Dr. Kenneth Hilton Margerison, Jr. died on September 9, 2025, after a long illness. Ken was born in Philadelphia, PA to Kenneth Hilton Margerison, Sr. and Edythe Florence Helmuth Margerison on March 22, 1946. After a childhood surrounded by family in Philadelphia, Ken, his parents, and his younger brother, Rick, moved to Gastonia, North Carolina where Ken graduated from Frank L. Ashley High School.
Ken attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There he was a Whitaker Scholar, a member of the Honors Program, a member of Phi Alpha Theta, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1967 he earned his AB degree in history.
On August 26, 1967, he married Mary Patricia Stacy (Patty) and they formed a life-long bond and partnership. Their first goal was for Ken to complete his graduate degree at Duke University. By the time he completed his Masters in 1969 and his PhD in 1973, the job market for history professors had collapsed, threatening his dream of teaching at a university.
When Southwest Texas State University offered him a position in 1972, Ken was forever grateful to the university, and especially to the History Department, where he found wonderful colleagues and friends. He taught courses in European History for 50 years. His courses in his area of expertise, the French Revolution and Modern France, were especially popular and his exemplary teaching was recognized by the Southwest Texas Faculty Senate Teaching Award (1990); the 1991 Honors Professor of the Year Award; the Everette Swinney Faculty Senate Teaching Award (2005, 2006, and 2013); and the Minnie Stevens Piper Professor Award (2013). Upon his retirement in 2022 he was named Distinguished Professor Emeritus.
Ken loved the History Department where he served as chair for six years. During his tenure he was instrumental in beginning the Public History Program and helping faculty and students acclimate to computers. He was never happier than when he was mentoring students and new faculty or reviewing manuscripts for his colleagues. In 2010 he received the Muir Mentoring Award for his service in these areas. His many colleagues who visited him during his illness with news from the department gave him such joy and attested to their affection for him.
His career was also marked by advocacy for faculty in his department, across campus at Texas State, throughout Texas, and nationally. From 1983-84 he served as first vice-president of the Texas Conference of AAUP. In 1985 he was a founding member of the Texas Faculty Association and its first state president. During his ten-year leadership as president, the Texas Faculty Association grew to be the largest faculty organization in Texas and was recognized as a force for faculty rights. In 1998 in recognition of his leadership, he received the James M. Davenport Memorial Award from the National Council of Higher Education.
Throughout his career, he was an active scholar. In his early career his focus was on the French Revolution. He published two books in this field: P.-L. Roederer: Political Thought and Practice During the French Revolution (1983) and Pamphlets and Public Opinion: The Campaign for a Union of Orders in the Early French Revolution (1998). His most recent research centered on the French in India during the American Revolution. He published many articles, book reviews, chapters in books, essays, and reports.
Besides his life at the university, Ken lived a rich family life. In 1970 on his first research trip to Paris, he and Patty embarked on a love affair with Paris in particular and France in general. When their daughter Claire was five, they introduced her to Paris, profiteroles, and pain au chocolat. Over the years, the three of them traveled throughout France, adding to their entourage their granddaughters, Katya and Frances, in 2017. When Claire, Katya and Frances could not visit Texas, thanks to Ken’s computer skills, they had weekly Skype sessions. During the Covid years, they had Christmas dinner on Skype, and Ken performed many on-line shows with Parisian puppets for his girls. Once the pandemic was over, their house in San Marcos, which he and Patty had built in 1974, became a beautiful gathering place for his family to play Clue, work on craft projects, and create fairy gardens. Ken was a masterful gardener and filled their grounds with Texas native plants and flowers.
Ken had a small, but tight-knit family who cherished him: his wife of 58 years, Patricia Stacy Margerison; the light of his life, his daughter, Claire Elizabeth Margerison; his beloved granddaughters, Katherine Patricia Zilko and Frances Elizabeth Zilko; his much-loved brother and sister-in-law, Richard Wayne Margerison and Leah Creed Margerison; his nephew Andrew Kenneth Margerison and his wife Allison and their children, Nora and Clara; his niece Ashley Margerison Brooks and her husband Ben and their children Frankie and Charlie; his cousin Ellen Smith, her children Craig and Colleen, and their families.
The family gives special thanks to his pulmonologist, Dr. Jesus Sahad, to the doctors and nursing staff at Christus Santa Rosa Hospital in San Marcos, and to Hope Hospice of New Braunfels for their tender care.
A memorial service will be held September 27 at 2:00 p. m. in Flowers Hall Room 230 on the Texas State University campus. Free parking is available at the Pleasant Street Garage.
In lieu of flowers, if you wish to remember Ken, please consider donating to one of the following:
- The Kenneth and Patricia Margerison Graduate Research Fellowship in History, set up by his brother Rick and sister-in-law Leah. Follow the instructions to donate on the History Department's Support Page.
- The Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation