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  • A Brief History of Simmons College
  • Presidents of Simmons College
  • Women of Simmons College, 1900-1920
  • Traditions of Simmons College
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Simmons College Archives

The Women of Simmons College, 1900 - 1920

The Corporation

The founding and early history of Simmons College owes a great debt to the strength and influence of a handful of prominent and respected Boston residents. Among the thirteen individuals called upon to carry out John Simmons’s will and apply to the Massachusetts legislature for incorporation of this innovative educational venture were two women—Fanny Baker Ames and Frances Rollins Morse. Their passion and interest in social justice and women’s education set a course that future members of the Corporation would follow.

After the May 1899 incorporation of Simmons Female College, a number of new Corporation members were recruited to help design the College’s educational program. Mary Morton Kehew, Marion McGregor Noyes, and Mary Eleanor Williams were, like Ames and Morse, leaders of Boston’s charitable community who used their energy and influence to foster social change. Through education and social work, they sought to improve the lives of poor and working women and their families.

Many of these women served on the Simmons Corporation well into the 20th century. Their influence was reflected in many of the College’s early programs and remains evident in the priorities and mission of Simmons College in the twenty-first century.

 

Frances Rollins Morse , 1850-1928, a member of a well-known Boston family, worked with Dr. Charles Putnam and Marion Jackson to establish the Associated Charities of Boston. Morse was a member of the Social Service Advisory Committee of Massachusetts General Hospital 1917-1927, and served on the Boston city board in charge of almshouses. In 1899, she was recruited to become a founding member of the Simmons College Corporation.

Morse was both a founding member and honorary member of the Academy and on the board of the Simmons College School of Social Work. She was a generous donor to scholarship and building projects at Simmons College and in 1953 Morse Hall was named in her honor. In 1912 she persuaded her cousin, Henry Lee Higginson, to sell land on Avenue Louis Pasteur to Simmons College for less than he had first requested. In 1922, Morse, the last of the active charter members, resigned from the Corporation. Upon her death, President Henry Lefavour remarked that Morse was "one of the most devoted friends of the College . . . during her twenty-three years of service there was no member of the Board more assiduous in the performance of her duties, more deeply interested in the personal welfare of the instructors and students, or more ready to aid in counsel, in personal attention, or in gifts to relieve aid."

 

Marion McGregor Noyes , 1833-1929, was born in New York City and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1878, she was a member of the first class of the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, from which Radcliffe College developed.

During the 1880s she was an instructor of philosophy at Wellesley College and later was associated with the philosophical department at Colorado College, where she remained until 1897. After returning to Boston, she remained involved in education and public welfare as a member of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, and the Massachusetts Child Labor Committee. She joined the Corporation of Simmons College in 1902 and served until 1918.

Fanny Baker Ames , 1840-1931, was a charity organizer and early supporter of women’s suffrage. During the economic depression of 1873, she helped establish the Relief Society of Germantown, Pennsylvania, considered the beginning of the charitable organization movement in the United States. In 1888, she and her husband, Unitarian minister Charles Gordon Ames, settled permanently in Boston. She held various offices in Massachusetts and New England suffrage associations, served for three years on the Boston School Committee, and, in 1891, began a four-year term as the state’s first woman factory inspector. She was a founder of the Good Government League, which later became the League of Women Voters. She was a founding member of the Simmons Corporation and served until 1914.
(Photograph courtesy of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.)

Mary Eleanor Williams was a Boston reformer involved with the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union and the North Bennett Street Industrial School. Shewas recruited by Frances Rollins Morse to the Board of Trustees of Simmons College to help promote a greater public interest and more intimate understanding of the College and its purposes. Williams responded by helping to form the Associates, a group whose aim was to publicize the mission and role of Simmons College. Williams helped establish the School of Public Health Nursing and served on the School’s advisory committee for many years. She was particularly interested in the early education program and also served on the search committee for the second president of the College. She stepped down from the Board in 1946.
(Photograph: Mrs. George West, Mrs. Robert Homans, Mary E. Williams, and an unidentified student in the Salvage Shop at 23 Blagden Street during the Endowment Campaign.)

Back to The Women of Simmons College, 1900-1920

Learn about members of the early Faculty of Simmons College

Learn about the early Alumnae of Simmons College

 

 

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Page updated: July 8, 2008