25 Notable Bryn Mawr Women from the first 25 Graduating Years

A Project for the College’s 125th Anniversary Celebration

Summer 2009Emily Wiseman

What I did:

•Created “visual biographies:” incorporating photographs as well as biographical information for each woman (12 slides each)

•Looked at those in the graduating years 1889-1914

•Started with Alumnae Office recommendations

•Majority of time spent researching in the College’s Special Collections, Alumnae Archives

•Used newspapers, letters, books, scholarly articles, yearbooks, The Lantern, Tipyn O’Bob, the internet, alumnae bulletin, pamphlets & brochures, etc.

Where I was, when, and who helped me along the way:

•On campus for June and July

•Bryn Mawr Special Collections:•Lorrett Treese

•Marianne Hansen•Barbara Grubb

•Faculty Advisor: •Leslie Recorla

Who I Included:

•Emily Greene Balch (1889)•Ume Tsuda (1892)•Edith Hamilton (1894)•Ethel Walker Smith (1894)•Pauline Goldmark (1896)•Dora Keen (1896)•Elizabeth Kirkbride (1896)•Alice P. Gannett (1898)•Gertrude Ely (1899)

Who I Included (continued):

•Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn (1900)

•Edna Fischel Gellhorn (1900)•Ellen D. Ellis (1901)•Hetty Goldman (1903)•Michi Kawai (1904)•Hope Emily Allen (1905)•Margaret Ayer Barnes (1907)•Cornelia Lynde Meigs (1907)•Louise Pettibone Smith (1908)

Who I Included (continued):

•Frances Witherspoon (1908)•Tracy D. Mygatt (1908)•Katharine F. Branson (1909)•Hilda Doolittle Aldington (1909)•Marianne Moore (1909)•Helen Tredway Graham (1911)•Katharine Sergeant White (1914)

A Glimpse at five of the twenty-five Women…

•Emily Greene Balch (1889), the 2nd woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, on Bryn Mawr’s Campus with Katharine McBride

•Miss Balch worked with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom during WWI

•Edith Hamilton (1894), a prolific author who made ancient Greece and Rome widely accessible through literature, on Bryn Mawr’s campus (1960)

•Far left: Dora Keen (1896), the first woman ever to peak a mountain in Alaska, riding a dogsled in Alaska circa 1911

•Bottom left: Dora Keen rock climbing

•Tracy Mygatt and Frances Witherspoon (both 1908) were life-long, peace-minded, political activists who, most notably, stood up for the rights of the foreign born during the McCarthy era

•Pictured at left, writing a letter to their congressperson from their Friends’ nursing home in PA

Helen Tredway Graham (1911), a trail-blazing female chemist, in her lab (1948)

A few other things that I came across…

A group of Bryn Mawr students in 1905, including Marianne Moore and Hilda Doolittle

A section of the E.B. White speech, husband of Katharine Sergeant White (1914)

“I have known many graduates of Bryn Mawr. They are all of the same mold. They have all accepted the same bright challenge: something is lost that has not been found, something’s at stake that has not been won, something is started that has not been finished, something is dimly felt that has not been fully realized. They carry the distinguishing mark – the mark that separates them from other educated and superior women: the incredible vigor, the subtlety of mind, the warmth of spirit, the aspiration, the fidelity to past and to present… what is there about these women that makes them so dangerous, so tempting? Why, it is Bryn Mawr.

The speech, continuedAs they grow in years, they grow in light. As their minds and hearts expand, their deeds become more formidable, their connections more significant, their husbands more startled and delighted… You ask me how I feel to have undertaken this union. I feel fine. But I have not recovered from my initial surprise, nor have I found any explanation for my undeserved good fortune. I once held a live hummingbird in my hand. I once married a Bryn Mawr girl. To a large extent they are twin experiences. Sometimes I feel as though I were a diver who had ventured a little beyond the limits of safe travel under the sea and had entered the strange zone where one is said to enjoy the rapture of the deep.”

The Bryn Mawr Class of 1909

Thank you to the Hepburn CenterKatharine Houghton Katharine Hepburn