Martha Carey Thomas (January 2, 1857 – December 2, 1935) was an American
educator
A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching.
''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...
,
suffragist
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...
, and
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...
. She was the second president of
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United ...
, a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
Biography
Early life
Carey Thomas, as she preferred to be called later in life (she was known as Minnie to her family as a child), was born in
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore wa ...
on January 2, 1857. She was the daughter of James Carey Thomas and Mary (Whitall) Thomas. She was conceived "in full daylight", because her father, a doctor, thought this would diminish the chance of his wife miscarrying.
Her family included many prominent
Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...
s, including her uncle and aunt
Robert Pearsall Smith and
Hannah Whitall Smith
Hannah Tatum Whitall Smith (February 7, 1832 – May 1, 1911) was a lay speaker and author in the Holiness movement in the United States and the Higher Life movement in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. She was also active in ...
, and her cousins
Alys Pearsall Smith
Alyssa Whitall "Alys" Pearsall Smith (21 July 1867 – 22 January 1951) was an American-born British Quaker relief organiser and the first wife of Bertrand Russell. She chaired the society that created an innovative school for mothers in 1907.
...
(first wife of
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, a ...
) and
Mary Smith Berenson Costelloe (who married
Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865 – October 6, 1959) was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. His book ''The Drawings of the Florentine Painters'' was an international success. His wife Mary is thought to have had a large ...
).
In 1864, when Carey Thomas was just seven years old, she was severely burned while trying to help her cook, Eliza, prepare lunch. Thomas's frock caught on fire and the young girl was engulfed in flames, which were shortly thereafter extinguished by her mother. Her recovery was long and arduous, a time during which her mother cared for her intently. Growing up, Thomas was strongly influenced by the staunch
feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
of her mother and her mother's sister,
Hannah, who became a prominent preacher. Her father was not entirely comfortable with feminist ideas, but his daughter was fiercely independent, and he supported her in these endeavors.
Although both her parents were orthodox members of the
Society of Friends
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...
, Thomas' education and European travel led her to question those beliefs and develop a love for music and theater, both of which were forbidden to orthodox Quakers. This religious questioning led to friction with her mother.
Thomas initially attended a Society of Friends school in Baltimore. Minnie had a strong childhood relationship with her cousin, Frank Smith, Hannah Smith's son. The two were almost inseparable until Frank's sudden death in 1872. Minnie became deeply depressed, moving her parents to send her, along with her cousin, Bessie, to the
Howland Institute, a Quaker boarding school near
Ithaca, New York
Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named ...
, in October, 1872. While at Howland, Minnie decided to dress as a man in the school's opera, which made her mother very upset, for it was "repugnant to her taste". It was here that Miss Slocum, a teacher at Howland, influenced Minnie to study education, rather than medicine. Thomas hoped to enter
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
to pursue further education, but met with her father's objections. After a great deal of pleading from both Thomas and her mother, her father relented.
Thomas went to
Sage College, the women's school at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
, in September, 1875, where she formally changed her first name to Carey. She graduated from Cornell University in 1877. Cornell offered her both the position of professor of literature and dean of Sage College, but she did not consider either.
[ She did graduate work in Greek at ]Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
, but withdrew because she was not permitted to attend classes. She did further graduate work at the University of Leipzig
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December ...
, but that university did not grant degrees to women. She then went to the University of Zurich
The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 f ...
and earned a Ph.D. in linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...
, summa cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...
, in 1882 for her dissertation, which was a philological
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as t ...
analysis of ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of ...
''. This dissertation continued to be highly regarded by specialists eighty years later.
She was the first woman and the first foreigner to receive such a doctorate from the university. She then spent some time in Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
, where she attended lectures by Gaston Paris
Bruno Paulin Gaston Paris (; 9 August 1839 – 5 March 1903) was a French literary historian, philologist, and scholar specialized in Romance studies and medieval French literature. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901, 19 ...
at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne may refer to:
* Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities.
*the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970)
*one of its components or linked institution, ...
, and then returned to the United States. Thomas did not pursue her degree out of love for her academic work, but rather out of a desire to show Americans that women had the same intellectual capacity as men.
At Bryn Mawr
In 1882, Thomas wrote a letter to the trustees of Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United ...
