Women at Harvard University

Alice M. Boring correspondence, 1921-1956, (HUG 4229.25.5)
Included within the Papers of Edwin Garrigues Boring, 1919-1977 (HUG 4229.xx), these papers include the correspondence of Alice M. Boring (1883-1955), 1921-1956. Alice M. Boring (1883-1955) was Boring's sister; a zoologist, she taught for some years in China. It includes carbons of letters from Edwin Boring, but also some letters from Alice M. Boring. It also includes correspondence with persons outside the family that relate to Alice M. Boring’s personal business and financial matters, especially settlement of her estate (1955-1956).

• Open for research.

 

Chest of 1900 (HUA 900.xx).
The Chest of 1900 was a time-capsule project undertaken by Harvard University to mark the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. It contains diaries, many of which were written by Harvard women, including Anna Belle Eisenhower, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, Harriet Hyatt, Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming, Katharine Fullerton, Alice Freeman Palmer, and Lucy Allen Patton.

• Open for research.

 

Katharine Fowler-Billings lantern slide collection, 1937 (HUM 206).
Katharine “Kay” Stevens Fowler-Billings (1902-1997) was a geologist who taught at Wellesley College, Erskine Junior College, and Tufts College, but spent most of her career conducting private research. In 1938, she married geologist and Harvard professor Marland Pratt Billings. The collection includes 88 lantern slides, housed in two black wooden slide boxes, document Fowler-Billings’ 1937 geological expedition to Russia and Japan for the 17th International Geological Conference.

• Open for research.

 

Scrapbook compiled by the sister of Samuel Tenney Hildreth, 1839-ca. 1860 (HUG 1451.307).
Samuel Tenney Hildreth (1817-1839) earned his Harvard AB in 1837 and was an Instructor in Elocution at Harvard from 1838 to 1839. His sister's name and profession are not noted in scrapbook; she may have been a teacher. The scrapbook has a few notices about Hildreth's death, some of his manuscript poems and essays, and some material relating to Harvard's Class of 1837, but it chiefly contains newspaper clippings, many of which are poems.

• Open for research.

 

Leonard family correspondence, 1793-1829 (HUD 823.49).
The Leonard family lived primarily in Marshfield, Massachusetts. This collection contains five letters written by Molly Fobes Leonard, minister Elijah Leonard, and their son George. Included is a letter from Molly to her unmarried sister Nancy discussing courtship.

• Open for research.

 

Leslie Miller-Bernal correspondence with David Riesman, 1991-1998 (HUM 362)
Leslie Miller-Bernal (1946-), sociologist, is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Wells College. She has written several books on women’s colleges and the history of single-sex education. This collection contains correspondence, from 1991 to 1998, between sociologists Leslie Miller-Bernal and David Riesman. The thirty letters primarily concern Riesman and Miller-Bernal’s shared interest in single-sex education for both men and women and the history of this subject from the period of World War I through the 1990s.

• Open for research.

 

Yvonne Renouard personal archive, 1914-1926.  (HUG 4582.95).
Yvonne Renouard (1890-1977) was a social worker in the London slums during World War I, subsequently serving as an interpreter in France for the American aviation unit. She was awarded two medals for her war work. Renouard was an instructor at the Middlebury French Summer School from 1929 throughout the 1930s, where she worked with Harvard professor and French war hero André Morize. The collection includes materials related to Renouard’s war work and her personal life after the conflict.

• Open for research.

 

A Recognition: For Perley Cole [signed poem] by May Sarton, 1962. (HUM 277).
Eleanore Marie Sarton (pen name May Sarton) wrote several volumes of poetry, novels, children’s books, and nonfiction autobiographies and memories. This is a signed copy of Sarton’s poem, “A Recognition: For Perley Cole.” Poem is typed in green ink, dated Christmas, 1962, with the typed signature “May Sarton, Nelson, New Hampshire and Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

• Open for research.