final draft of his papers longhand. Preliminary drafts were in his head. He had artistic calligraphy to an extreme, with modulation of letter thickness and flourishes that made the final product look like something from the 18th century.” Larry Price, who was one of Ken’s three Directed Studies roommates Sophomore year, adds that “a graduate student across the street would type up his work.”

With a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in hand, Ken enrolled in Princeton University’s history department. In Joe’s words “Ken’s Ph.D thesis was breathtakingly original, but simple in concept. He selected a single early New England town for his topic, Dedham, MA, because they had wondrously complete records. He used a quantitative approach to measure many aspects of life in this town’s first one hundred years, using the birth, marriage, and death records. His thesis became a seminal book in 1970, A New England Town: The First Hundred Years… I bought the book and must say it was a great read for a scientist, even.” As noted in his obituary in the Missoulan, “it became a seminal text of the ‘new social history,’ the transformative move among historians to study the everyday lives of ordinary people.”

Prior to beginning his graduate studies at Princeton he and Lucile Procter (Smith College) wed. The marriage lasted less than a year. Upon completion of his dissertation in three years, (1965) he married Oksana Maslivec (Smith College) ,the mother of his daughter, Kat. That marriage lasted until 1990, after which he married Helena Hoas; they share a son, Kristoffer.
Before joining the University of Montana faculty in 1991, Ken served as a history professor at the University of Michigan and before that at the University of Illinois, Chicago. As a scholar, he authored numerous books and articles which were celebrated for their insightful assessments of early American life.

In addition to raising his children Ken enjoyed fly fishing, music, and skiing. After his retirement from Montana in 2009, he and Helena settled in Visby, Gotland, Sweden to be near their son and his family.

He was predeceased by his parents and by his sister, Joan Lukenbill, all of California. Ken leaves behind his wife, Helena Hoas; his daughter, Katherine; his son, Kristoffer (Martina); five granddaughters: Aleana, Sophia, Astrid, Miranda, and Disa; mother-in-law, Karin Hoas; brother-in-law, Torleif Hoas (Isabelle); nieces, nephews, friends, colleagues.

— John D. Hatch III