John Musser

{{short description|American historian}}

John Musser (November 14, 1889 – March 21, 1949) was an American historian and educator who was dean of the graduate school at New York University and an instructor of American History.{{cite news|title=Dr. John Musser|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/15484042|access-date=February 14, 2018|work=Bedford Gazette|date=March 25, 1949}}{{subscription required}}{{cite news|title=Air College Opens Spring Term|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/222146617|access-date=February 14, 2018|work=Orlando Sentinel|date=February 15, 1925}}

Musser attended Franklin and Marshall College before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, from which he received his bachelor's degree.{{cite news|title=Dr. John Musser, Educator, Dies|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image|access-date=February 14, 2018|work=Everett Press|date=April 1, 1949}} He went on to also earn his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania under the direction of Herman Vandenburg Ames.{{cite book|title=Memorial: Herman Vandenburg Ames|date=1936|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|location=Philadelphia|pages=2–25}} An authority on Benjamin Franklin, in 1937 Musser debunked a claim made by the Nazi Party that Charles Pinkney had once recorded in his diary that Franklin had made an anti-Semitic prophecy about a future threat of Jews in the United States by noting that Pinckney had never kept a diary and that Franklin himself had once donated money for the construction of a synagogue in Philadelphia.{{cite news|page=6|title=The Franklin "Prophecy"|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/107731667|access-date=February 14, 2018|work=Courier-Journal|date=March 12, 1937}}{{subscription required}}

He was the grandfather of Charles Musser.{{cite news|title=Dr. Lynne M. Zeavin Is Married to Charles Musser|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/16/style/dr-lynne-m-zeavin-is-married-to-charles-musser.html|access-date=February 14, 2018|work=New York Times|date=October 16, 1988}}