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Cambridge Women's Heritage Project ~ H ~ |
Halsted,
Isabella (Hopkinson)
Hamilton, Alice
Hamilton, Margaret
Harvey, Beatrice
Hayden, Sophia
Herman,
Judith (Lewis)
Hiatt, Suzanne Radley
Hocking, Agnes Boyle (O'Reilly)
Hopkins, Pauline Elizabeth
Horsford, Cornelia
Lois Lilley Howe
Howe, Mary (Manning) see Adams, Mary (Manning)
Howe
Hubbard, Ruth
Huntington, Anna Vaughn (Hyatt)
Hurd, Marjorie
Isabella
(Hopkinson) Halsted (b. May 8, 1907 in Manchester, MA, d. December
13, 2006 in Cambridge, MA)
Author and Activist
Photo by Nancy Scanlan.
Isabella Halsted was the daughter of Charles Hopkinson,
a Cambridge born portrait artist who painted over thirty members of the Harvard
faculty, and Elinor (Curtis) Hopkinson, who was related to the Longfellow family.
Although her home was in Manchester, Isabella also stayed in Cambridge while
attending the Buckingham and Winsor schools. She attended Bryn Mawr College
for two years in the mid-1920s and then studied at the Art Students League in
New York City for two more years. In 1930, she married James Halsted, a physician,
after which she lived in Boston, Cleveland, Dedham, and Los Angeles, CA. After
the marriage ended in divorce in 1951, Isabella Halsted returned to Cambridge
and decided to learn typing and stenography. Isabella worked as secretary to
the dean of residents at Radcliffe College, as membership secretary at the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, and as director of the newly formed Boston Center for International
Visitors, from 1961-1967. There she hosted foreign guests of the State Department,
welcoming them into her home in Cambridge and learning about their cultures.
Isabella Halsted also initiated and led a campaign
to close Memorial Drive to automobile traffic on Sundays during the summer months
(Riverbend Park) for which she was celebrated with a memorial stone bench in
Longfellow Park, between Memorial Drive and Mt. Auburn Street.
She
was the author of The Aunts, a 1992 memoir of the four Curtis sisters
of Beacon Hill and Manchester. Some of her letters from her father are held
in the Charles Hopkinson collection in the Smithsonian Archives of American
Art. The Curtis family papers, in the Schlesinger Library, include some material
written by her mother.
References:
Charles Hopkinson collection, Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Papers, 1797-1991 of the Curtis family, Schlesinger Library
Cambridge Chronicle October 21, 1993.
corrections and additions by her children
Alice
Hamilton (b. February 27, 1869 Fort Wayne IN, d. Sept. 22, 1970,
Hadlyme CT)
Toxicologist, physician
Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana to Gertrude (Pond)
and Montgomery Hamilton, Alice was educated first at Miss Porter’s School
in Connecticut and then attended the University of Michigan Medical School,
graduating in 1893 and interned at the Hospital for Women and Children in Minneapolis
and at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. In 1897, she
was named the first woman professor at the Women’s Medical School of Northwestern
University as professor of pathology. During this period, she lived at the famous
settlement house, Hull House, founded by Jane Addams. She noticed the numbers
of immigrants sickened by toxins produced by Chicago factories, and began to
study occupational hazards from various chemicals. She served on the Occupational
Disease Commission in Illinois and then joined the staff of the U.S. Department
of Labor. In 1919, she joined the new Department of Industrial Medicine at Harvard
Medical School as an assistant professor, the first woman to be appointed to
the medical faculty. She remained there for sixteen years without a promotion,
excluded as a member of the Harvard Faculty Club. She went on to publish a number
of important books, most notably Industrial Toxicology (1934) and including
an autobiography, Exploring the Dangerous Trades: The Autobiography of Alice
Hamilton (1943). She was the only member of the League of Nations Health
Committee (1924-1930). After her retirement, she continued to be active in both
national and local groups and to support liberal causes. She was awarded many
honorary degrees in her retirement years.
References: Cambridge Chronicle 09-20-00; Barbara
Sicherman. Alice Hamilton M.D.: A life in Letters. Harvard University
Press, 1984; Ogilvie, Marilyn and Joy Harvey. Biographical Dictionary of
Women Scientists (2000).
