James Sterling Young, who established the country’s only program dedicated to compiling comprehensive oral histories of the American presidency, and who also amassed a vast oral history of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s career, died on Aug. 8 at his home in Advance Mills, Va. He was 85.

His death was announced by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, which studies politics, policy and the presidency. The center houses the Presidential Oral History Program, of which Professor Young was the founder and longtime chairman.

An award-winning historian of 19th-century American politics, Professor Young, who retired in 2006, was at his death an emeritus professor of government and foreign affairs at Virginia. He was previously a faculty member and administrator at Columbia University....