One of Washington College’s most beloved and devoted former professors of history, Robert Fallaw, died at the Hospice Center of Queen Anne’s in Centreville, Md., on December 13, 2013, from complications of multiple myeloma. He was 78.

Born in Durham, N.C., on March 19, 1935, Walter Robert Fallaw, Jr. (known as Bob) was the older son of Walter Robert Fallaw, Sr., and Amy Wilson Childs Fallaw. He was raised mainly in the nearby community of Bragtown, moving while in high school to a small farm near Hillsborough. A 1953 graduate of Bragtown High School (where his mother taught), in 1957 he earned his B.A., with distinction in history, from Duke University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. (In recent years he was a charter resident member of the new chapter at Washington College.) Awarded a fellowship, he earned a M.A. (1959) and Ph.D. (1966) at Princeton University, focusing on early American history, especially political history of the Jacksonian period, and American intellectual history....