Margaret
Hamilton (b. ca 1938)
Software engineer, NASA software designer, founder of software company
Born ca. 1938, Margaret Hamilton graduated from
Hancock High School in 1954 and then attended Earlham College in Richmond Indiana
graduating in 1958 as a major in mathematics. She moved to Massachusetts with
the intention of doing graduate study at Brandeis but instead took a position
at MIT where she learned to write software for computers. She postponed her
graduate work for a chance to work on software for the Apollo program and eventually
became the director of software programming at MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory
for the Apollo and Skylab NASA missions, overseeing the moon flights. She produced
over 130 papers, proceeding and reports.
In 1986, she founded and became CEO of Hamilton Technologies, in Cambridge MA,
a software company. She has been recognized with the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award
by the Association of Women in Computing in 1986 and the NASA Exceptional Space
Act Award, in 2003 for her contributions to the Apollo Program and to the field
of software engineering.
References: Earlham College press release March 4, 2005; NASA
Office of Logic Design “About Margaret Hamilton." http://klabs.org/home_page/hamilton.htm
Beatrice
Harvey (b. September 27 1923 in Cambridge)
World War II welder, community leader
Bea Harvey grew up in East Cambridge during the
Depression. Her father died when he was 50, and her mother was left with 13
children. Because of family circumstances, she and her siblings were split up,
and she went to live with her aunt and uncle in West Bridgewater. When she was
21, she came back to Cambridge and worked at various jobs in Central Square,
including Woolworth’s and Gorin’s. During World War II, she became
a welder at the Quincy shipyard. Later on, she worked at Necco and Fanny Farmer
where she rolled candy and at Fenton Shoe where she put the “faces”
on children’s slippers. After her husband died in 1996, Bea became tenant
president of Manning Apartments, where she has been a strong advocate for tenants’
rights, as well as a member of the crime watch group. She works part time as
a school lunch cashier in the city’s schools. Bea had six children, three
of whom died tragically; 10 grandchildren, and 2 great-grandchildren.
Reference: Oral interview by Sarah Boyer
Sophia
Hayden (later Bennett) (b. 1868 in Santiago Chile d. 1953 in
Massachusetts)
Architect
Sophia Hayden was the first woman to graduate
in architecture from MIT in Cambridge in 1890. After graduation, she taught
mechanical drawing at a high school in Jamaica Plain. Hayden won the competition
to design the Woman’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition
in Chicago in 1893 commemorating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s
discovery of America. In an effort to draw attention to women’s progress
in entering previously all-male professions, the Board of Lady Managers had
established a $1,000 prize for a woman architect. Hayden’s design was
for an Italian Renaissance exhibit hall with skylights. This was awarded the
Gold Medal from the Board of Lady Managers, though the design was criticized
for its "daintiness and grace". Hayden, although barely out of school,
and only 22 years old was asked to go to Chicago supervise the construction
of her design. Unfortunately, overwhelmed by the pressure of supervising such
a large construction project, and negative critical response to her work, Hayden
experienced a collapse at the site, but returned a few months later for the
dedication of the building. She retired from architecture and never designed
another building. She moved to Winthrop, MA where she was active in women’s
societies. Around 1900, she married an artist, William Blackstone Bennett, and
lived a retired life.
A plan of her thesis illustration for a Fine Arts building
is on the MIT web site. http://web.mit.edu/museum/chicago/bennett29.html
References:
Notable American Women: Modern Period
Sarah Allaback, The First American Women Architects. University of
Illinois Press, 2008
Encyclopedia Britannia
Judith
(Lewis) Herman
(b. 1942)
Psychiatrist, professor of psychiatry
A Cambridge resident, Judith Lewis Herman has
done ground breaking research on post-traumatic disorders and sexual violence
against women and children. She grew up in the New York area, daughter of secular
Jews. Her father, Naphtali Lewis, was a professor of classics at Brooklyn College
and her mother, Helen Block Lewis, trained as a clinical psychologist and later
became a Yale professor. Both parents were involved in social activism and both
suffered from political repression during the McCarthy era. Judith Lewis attended
Radcliffe College, graduating in 1964. As a student, she participated in the
Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-War Movement, and became involved in "second
wave" feminism in the late sixties, when she was influenced by the work
of Kathie Sarachild, who had been a classmate of hers at Radcliffe, and who
popularized the term “consciousness-raising.” She received her medical
degree from Harvard University in 1968 with a cum laude distinction.
