The Academy of American Franciscan History was founded in 1943 in Washington, D.C. as an institution to promote scholarship on the history of the Franciscan Order in the Americas. The inauguration of the Academy "brought together a large group of scholars in the Latin American field," including Howard Mumford Jones, John Tate Lanning, and Carlos E. Castañeda. The core members of the Academy included Antonine Tibesar O.F.M. and Maynard Geiger, O.F.M., with Roderick Wheeler, O.F.M., serving as its first director. A number of non-Franciscans pursuing the history of the order were made corresponding members of the Academy, including John Tate Lanning, France V. Scholes, Herbert E. Bolton, and George P. Hammond. The Academy is a research institute, now based in Oceanside, California, on the cam