Kenneth Duckett was born on June 26, 1924 and grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He graduated from the University of Denver after his World War II military service. He then studied history as a graduate student under William B. Hesseltine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His archival career began at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and continued at the Oregon Historical Society, the Ohio Historical Society (where he was instrumental in preserving the love letters of then Senator Warren G. Harding to Carrie Phillips, which he wrote about in The Shoe Box Letters, 2003), Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and the University of Oregon. He also wrote a book about manuscript curation (Modern Manuscripts, 1975), and was active in the Society of American Archivists and the Midwest Archives Conference.
Kenneth Duckett died on July 12, 2014 in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.