Herman became interested in the subject of violence
against women and began to study that subject as she was finishing her residency
in psychiatry, publishing a study on trauma with a young psychologist, Lisa
Hirschman. She went on to develop her interest in all forms of domestic gender-based
violence, publishing a study of incest, Father-Daughter Incest (Harvard University
Press, 1981). In 1986, Judith Herman published an article with her mother who
had done important studies on the shame reaction to trauma. (Judith Lewis Herman
and Helen Block Lewis, 'Anger in the Mother–Daughter Relationship', The
Psychology of Today's Woman: New Psychoanalytic Visions: Edited by Toni Bernay
and Dorothy W. Cantor. Hillsdale, New Jersey: The Analytic Press. 1986). Herman
is currently a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and
Director of Training at the Victims of Violence Program at Cambridge Hospital.
As a Radcliffe Institute Fellow in 2001-2, Herman studied how survivors of violent
crimes come to terms with those who have offended against them, focusing on
the victims of child abuse, rape, and domestic violence that she long studied
and treated.
She has lectured widely on these subjects and
is the author of many award-winning publications, including Trauma and Recovery:
The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (Basic Books,
1992). Among her numerous honors are a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International
Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, a Bunting Institute fellowship from Radcliffe,
a Women in Science Award from the American Medical Women’s Association,
and the Manfred S. Guttmacher Award from the American Psychiatric Association
and American Academy of Psychiatry and Law. She received a Radcliffe Alumnae
recognition award in June 2006.
References:
Harry Kreisler, "Conversations with History Interview with Judith Lewis
Herman," http://globetrotter-demo.berkeley.edu/people/Herman/herman-con0.html\
Radcliffe alumni awards, http://www.radcliffe.edu/alumnae/reunions/awards/2006_profiles.php#judith
Suzanne
Radley Hiatt (b. September 21, 1936 in Hartford CN, d. May 30,
2002)
Episcopal priest , feminist theologian, educator
Born in Hartford, the Rev. Dr. Suzanne Hiatt was
the oldest child of Alfred and Frances Hiatt. Brought up in Minnesota, she attended
high school in Edina MN. She started college at Wellesley and graduated from
Radcliffe College in 1958. After graduating as Master of Divinity from Episcopal
Theological School in 1964, she went on to study for her master‘s degree
in social work from Boston University in 1965. For a while, she worked for a
Presbyterian church in Minnesota helping the ghetto poor. She moved to Philadelphia
where she organized a group to represent the poor (Welfare Rights Organization).
She then worked with the Episcopal Diocese in Philadelphia and began to advocate
for women and the ordination of women priests. She organized and participated
in the first women’s ordination in July 29 1974, though they did not then
have the permission of their bishops or the church government at that time.
After the Episcopal Church's General Convention in 1976, where ordination of
women was approved, she was then regularly ordained in 1977.
Hiatt returned to Cambridge in 1975 and joined
the Episcopal Divinity School where she eventually rose to full professor as
the John Seely Stone Professor of Pastoral Theology, Cambridge. In 1997, she
was Acting Director of Congregational Studies. The Suzanne Hiatt Chair in Feminist
Pastoral Theology was named after her. In 1993, she published with Emily C Hewitt,
Women Priests, Yes or No? She contributed extensive book chapters and
articles on a variety of topics. She presented a woman for ordination of the
Diocese of London’s first ordination of women in St Paul’s Cathedral
in 1994. Hiatt received an Honorary LLD from Regis College in 1988. Suzanne
Hiatt died of cancer at Chilton Hospice , Cambridge. Her papers are held at
Columbia University, Union Theological Seminary, Archive of Women in Theological
Scholarship.
References: The Witness magazine Monday, July 15,
2002, Cambridge Chronicle June 5 2002. Biographical note, Archive of
Women in Theological Scholarship by Leslie Reyman: (October 2000) http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/img/assets/6396/Hiatt_SFA51305PDF.pdf
Agnes Boyle (O'Reilly)
Hocking (b. in Boston, d. 1955 in Cambridge)
Co-founder of Shady Hill School
Agnes Boyle O'Reilly was the daughter of Irish-born Catholic poet and editor
of The Pilot, John Boyle O'Reilly. She married William Ernest Hocking, then an
instructor in comparative religion at Andover Theological Seminary, in Boston
on June 28, 1905. They had three children, Richard Hocking (1906-2001), Hester
Campbell (b. 1909), and Joan Kracke (b.1911). The couple moved to Berkeley, California,
then to New Haven, Connecticut, and finally back to Cambridge in 1914, when William
obtained positions in the philosophy departments of UC, Yale, and Harvard respectively.
