Stephen Guild Kurtz, 81, of Washington, D.C., a historian who was a professor at the College of William and Mary and at American University, and who was also the principal of Phillips Exeter Academy, died Jan. 24 of pancreatic cancer at Georgetown University Hospital.
Dr. Kurtz was a historian of the Revolutionary War era and published three books on early American history and the presidency of John Adams. He spent his academic career as a teacher and administrator in colleges and secondary schools.
He was born in Buffalo, N.Y. and graduated from Princeton University. He received a doctorate in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1952.
After teaching at the Kent School in Kent, Conn., he spent a year in Athens on a Fulbright fellowship as a professor at the English-language Athens College. He was a history professor and dean at Wabash College in Indiana from 1956-1966.
From 1966-1972, he lived in Williamsburg, Va. where he taught history at William and Mary and edited the papers of John Marshall, who was chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1801-1835.
Dr. Kurtz was a dean and professor at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., from 1972-1974, then was appointed principal of Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. He presided over the 200th anniversary of the prep school and made adjustments to its curriculum and disciplinary system.
He retired from Phillips Exeter in 1987 and moved to Washington, D.C. three years later. He taught history at American University for several years and, in the early 1990s, was acting headmaster of the Bullis School in Potomac.
He spent summers in Pemaquid.
His marriage to Katherine Godolphin Kurtz ended in divorce.
Survivors include children, Sharon Kurtz Thompson of Alexandria, Va., Thomas Patterson Kurtz of Wiscasset, and Stephen Godolphin Kurtz of Sudbury, Mass.; and four grandchildren.