, requesting that she be made president of the university. She was not granted the position, however, as the trustees were concerned about her relative youth and lack of experience. Instead, Thomas entered in 1884 as the dean of the college and chair of English. Despite not receiving her desired role at Bryn Mawr, Thomas was active in the college's administration, working closely with then president James Rhoads. According to the biographical dictionary ''Notable American Women: 1607–1950'', by 1892 she was "acting president in all but name". She hired Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
as professor of history and government, 1882-1885.
At the end of April 1884 Thomas went with the encouragement of President Rhoads to tour other colleges in the area to become familiar with them in order to bring ideas back to Bryn Mawr. She started her tour at Vassar, then she went on to Smith College, Wellesley, and ended her tour at Radcliffe (or the Harvard Annex as it was called).
In 1885, Thomas, together with Mary Garrett
Mary Elizabeth Garrett (March 5, 1854 – April 3, 1915) was an American suffragist and philanthropist. She was the youngest child and only daughter of John W. Garrett, a philanthropist and president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B. & O.). ...
, Mamie Gwinn (February 2, 1860 – November 11, 1940), Elizabeth King, and Julia Rogers, founded The Bryn Mawr School
Bryn Mawr School, founded in 1885 as the first college-preparatory school for girls in the United States, is an independent, nonsectarian all-girls school for grades PK-12, with a coed preschool. Bryn Mawr School is located in the Roland Park co ...
, a prep school in Baltimore, Maryland. The school would produce well-educated young women who met the very high entrance standards of Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United ...
.
In 1894, President Rhoads died, and Thomas was narrowly elected to succeed him on September 1, 1894. Out of respect for President Rhoads's recent death, Thomas was not given a ceremony. She was president until 1922 and remained as Dean until 1908.
During her tenure as president, Thomas' primary concern was upholding the highest standards of admissions and academic rigor. The entrance examinations for the college were made as difficult as those at Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
, and pupils could not gain admission by certificate. For the academic curriculum, Thomas emulated the "group system" of Johns Hopkins, in which students were required to take parallel courses in a logical sequence. Students could not freely choose electives. There were also other requirements, including a foreign language requirement that culminated in a sight translation examination proctored by Thomas herself. Overall, the academic curriculum at Bryn Mawr under Thomas shunned liberal arts education, preferring more traditional topics such as Greek, Latin, and mathematics. Thomas was also instrumental in bringing several new buildings to the College, which introduced collegiate Gothic architecture to the United States.
In 1908, she became the first president of the National College Women's Equal Suffrage League. She was also a leading member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association
The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National ...
. After 1920 she advocated the policies of the National Woman's Party
The National Woman's Party (NWP) was an American women's political organization formed in 1916 to fight for women's suffrage. After achieving this goal with the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the NW ...
. She was one of the early promoters of an equal rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
For many years Thomas maintained an intimate relationship with long-time friend, Mamie Gwinn. Thomas and Gwinn lived together at Bryn Mawr College in a small cottage that came to be known as "the Deanery
A deanery (or decanate) is an ecclesiastical entity in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Communion, the Evangelical Church in Germany, and the Church of Norway. A deanery is either the jurisdiction or reside ...
". "As late as the first decade of the twentieth century, she wrote of her relationship with Mamie in language analogous to marriage. But by the 1920s she faced a different world. The love between women that had once been broadly accepted was now being portrayed in fiction and on the stage as lesbian and deviant." When Gwinn left Thomas in 1904 to marry (a love triangle fictionalized in Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
's ''Fernhurst'') Alfred Hodder
Alfred LeRoy Hodder (September 18, 1866 – March 3, 1907) was an American author, attorney, Bryn Mawr College professor, private secretary to Manhattan District Attorney William Travers Jerome, muckraking journalist, and voice of the Progressiv ...
, a fellow Professor of English at Bryn Mawr College, Thomas pursued a relationship with Mary Elizabeth Garrett
Mary Elizabeth Garrett (March 5, 1854 – April 3, 1915) was an American suffragist and philanthropist. She was the youngest child and only daughter of John W. Garrett, a philanthropist and president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B. & O.).S ...
.[ Thomas shared her campus home, the ]Deanery
A deanery (or decanate) is an ecclesiastical entity in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Communion, the Evangelical Church in Germany, and the Church of Norway. A deanery is either the jurisdiction or reside ...