He was named Alford Professor of Natural Religion and Moral Philosophy in 1920.
William and Agnes Hocking founded the Cooperative Open-Air School in the spring
of 1915 located at their home at 16 Quincy Street in Cambridge. Parents shared
teaching duties and generally believed in teaching from primary sources, without
textbooks, and encouraging children’s exposure to plenty of fresh air in
the classrooms. In 1917, the school moved to the Charles Eliot Norton estate
near Shady Hill Square at the corner of Holden and Scott streets and adopted
the name Shady Hill School around 1917-18. In October 1926, the school relocated
to Coolidge Hill in Cambridge. The couple continued their strong interest in
the project and correspondence with the directors until their deaths.
The correspondence of Agnes and her husband, and
multiple letters from others concerning Shady Hill School and many other topics
is to
be found in the William Ernest
Hocking papers in Houghton Library Harvard University and additional letters
(about Shady Hill) in the Katherine Taylor Papers in Schlesinger Library. There
is also a folder in the WEH papers from Cambridge Historical Society (Mass.), “ Correspondence
with WEH, 1950” with a letter from Agnes Hocking concerning the history
of the Shady Hill School.
Reference: Finding aid and list of archives, William Ernest Hocking papers, Houghton
Library Harvard University.
Winifred
Holman (fl 1659)
Accused and acquitted of witchcraft
A widow, living in Cambridge, Winifred Holman,
and her daughter Mary were accused in the summer of 1659 of witchcraft by a
family living nearby. The neighbors included John Gibson, his wife, and their
married daughter, Rebecca Stearns. Over some time previously, Rebecca began
to experience unexplained fits in which she barked like a dog and screamed that
Mrs. Holman and her daughter were witches. Her parents became alarmed and sought
an explanation. In an indictment they prepared, the Gibsons claimed that Winifred
Holman had offered herbs to their daughter during a previous fit and noticed
that the daughter, Rebecca, seemed worse whenever she saw the Holmans. They
also cited some assistance by the Holmans to their daughter’s child after
the child had fallen ill that did not result in any improvement. The indictment
included observations on the behavior of Winifred Holman and her poultry, which
the Gibsons considered peculiar, attributing the death of some of their own
hens to witchcraft. This indictment could have had serious consequences since
an unfortunate woman, Goody Kendal had been executed as a witch in Cambridge
because of a claim by the nurse of a child that she had “made much of”
a child and caused its sudden death.
In defense of her character as a “good Christian woman,” Mrs. Holman
submitted certificates signed by two deacons and her neighbors that said she
was diligent in attending church and had never been perceived to do or say anything
or to give any grounds to suspect her of “witchery”. Without the
hysteria that engulfed similar cases in Salem thirty years later, the case was
dismissed. Mary and Winifred Holman then brought two suits in the county courts
at the end of March 1660 against John Gibson and his daughter Rebecca Stearns
for defamation.
Reference: Lucius R.Paige. A History of Cambridge 1630
-1877 with a Genealogical Register Boston, Cambridge 1877, 856-863.
Pauline
Elizabeth Hopkins (b. 1859 in Portland, Maine, d. August 13
1930 in Cambridge)
African American writer
Pauline Hopkins was born in Maine but came to
Boston as a young girl where she attended Girls High School. After winning a
writing competition at the age of fifteen sponsored by the African-American
playwright, novelist, essayist, historian, and abolitionist, William Wells Brown
(1814-1884), she began to write seriously. At the age of twenty, she wrote a
musical drama “Slaves Escape or the Underground Railroad”. She both
produced the play and performed a central role. In order to support herself,
she worked as a stenographer with the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics, beginning
her professional literary career only in 1900 when she published a short story
in the first issue of The Colored American Magazine. She wrote continuously
for the magazine, eventually becoming its literary editor. Her work includes
many short stories, essays, and two serialized novels: Winona: A Tale of
Negro Life in the South and Southwest and Of One Blood: or, The Hidden
Self. In 1905, ill health forced Hopkins to return to work as a stenographer
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her final literary work was a series
of articles entitled, "Dark Races of the Twentieth Century," published
during 1904-1905 in The Voice of the Negro. Mainly interested in the problems
of the black middle class, she was one of the first black women writers in America.
