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Here Was Fellowship: A Social Portrait of Academic Women at Wellesley College, 1895–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Patricia A. Palmieri
Patricia A. Palmieri*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
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Extract

In 1929 historian Willystine Goodsell noted the meager professional opportunities available to academic women. Only in the women's colleges did women professors of all ranks considerably outnumber the men. Goodsell concluded, “In the realm of higher education this is their one happy hunting ground and they make good use of it.” One such golden arena was the academic community of Wellesley College 1895–1920. Wellesley was the only women's college which from its founding in 1875 was committed to women presidents and a totally female professoriate. In the Progressive era this professoriate was a stellar cast: it included Katharine Coman, historian; Mary Calkins, philosopher; Vida Dutton Scudder, literary critic and social radical; Margaret Ferguson, botanist; Sarah Frances Whiting, physicist; Emily Greene Balch, economist; and Katharine Lee Bates, author of America the Beautiful. To outside observers this group had created a female Harvard, a “bubbling cauldron that seethed,” a “hotbed of radicalism.” To their students the noble faculty provided a rich world which stirred them. To the next generation of faculty women the “old crowd” were completely dedicated “war horses.” To each other, they were kindred spirits, diverse, but united in the “bonds of Wellesley.”

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , Summer 1983 , pp. 195 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 by History of Education Society 

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References

Footnotes

1. Goodsell, Willystine, “The Educational Opportunity of American Women—Theoretical and Actual,” The American Academy of Political and Social Science, 143 (May, 1929): 12.Google Scholar

2. Diary of Horace Scudder, February 23, 1891, Box 6, Horace Scudder Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Collidge, Calvin, “Enemies of the Republic: Are the Reds Stalking Our College Women?,” The Delineator (June, 1921): 67.Google Scholar

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7. This social portrait studied every woman faculty member at Wellesley who satisfied two criteria: tenure of at least five years on the Wellesley faculty between 1900 and 1910 and attainment of the rank of associate professor. I imposed these conditions because I was interested primarily in the senior faculty and because records are fuller for them. Selection by these criteria yielded a total of fifty-three women; the two men who met the criteria were excluded. The ten year duration (1900–1910) seemed to satisfy the need both for a manageable study and for one which would produce a valid picture of a faculty group over time. However, it should be noted that the group mean for service to the college is thirty-two years and this many women were still teaching at Wellesley in the 1920s and 1930s. The quantitative study was processed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). I am indebted to George H. Ropes for his assistance in quantifying data.Google Scholar

8. Caroline Hazard speaks of a “Wellesley world” in “Tribute to Katharine Lee Bates,” Wellesley Alumnae Magazine, 12, no. 3 (June, 1929): 15 (hereinafter cited as WAM). Google Scholar

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12. Statistics computed from data taken from Faculty Biographical Files, WCA; also: U.S. Federal Census of 1880.Google Scholar

13. Examples of such fathers include: Walter Willcox; Thomas Sherwood; Levi Coman.Google Scholar

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47. There is extensive correspondence between Caroline Hazard and Katharine Lee Bates in both the Bates and Hazard Papers, WCA.Google Scholar

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50. The fourteen women scientists listed in Cattell's American Men of Science (the first five editions: 1906; 1910; 1921; 1927; 1933) are: Google Scholar These dictionaries of notable Americans are among the best reference guides to the biographies of academic women. They are by no means exhaustive. Each employs subjective criteria to determine what constitutes achievement. For a discussion of the kinds of women scientists included in Cattell, James M. (ed.), American Men of Science, see: Rossiter, Margaret, “Women Scientists in America Before 1920,” American Scientist (May June, 1974): 312–333.Google Scholar

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54. A full discussion of the Balch case is contained in the epilogue, “Eden's End,” in “In Adamless Eden.” See also the extensive correspondence in the Emily Greene Balch papers, SCPC.Google Scholar

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58. Furumoto, Laurel, “Are There Sex Differences In Qualities of Mind? Mary Whiton Calkins Versus Harvard University. A 37-year Debate,” pp. 42–43. WCA.Google Scholar

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60. Transcribed oral interview with Lucy Wilson, p. 15. WCA.Google Scholar

61. Scudder, Vida Dutton, “The Privileges of a College Teacher” WAM (August 1929): 327.Google Scholar

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63. Vida Dutton Scudder to Jeannette Marks, July 9, 1939. Scudder Papers, WCA.Google Scholar

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65. Martha Hale Shackford to Jeannette Marks, May 27, 1953. Shackford Papers, WCA.Google Scholar

66. For a general discussion of the increasing bureaucratization characteristic of American culture 1870–1920, see: Wiebe, Robert, The Search For Order: 1877–1920 (New York, 1967); in the various professions this shift manifests itself as a loss of respect for the amateur and the glorification of the highly credentialed professional. See: Bledstein, , The Culture of Professionalism; Furner, Mary J., Advocacy and Objectivity. A Crisis in the Professionalization of American Social Science 1865–1905 (Lexington, Kentucky, 1975).Google Scholar

67. Mary Alice Willcox to Marian Hubbard, December 2, 1927. Willcox Faculty Biographical File, WCA.Google Scholar

68. Rossiter, Margaret, “Women's Education: The Entering Wedge.” Chapter from a forthcoming book on women scientists at the women's colleges 1865–1940. I am grateful to Prof. Rossiter for sharing this work with me.Google Scholar

69. Scudder, Vida Dutton, On Journey, p. 175.Google Scholar

70. See, for example: Mary Alice Willcox to Miss Whiting, March 27, 1948. Willcox Faculty Biographical File, WCA; ALS. Louise Manning Hodgkins to Martha Hale Shackford, November 12, 1924, WCA; Emily Greene Balch [“I am no princess …]. Folde 604, Box 66, Balch Papers, SCPC.Google Scholar

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72. Hawkins, Hugh, Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874–1889 (New York, 1960), p. 237.Google Scholar

73. James McLachlan reviews and criticizes standard historical accounts of the “old-time” liberal arts college in “The American College in the Nineteenth Century: Toward a Reappraisal,” Teachers College Record, 80 (December, 1978): 287–306.Google Scholar

74. When President Caroline Hazard retired in 1910, rumors spread that she was to be replaced by a man. Alumnae and faculty cried out, “What and spoil our ‘Adamless Eden’?” “Man to Rule Wellesley? No! Say Graduates,” Evening Newspaper, Minneapolis, Minnesota, [n.d., probably 1910]. Hazard Scrapbook, 1909–1910, WCA.Google Scholar