Haitian Historian Dies: George Corvington Dead at 88; How Did He Die?

George Corvington, a historian who rose to prominence for his seven-volume work on Port-Au-Prince, Haiti's capitol city, died Wednesday at 88. The President of the Society of History and Geography who was decorated Living National Treasure in January 2009, according to HaitiLibre.com, he was called "the greatest living Haitian historian" and "a giant that has fallen" by his friend and fellow historian Georges Michel.

Corvington, who suffered from heart problems, died in his sleep at home in the capitol about which he wrote so much, reported the AP. The cause of death was listed as heart failure.

His work on the history of Port-au-Prince, entitled "Port-au-Prince au Cours des Ans" (or "Port-au-Prince Through the Years"), chronicles the years from 1743 -- when Haiti was founded as a French colony -- up to the beginning of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1957. The last book from the series was published in 2009.

Corvington himself was born in Port-au-Prince and first began writing in the 1970s. His famed personal library began to grow around the same time. Over the course of his lifetime, he saw the transformation of Port-au-Prince, about which he wrote so extensively. The population of the city quadrupled between 1950 and 2000, from 500,000 to an estimated 3.7 million, nearly half of the country's people.

In addition to his exhaustive work on the capitol's history, he also wrote about the National Palace and the National Cathedral. The former was constructed in the 18th century for the French colonial governor, while the second was completed in 1914 for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese. Both structures collapsed during the 2010 earthquake, which took the lives of more than 200,000 people and destroyed an estimated quarter of a million residences, leaving 1.5 million people homeless.

The quake nearly took Corvington's life as well -- the historian was reportedly trapped under the debris of his home for about an hour before he was pulled out uninjured by his neighbors. The cultural preservation agency UNESCO helped him rescue his personal library as part of their call to keep artifacts from being pillaged.

Haiti's Education Minister, Pierre Buteau, called it "a great loss for Haitian society," according to Radio France International. The Haitian editor and filmmaker Franz Voltaire said he was "a man of great integrity," adding that "we will not forget George, the great historian of Port-au-Prince who safeguarded the memory of our city".

Corvington was never married. No details about his survivors were immediately available.