References: The Unruly Voice: Rediscovering Pauline Elizabeth
Hopkins. Ed. John C. Gruesser. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1996. Cambridge
Public Library online site “Penwomen of Cambridge Past: Biographies of
Our Literary Foremothers”: http://www.ci.cambridge.ma.us/cpl/about/penwomen.html
Cornelia
Horsford (b. September 25, 1861 in Cambridge. d. 1941? in Cambridge)
Amateur archaeologist, Author
Cornelia Horsford was born in Cambridge, the daughter
of Eben Norton Horsford, a professor of chemistry at the Lawrence Scientific
School, Harvard University and his second wife Phoebe (Gardiner). She attended
private schools in Cambridge and Boston. Her father, after making a fortune
from the manufacture of baking powder, became an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist,
convinced that Leif Erikson had landed in North America and resided along the
Charles River. He purchased land and erected a tower and monument to this theory
in Weston MA at the junction of the Charles and Stony Brook Rivers. Just before
his death in 1893, he asked his daughter to carry on his work.
In subsequent years, Cornelia Horsford published his unfinished writings along
with her own studies. In her essay “Graves of the Northmen,” published
with her father’s writings in 1893, Miss Horsford gave an interesting
description of the supposed traces of Leif Ericson at Gerry’s Landing,
in Cambridge, first claimed by her father. She also organized archaeological
expeditions in Iceland in 1895, in the British Isles, 1895, 1896, 1897; and
directed investigations of the Norse discovery of America. She was the author
of An Inscribed Stone, 1895; Ruins of the Saga-Time; and “a popular article
“Vinland and its Ruins: Some of the evidence that Northmen were in Massachusetts
in pre-Columbian days” Popular Science Monthly (December, 1899). Her later
work was devoted mainly to the discovery of other similar ruins and her attempts
to show that similar North American ruins were identical with those to be found
in Iceland and Greenland.
Horsford was also a member of the Mass. Horticultural
Society; Colonial Dames of Massachusetts; and the Icelandic Antiquarian Society.
She lived in her family home at 27 Craigie Street, Cambridge and summered on
Shelter Island, Long Island. Her family letters are in Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute Library archives. Twelve letters to Franz Boas are in American Philosophical
Society Boas collection (Philadelphia).
References: Horsford family papers, Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute Library; Cambridge Chronicle, July 2, 1998.
Lois
Lilley Howe (b. September 25, 1864 in Cambridge, d. September
13, 1964 in Cambridge)
Architect; fellow, American Institute of Architects
Lois
Lilley Howe was born on September 25, 1864 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She
was the eldest of four children of Dr. Estes and Lois Lilly (White) Howe. The
family originally lived at 1 Oxford Street in Cambridge where they owned an
acre of land and a few farm animals. Howe attended Miss Olmsted’s and
then Miss Page’s elementary schools from 1868 – 1877 and graduated
from the Cambridge public high school in 1882. From a young age, Howe showed
an interest in architecture. The workers building the Sanders Theatre at Harvard
College in 1876 dubbed her “the little superintendent” for her constant
comments on their project.
From 1882 – 1886 Howe was a student at The
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her focus at the Museum School was
in design. Her later architectural work reflected this artistic training, and
she maintained contacts with artists throughout her life. She became a member
of the Copley Society of Boston, an association of artists, in 1883. She joined
the Council of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1897; later the Museum
School named her an annual "Visitor to the School." She also served
as director of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts from 1916 to 1919.
Howe’s father passed away in 1887. Shortly after
his death, the family sold the house on Oxford Street and moved to 2 Appleton
Street. As a result of Howe’s alteration of a stairway of the Oxford street
home, which had been purchased by Reverend Francis G. Peabody, she gained the
admiration of his brother and architect, Robert Swain Peabody, who became her
mentor.
In 1888, Howe entered MIT's School of Architecture
and took the two-year “Partial Architecture” course. During this
time, she was a founding member of MIT’s first woman student’s group,
Eta Sigma Mu (later known as Cleofan.)
Upon graduating from MIT in 1890, Howe worked
as a drafter, artist and librarian in the Department of Architecture at MIT
and for herself at the Boston architectural firm of Allen and Kenway. In 1893
she submitted an application, on Allen and Kenway letterhead with a recommendation
from Robert Peabody, to build the Woman’s Building at the 1893 Chicago
World’s Fair. Her former MIT classmate Sophia
Hayden also entered the competition. Hayden won and Howe placed second.
Howe used the prize money for a long awaited trip to Europe.
Courtesy
MIT Museum.
Photo by Florence Maynard.
