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Smith College Students: The First Ten Classes, 1879–1888

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Sarah H. Gordon
Sarah H. Gordon*
Affiliation:
Chicago
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Extract

In 1875, women began leaving their homes and boarding schools to attend Smith College. They arrived from farms, barely settled western states, and from cities as large as New York and Chicago; but the largest number came from small New England towns. The fathers of some were artisans of even unemployed laborers, but more commonly they held positions of responsibility in business firms or in the professions. A few girls as young as fifteen came, as did a number of women in their twenties, but usually they began study at age seventeen or eighteen.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , Summer 1975 , pp. 147 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Smith College, College Register 1879–1888 (Smith College) (Handwritten).Google Scholar

2. The Reverend Laurens Clark Seelye. Seelye did not believe that Smith should aim to produce a professional elite similar to those from the men's colleges: Harvard and Yale particularly. The “woman” was his central concern. See for example Seelye, Laurens Clarke, The Need of a Collegiate Education for Women (North Adams, Privately Printed, 1874), p. 14, where he says: “Nor can I agree with some who claim for a woman a collegiate education that she may thereby compete with men in the learned professions. I have nothing, indeed, to say against professional life for any woman who desires it. … The trouble is … The woman is sacrificed to her trade.” Google Scholar

3. Rhees, Harriet Seelye, Laurens Clark Seelye: First President of Smith College (Boston, 1929), p. 191.Google Scholar

4. See for example Daskam, Josephine, Smith College Stories (New York, 1910).Google Scholar

5. “Last Will and Testament of Sophia Smith, Late of Hatfield, Massachusetts,” quoted in Seelye, Laurence Clark, The Early History of Smith College: 1871–1910 (Boston), p. 225.Google Scholar

6. Seelye, , The Need of a Collegiate Education, pp. 8–11.Google Scholar

7. Seelye, , Early History, p. 89.Google Scholar

8. Smith College, College Register, 1879–1888. Professionals are doctors, lawyers, ministers, professors, military men. Semi-professionals are editors, engineers, teachers, government officials and administrators in benevolent societies. These categories were devised by Professor David Allmendinger. These and all figures can be considered no more than close approximations due to inconsistencies in the early records.Google Scholar

9. Smith College, College Register, 1879–1888.Google Scholar

10. Seelye, Laurens Clark, “President's Report, 1875–1876” (Smith College Archives), p. 7.Google Scholar

11. Smith College, Minutes of the Meetings of the Board of Trustees, 1871–1907 (Smith College), p. 47.Google Scholar

12. Smith College, College Register, 1879–1888.Google Scholar

13. Letter “not to be used with name,” 6 June 1880, Smith College Archives, Northampton, Ma.Google Scholar

14. Seelye, , Early History, pp. 63–64.Google Scholar

15. Percentages derived from information in College Register, 1879–1888.Google Scholar

16. Smith College, College Register, 1879–1888. See appendix for percentages of Table 4 figures.Google Scholar

17. Derived from figures in Lippincott's Pronouncing Gazetteer of the World: 1889 (Philadelphia, 1889). See appendix for percentages of Table 5 figures.Google Scholar

18. Perry, Alice Cone, “A Valley Family” (Smith College Archives) (Typescript), pp. 59–67. Scholarship information from Treasurer's Scholarship Records (Smith College), p. 1. Population from Lippincott's Pronouncing Gazetteer .Google Scholar

19. The maximum scholarship offered for one year was $100. Income information from Wright, Carroll D. and Weaver, Oren W., eds., Bulletin of the Department of Labor, No. 13 (Washington, D.C., 1897), p. 2.Google Scholar

20. College, Smith, Official Circular: Smith College, 1874 (Northampton, 1874), p. 2.Google Scholar

21. Unidentified letter, cited by Seelye, , Early History, p. 34.Google Scholar

22. Smith College, College Register, 1879–1888.Google Scholar

23. See Tables 1 and 2, on pages 5 and 6, respectively. The loss of one parent legally rendered a child an “orphan” in this period.Google Scholar

24. Lippincott's Pronouncing Gazetteer, p. 1570.Google Scholar

25. Addams, Jane, Twenty Years at Hull House (New York, 1960), p. 46.Google Scholar

26. Scudder, Vida Dutton, On Journey (New York, 1937), p. 67.Google Scholar

27. Lord, Eleanor, Stars Over the Schoolhouse: Evolution of a College Dean (New York, 1938), p. 32.Google Scholar

28. George Ripley wrote in 1840: “Our objects are to insure a more natural relationship than now exists between intellectual and menial labor; … to guarantee the highest mental freedom; … to do away with the necessity of menial services by opening the benefits of education and the profits of labor to all; … to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent and cultivated persons, whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and wholesome life than now can be led amidst the pressure of our competing institutions.” Cited by Sams, Henry W., ed., The Autobiography of Brook Farm (New Jersey, 1958), p. 6.Google Scholar

29. See for example, College, Smith, Official Circulars, 1881, p. 12.Google Scholar

30. Lord, , quoted in Stars Over the Schoolhouse.Google Scholar

31. Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College: 1884–1885 (Cambridge, Ma., 1886), pp. 31–49.Google Scholar

32. See for example Daskam, , Smith College Stories.Google Scholar

33. Miner, E. N. (later Garman, C. E. Mrs.) to Garman, C. E., 30 September 1876, Smith College Archives, Northampton, MA.Google Scholar

34. Seelye, , “President's Report, 1882–1883,” p. 3.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., 1880–1881, p. 4.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., 1882–1883, p. 5.Google Scholar

37. Information is from College Register; Treasurer's Scholarship Records, 1882; and Letters, “not to be used with name,” Smith College Archives, 12 January 1880, 6 June 1880, 12 June 1881, 22 August 1949.Google Scholar

38. Eleanor Lord to her mother, 23 January 1887, quoted in Lord, , Stars Over the Schoolhouse, p. 57.Google Scholar

39. Smith Alumnae Association, Bulletin of Smith College: Alumnae Biographical Register Issue: 1875–1935 (Northampton, Ma., 1935), pp. 27–40.Google Scholar

40. Adelaide Brown Letter to Class of 1888, 1888–1889, Smith College Archives, Northampton, Ma.Google Scholar

41. Cornelia Church Letter to Class of 1888, 1888, Smith College Archives, Northampton, Ma.Google Scholar

42. Harriet Boardman Letter to Class of 1888, 1888, Smith College Archives, Northampton, Ma.Google Scholar

43. Clarke, Elizabeth Lawrence, “Response for Alma Mater,” Celebration of the Quarter Centenary (Cambridge, Ma., 1900), p. 60.Google Scholar

44. See for example, Daskam, Josephine, Smith College Stories (New York, 1910); Bacon, Josephine Daskam, The Domestic Adventurers (New York, 1907); Ray, Anna Chapin, Sidney at College (Boston, 1908); and Ray, , Sidney; Her Senior Year (Boston, 1910).Google Scholar

45. Bacon, Mabel G. Letter to the Class of 1896, 1916, Smith College Archives, Northampton, Ma.Google Scholar

46. Marion Baker Letter to Class of 1896, Smith College Archives, Northampton, Ma.Google Scholar

47. Derived from information in Bulletin of Smith College , pp. 27–40.Google Scholar

48. Ibid.Google Scholar

49. Ibid.Google Scholar

50. Van Kleeck, Mary, “What Alumnae are Doing: Some Facts and Some Theories about Women's Work,” The Smith Alumnae Quarterly, January, 1911, p. 75.Google Scholar