, with Garrett and together they endeavored to grow Bryn Mawr's resources. Upon her death, Garrett, who had been prominent in suffrage work and a benefactor of Bryn Mawr, left to President Thomas "a sum which would, in 1994, be close to $15,000,000."[ to be disposed of as she saw fit. M. Carey Thomas had firm views on marriage, and in a letter to her mother she described it as a "Loss of freedom, poverty, and a personal subjection for which I see absolutely no compensation."][
]
Racism and antisemitism
Both during and before her tenure as college president, Thomas actively worked to bar Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
from entering Bryn Mawr, both as faculty members and as students, biographer Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz (born 31 Jan. 1942) is an American historian and the Sydenham Clark Parsons Professor of American Studies and History, emerita, at Smith College.
Early life and education
Horowitz was born on 31 Jan. 1942 in Shreveport, Lo ...
noted. Thomas blocked the hiring of Jewish teachers, and later worked to remove Jewish candidates from consideration for faculty positions, noting she preferred to have faculty made up of "our own good Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...
stock." She tried to block the admission of Sadie Szold, a Jewish student, to the college.
In a speech to the freshman class of 1916, Thomas said: "If the present intellectual supremacy of the white races is maintained, as I hope that it will be for centuries to come, I believe that it will be because they are the only races that have seriously begun to educate their women." While Thomas claimed that African American students did not apply to Bryn Mawr during her tenure as president, she diverted Jessie Redmon Fauset
Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882 – April 30, 1961) was an African-American editor, poet, essayist, novelist, and educator. Her literary work helped sculpt African-American literature in the 1920s as she focused on portraying a true image ...
, an African American student who received a scholarship to attend Bryn Mawr in 1901, to Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
, and helped pay a portion of Fauset's tuition.
In August 2017, Bryn Mawr President Kim Cassidy addressed Thomas' "racism and anti-Semitism' and demands by some that the school drop Thomas' name from several buildings. ''"While Thomas had a profound impact on opportunities for women in higher education ... on the academic development and identity of Bryn Mawr, and on the physical plan of the campus, she also openly and vigorously advanced racism and anti-Semitism as part of her vision of the College. Some of you have suggested that the College rename Thomas Library and Thomas Great Hall because of this legacy, and others have suggested making that history explicit in other ways."''
In 2018, the buildings formerly known as Thomas Library and Thomas Hall was renamed Old Library and Great Hall.
Later life and death
Thomas retired in 1922, at age sixty-five. She left the college in the capable hands of Marion Edwards Park, who had served as a dean at both Simmons and Radcliffe Colleges. The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry
The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry (1921–1938) was a residential summer school program that brought approximately 100 young working women—mostly factory workers with minimal education—to the Bryn Mawr College campus, i ...
, which was founded at Carey's behest in 1921, was a sort of "grand finale" bookending Thomas' legacy as an earlier shaper of the college.[
Mary Garrett left a considerable fortune to Thomas, who spent the last two decades of her life traveling the world in luxury, including trips to ]India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
, the Sahara
, photo = Sahara real color.jpg
, photo_caption = The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972
, map =
, map_image =
, location =
, country =
, country1 =
, ...
, and France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
. Thomas died in Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...
on December 2, 1935 of a coronary occlusion. She had returned to the city to address Bryn Mawr College on the fiftieth anniversary of its founding. Her ashes were scattered on the Bryn Mawr College campus in the cloisters of the Thomas Library.
Gallery
File:Miss M. Carey Thomas.jpg, 1899 portrait of M. Carey Thomas by John Singer Sargent.
See also
* Hilda Worthington Smith
* Louise Leonard McLaren
*She-She-She Camps
The She-She-She Camps were camps for unemployed women that were organized by Eleanor Roosevelt (ER) in the United States as a counterpart to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) programs designed for unemployed men. ER found that the men-only fo ...
References
External links
Finding Aid to the M. Carey Thomas Papers, Bryn Mawr College Library
at www.brynmawr.edu
at www.brynmawr.edu
*
Photographs of M. Carey Thomas
Bryn Mawr College Photo Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Martha Carey
1857 births
1935 deaths
Cornell University alumni
People from Baltimore
Presidents of Bryn Mawr College
American suffragists
LGBT feminists
Linguists from the United States
Women linguists
American LGBT scientists
American women scientists
Workers' education
Labor schools
History of labor relations in the United States
Bryn Mawr School people
Women heads of universities and colleges
College Equal Suffrage League
LGBT academics
Feminists