After
fifteen months abroad, Howe returned to America and began her practice at 73
Tremont Street in Boston. She received her first commission to build a house
in 1894, and worked alone and with various partners until 1900. She established
her own firm in 1901 at 101 Tremont Street, Boston.
Also in 1901, Howe, sponsored again by Robert
Peabody, became the second woman elected to the A.I.A. (American Institute of
Architects). She was the first woman elected to the Boston Society of Architects.
Howe concentrated on domestic architecture from
the beginning of her architectural career with an emphasis on history and detail.
Noted projects of Howe’s at this time were her 1901 and 1904 renovations
of the Griswold residence at 23 Craigie Street in Cambridge. Howe was also noted
for pioneering the use of stucco. Articles about her plasterwork appeared in
Architectural Review and Architectural Record. In a 1907 issue
of Architectural Revew, she gave advice about designing serving pantries
for small houses.
In 1913 Howe co-published, with MIT graduate Constance
Fuller, Details of Old New England Houses. Howe became known for her
“ability to create simple, efficient floor plans; and her effort to minimize
expense.” “Howe used to see the house being torn down and would
run quickly and take the mantels and doors.”(Allaback).
Howe branched out in 1913 when she became partners
with Eleanor Manning. Manning brought a concern for public housing and urban
renewal to the firm. In the early 1920’s Howe and Manning participated
in the design of Mariemont, Ohio a planned community outside of Cincinnati using
the principles of John Nolan and the English garden city as a model. They were
also asked to submit designs by McCall’s magazine for its small
house series.
Howe and Manning further expanded in 1926 when
they acquired a third partner, Mary Almy, like Howe, a native of Cambridge.
This same year, the firm won first prize for The Charles Almy House in a Cape
Code competition sponsored by House Beautiful.
Howe was active on several housing planning commissions
throughout her life, but organizations concerned with housing problems represented
only part of her activities. She supported women's educational opportunities
as a member of the American Association of University Women and as the MIT representative
for the General Committee of the "Naples Table," which later became
the Association to Aid Scientific Research by Women. Perhaps Howe’s greatest
honor came in 1931, when she became the first woman to achieve the status of
Fellowship, an honor bestowed to some members of the A.I.A.
At the age of 73, Howe retired from Howe, Manning
& Almy in 1937, after practicing for more than forty years. After retirement,
she occasionally worked on commissions for Eleanor O'Connor's private practice
and was active in a number of Cambridge social clubs.
Lois Lilley Howe passed away in Cambridge on September
13, 1964 just twelve days short of her hundredth birthday. She is buried at
Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge.
References
Abeel, Daphne. Cambridge in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge Historical
Society: Cambridge, Mass., 2007.
Allaback, Sarah. The First American Women Architects. Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2007
American Institute of Architects. The A.I.A. Historical Directory of American
Architects. http://communities.aia.org/sites/hdoaa/wiki/Wiki%20Pages/Women%20and%20Minorities%20in%20the%20AIA.aspx
"An Alumna's Architectural Career," Technology Review, vol.
66, no. 2 (December 1963), pp. 21, 38.
"An Architectural Monograph: The Colonel Robert Means House at Amherst,
New Hampshire." New York: R. F. Whitehead, 1927, White Pine Series
of Architectural Monographs, vol. 13, no. 5.
Ben-Joseph, Eran, Holly D. Ben-Joseph and Anne C. Dodge. Against all Odds:
MIT’s Pioneering Women of Landscape Architecture. Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, City Design and Development
Group: Cambridge, Mass., November 2006.
Cambridge Historical Society. Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings.
Cole, Doris and Taylor, Karen Cord, The Lady Architects, Mid March Arts Press:
New York, 1990
Howe, Lois L. and Constance Fuller Details from Old New England Houses.
New York: Architectural Book Publishing Co., 1913.
Howe, Manning & Almy Papers,1883-1972, MIT Archives and Special Collections.
http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/collections-mc/mc9.html#howe
Nathanson, Larry M.D., “Lois Lilly Howe: Pioneer Career Woman, Architect,
Cambridge Citizen.”
"Serving Pantries in
Small Houses." Architectural Review, vol. 14, no. 3 (March 1907).
