Alice Freeman Palmer: Draft for Docents

Alice Freeman Palmer, First Woman as President of a Noted American College

Alice Elvira Freeman’s father was a farmer when his daughter was born in 1855, but saw that he needed a better career and enrolled in medical school when Alice was six years old. He completed his M.D. in three years, and Alice followed his example by deciding to attend college herself, eventually entering the University of Michigan and excelling there. She had barely started her teaching career at age 22 when her father’s bad mining investment plunged him into bankruptcy. Alice became the support of her family, even as she rose to become principal of a high school in Saginaw, Michigan.

Henry Durant had founded Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1870, and by 1877 he had noticed Alice Freeman’s work. It took him two years to persuade her to joint the faculty at Wellesley as head of the history department, where she quickly became a favorite with students. In October 1881, she was named vice-president and acting president of the college, and at Durant’s death she was elected its president.

She was only 26 years old, and was the first woman to head a nationally known college. The University of Michigan awarded her an honorary Ph.D. to go with her new and controversial position – many people then didn’t think women should even go to college at all!

When Alice Freeman met George Herbert Palmer, the pair fell in love and soon became secretly engaged to marry. Alice dared not wear a ring or otherwise announce the engagement, because it would mean the end of her position. A woman leader at Wellesley was not expected to take the secondary role to a man that marriage would demand. But word slowly leaked out, so with her marriage in 1887, she resigned, leaving a legacy of stronger academics and a broad curriculum in liberal arts.

The new University of Chicago recruited her, even though married, and in 1892 she became dean of its women’s department. For three years she stayed in Chicago, but her husband had refused to leave Cambridge, so Alice at last resigned and came home.

Tragically, a surgical operation to repair a problem with her liver ended her life in 1903. She had put so much into her 48 years! A service at Harvard University commemorated her and was attended by college presidents and others of note.

Along with her development of the two colleges, Alice Freeman Palmer also founded the American Association of University Women. It is likely that her visit to St. Johnsbury, arranged by the local Women’s Club, was in the late 1890s. After her death, in 1920 she was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, and in World War II the United States Liberty ship SS Alice F. Palmer was named in her honor.

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from WHY GO TO COLLEGE? an Address by Alice Freeman Palmer, circa 1898

To a largely increasing number of young girls college doors are opening every year. Every year adds to the number of men who feel as a friend of mine, a successful lawyer in a great city, felt when in talking of the future of his four little children he said, "For the two boys it is not so serious, but I lie down at night afraid to die and leave my daughters only a bank account." Year by year, too, the experiences of life are teaching mothers that happiness does not necessarily come to their daughters when accounts are large and banks are sound, but that on the contrary they take grave risks when they trust everything to accumulated wealth and the chance of a happy marriage. Our American girls themselves are becoming aware that they need the stimulus, the discipline, the knowledge, the interests of the college in addition to the school, if they are to prepare themselves for the most serviceable lives. …
While it is not true that all girls should go to college any more than that all boys should go, it is nevertheless true that they should go in greater numbers than at present. They fail to go because they, their parents and their teachers, do not see clearly the personal benefits distinct from the commercial value of a college training. I wish here to discuss these benefits, these larger gifts of the college life,—what they may be, and for whom they are waiting.
It is undoubtedly true that many girls are totally unfitted by home and school life for a valuable college course. These joys and successes, these high interests and friendships, are not for the self-conscious and nervous invalid, nor for her who in the exuberance of youth recklessly ignores the laws of a healthy life. The good society of scholars and of libraries and laboratories has no place and no attraction for her who finds no message in Plato, no beauty in mathematical order, and who never longs to know the meaning of the stars over her head or the flowers under her feet. Neither will the finer opportunities of college life appeal to one who, until she is eighteen (is there such a girl in this country?), has felt no passion for the service of others, no desire to know if through history or philosophy, or any study of the laws of society, she can learn why the world is so sad, so hard, so selfish as she finds it, even when she looks upon it from the most sheltered life. No, the college cannot be, should not try to be, a substitute for the hospital, reformatory or kindergarten. …
Pre-eminently the college is a place of education. That is the ground of its being. We go to college to know, assured that knowledge is sweet and powerful, that a good education emancipates the mind and makes us citizens of the world. No college which does not thoroughly educate can be called good, no matter what else it does. No student who fails to get a little knowledge on many subjects, and much knowledge on some, can be said to have succeeded, whatever other advantages she may have found by the way. It is a beautiful and significant fact that in all times the years of learning have been also the years of romance. Those who love girls and boys pray that our colleges may be homes of sound learning, for knowledge is the condition of every college blessing.