Ruth
Hubbard (b. 1925 in Vienna, Austria)
Biologist; biochemist; social activist
Ruth Hubbard was born in Vienna, Austria and escaped
the Nazi regime with her family when she thirteen. The family moved to the Boston
area. Ruth attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1945. She went on to study
biochemistry and biology at Harvard. Entering George Wald’s laboratory
at Harvard, she did important work on the biochemistry of the visual system,
working out the enzymatic interconversion of retinal and retinol for her PhD
in 1950. After receiving fellowships that took her to London and Copenhagen,
she returned to Harvard. She married Wald in 1958 with whom she had a daughter
and a son. The couple was awarded the Paul Karrer Medal from the University
of Zurich for studies of biochemistry of vertebrates and invertebrates in 1967.
After George Wald was awarded the Nobel prize in 1967, he became deeply concerned
with issues of peace, in which Ruth joined him.
She was tenured as professor of biology at Harvard
in 1974, the first woman tenured in the department. In the late seventies and
early eighties, she created innovative courses on biology and politics from
a feminist perspective. She began to publish studies of the politics of women's
health, on the position of women in academia and research and, more recently,
on the ethics of gene therapy and genetic testing including, The Politics
of Women’s Biology (1990); Profitable Promises: Essays on Women
Science and Health (1994); and Exploding the Gene Myth, with her
son Elijah Wald, (1993). She was a board member of Science for the People in
the 1970s and 1980s, along with geneticists Richard Lewontin and Jonathan Beckwith.
She is a founding board member of The Council for Responsible Genetics. Retiring
in 1990, she is currently professor emerita in the Department of Molecular
and Cellular Biology at Harvard. In 2003, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate
of Science by Clark University. In May 2005, the Massachusetts American Civil
Liberties Union presented her with the Luther Knight Macnair award for her work
on bioethics.
References: Benjamin F. Shearer and Barbara Smith Shearer Notable
Women in the Life Sciences. Westport CN 1996.; R. Hubbard and E. Wald.
“George Wald Memorial Talk” in Rhodopsin and Photransduction,
pp. 5-20. Chichester: [Novartis Foundation Symposium 224]; Online conversation
with Frank Aqueno in 1993 http://members.aol.com/qbchoice/EXPLODING.html.
Anna
Vaughn (Hyatt) Huntington (b. March 10, 1876 in Cambridge,
d. October 4, 1973 in Connecticut)
Sculptor, philanthropist, founder of wildlife preserves
Anna Vaughn Hyatt was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
daughter of Audella (Beebe) and Alpheus Hyatt. Her father was a curator of fossil
invertebrates at Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard, professor of paleontology
and zoology at MIT and a founder of Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratories.
Through her father, she developed an interest in animals and animal anatomy.
She was educated in private schools in Cambridge. She began to study sculpture
in Boston and then went to New York to study at the Arts Students League in
the early 1900s. She began to observe animals at zoos and circuses. Her first
exhibition was at the Boston Arts Club in 1900 and she soon became nationally
known. From 1906 to 1910 she lived and worked in France and Italy, exhibiting
her animal statues and an equestrian statue of Joan of Arc at the Paris Salon.
She returned to New York where she prepared a public statue of Joan of Arc,
and a wall statue for the Cathedral of St John the Divine. In 1923, she married
Archer Milton Huntington, the adopted son of a railroad tycoon, who from this
time on supported her work. The couple joined in philanthropic projects for
museums and in the preservation of wildlife, funding more than fourteen museums
and setting up an outdoor sculpture museum for American sculpture at Brookgreen
Gardens, South Carolina. In 1940, she and her husband moved to an estate, Stenerigg,
in Redding Ridge Connecticut where she continued set up a large studio. There
both husband and wife practiced organic farming and founded a bird sanctuary.
After the death of her husband in 1955, she began a large number animal studies
as well as monumental equestrian statues, the last completed when she was ninety.
She died at the age of ninety seven at her estate, which is now the Collis P
Huntington State Park.
References: Notable American Women, Modern Period;
Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia
Marjorie
Hurd (b. June 24, 1886 in Boston, d. April 1, 1977 in Cambridge)
Lawyer, Volunteer, Sportswoman
Born in Boston in 1886, Marjorie Hurd
was the daughter of Alfred Dennis Hurd and Louisa Maria (Coolidge) Hurd. Her
father worked in publishing and insurance; her mother was an incorporator of
the Salem Woman’s Club when the family moved to Salem, Massachusetts in
1896. Marjorie’s early influences included her paternal grandfather, Melancthon
Montgomery Hurd, whose publishing company, Hurd & Houghton, evolved into
today’s Houghton Mifflin Company; her maternal grandfather, Horace Hopkins
Coolidge, a leading Boston attorney and president of the Massachusetts Senate;
and her uncle William Williamson Coolidge, an attorney and mountain climber.
As a girl, Marjorie attended the school kept by Bertha Hazard and Elizabeth
J. Woodward in Boston’s Back Bay, “Miss B. M. Howe’s”
Hamilton Hall School on Salem’s Chestnut Street, and Salem High School.
She entered Radcliffe College in Cambridge as a member of the Class of 1908
to study history and economics. Her yearbook motto was: “I am not daunted,
no; I will engage.”
After graduating from Radcliffe, Marjorie became
involved in social service work. She returned to her alma mater in 1910 to pursue
an advanced degree, earning
her A.M. in government and economics. That same year, Marjorie and her family
moved to 44 Walker Street, Cambridge. She also took the civil service examination,
and received the highest percentage among her fellow test-takers. Marjorie’s
first job was as a “special agent” for the Massachusetts Minimum
Wage Commission, where she began a lifelong professional relationship with the
Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in Boston (WEIU). She also studied
statistics with Professor William Z. Ripley at Harvard from 1912-13, and in
1915 she was one of nine students to enroll in the first graduate level law
school for women in America—the Cambridge Law School for Women, which
was founded in 1915 by Professor Joseph H. Beale of the Harvard Law School.
At the same time, Marjorie worked in the afternoons for the Cambridge Social
Union (the precursor to today’s Cambridge Center for Adult Education),
and she was elected to the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa. Unfortunately, the law
school was short-lived but, undaunted, Marjorie took courses at the Portia School
of Law on Boston’s Beacon Hill—the first law school in the country
to admit women with or without a college degree. She also worked as a legal
clerk for the law firm of Hale & Dorr. In 1918, at the age of 32, Marjorie
was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. Between 1919 and 1920, she worked for
the law firm of Dunbar, Nutter & McClennen, and in 1920, Marjorie joined
the staff of the Boston Legal Aid Society (BLAS) as its first female attorney.
She remained there for 35 years. That same year, the family moved to 4 Mercer
Circle, Cambridge, just off Brattle Street.
Marjorie Hurd, photo courtesy of the Hurd family
Along
with her distinguished law career, Marjorie was an avid mountain climber, rock
climber, camper, canoeist, swimmer and snowshoe-r. She traveled all over the
world, climbing the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, and the more difficult Dolomites;
she also scaled every 4,000-footer in the White Mountains (celebrating her 80th
birthday on the summit of Mount Washington), and knew well the peaks in the
Canadian Rockies and Sierra Nevada. The Christian Science Monitor once
described her as a “petite sportswoman” as she stood less than five
feet tall. When she was at home in Cambridge, Marjorie was an active volunteer
including for the Appalachian Mountain Club (editor, officer, life member),
Women’s Travel Club, Massachusetts Bar Association, Massachusetts Association
of Women Lawyers (serving as vice president and president), Business Women’s
Club, Cambridge Civic Association, Cambridge League of Women Voters (which met
in her home at 4 Mercer Circle), and, late in life, the Mount Auburn Hospital
Coffee Shop. She was an active Radcliffe alumna and a member of the First Parish
in Cambridge, Unitarian. Marjorie never married, but she was devoted to her
brother Jack’s three sons and one daughter, Lydia, in whose education
Marjorie took a special interest. Marjorie made it possible for Lydia to attend
Buckingham School, Radcliffe College (for two degrees), and the Harvard School
of Education. Lydia Hurd earned an Ed.D. from Harvard and went on to found the
Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program at Simmons College in Boston.
Marjorie died in 1977 at the age of 90 and was
buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery. During the memorial service held for her at
First Parish, Marjorie’s friend Christine Reid noted, “her infectious
laugh, her quick wit, her keen, incisive, legally trained mind, and her overflowing
enthusiasm for the many and varied activities in which she participated won
her countless friends and admirers during her long and productive life. Her
sometimes brusque manner concealed her warm and generous heart, and she will
be long remembered with deep admiration by those of us who were privileged to
have known her.”
References: Marjorie Hurd Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; Radcliffe College alumni files;
Social Law Library files, Supreme Judicial Court; New England School of Law
files; Hurd family files. Photograph courtesy of the Hurd family.
For more detailed bio, see http://www.hurdsmith.com/marjoriehurd.htm
Cambridge
Women's Heritage Project
March 2009