On this Day…1853 Helen Magill White by Donna Schlachter

Helen Magill 1873 courtesy Wikipedia

Helen Magill was born in Providence, Rhode Island on November 28, 1853. Her parents, Edward Hicks Magill and Sarah Warner Beans Magill, later had five more daughters, raising them in a Quaker setting. As such, she was brought up to believe she could and should have the same education as a man, and indeed, she and her five sisters became college teachers.

In 1859, the family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where Helen enrolled as the only female student at Boston Public Latin School, probably because her father was submaster there, teaching French and Latin.

When Helen was 16, her father became a professor at the new Swarthmore College, founded by Quakers, in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. She enrolled as an undergraduate, graduating in the Class of 1873, one of five women graduating in the first graduating class at the college, along with one man. By this time, her father had been the college’s second president for two years, and he went on to serve in that position for the next 15 years.

Helen attended graduate school at Boston University, earning her doctorate in Greek in 1877. She was the first female Ph.D. in the United States. She then traveled to England, studying at the University of Cambridge. However, due to illness (she struggled with depression most of her life), she ranked only third in her 1881 honors examination at Newnham College, which she felt negatively impacted her academic career.

An interesting note here is that her dissertation, The Greek Drama, was lost until being located in her papers in the Rare Book and Manuscript Collections of Cornell University Library in 2018.

Apart from Helen, Boston University is also known for awarding other notable degrees: To Anna Oliver, the first degree to a woman in theology in the US in 1878; To Lelia Robinson, the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1881; and to Solomon Carter Fuller, the first place psychiatrist in the US. He graduated from the university’s School of Medicine in 1897, and made significant contributions to the study of Alzheimer’s disease.

Helen’s career began with serving for one year at a private school in Pennsylvania, before being recommended to organize Howard Collegiate Institute in Massachusetts in 1883. At the time, the school hosted about 40 women, and Helen hired teachers and taught college courses. She taught here until 1887.

Andrew D. White 1885 courtesy Wikipedia

Helen met her future husband, Andrew D. White, around this time while presenting a paper about her time at Newnham College. A college contemporary of Helen’s father, he had formerly served as the first president of Cornell University, His wife had died a year earlier. He encouraged her to apply as Director of Sage College for Women at Cornell, but she was hesitant because of her previous experience at Howard College and her ongoing depression.

After leaving Howard Collegiate, she taught at Evelyn College for women, an annex of Princeton University, leaving there (perhaps following a bout of depression) to teach geography at Brooklyn High School for several years. During this time, Helen kept in communication, finally marrying in 1890. They had three children together.

Helen joined her husband in St. Petersburg and Berlin where he served in diplomatic posts. She was an asset to his career, presented at both courts, and was much sought after for her understanding of architecture, sculptures, music, and literature.

When they returned to the US, she maintained a private life, choosing to keep her home and raise her children away from the public or academic spotlight.

After her husband died in 1918, and with her children grown and on their own, she lived several years abroad, returning to the US, then retiring to Kittery Point, Maine, where she died in 1944, one month shy of her 91st birthday.

While Helen’s letters and correspondence indicated she felt she could have achieved much more if she’d criticized less, there is no question that she was a brave woman who tested social norms and changed university traditions that usually excluded women. As such, we can remember her this month for making room for all of our daughters, sisters, and granddaughters in higher education.



Leave a comment about Helen Magill White and share your thoughts about her persevering spirit.





About Donna:

A hybrid author, Donna writes squeaky clean historical and contemporary suspense. She has been published more than 60 times in books; is a member of several writers' groups; facilitates a critique group; teaches writing classes; and judges in writing contests. She loves history and research, traveling extensively for both, and is an avid oil painter. She is taking all the information she’s learned along the way about the writing and publishing process, and is coaching committed writers eager to tell their story.



www.DonnaSchlachter.com

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Resources:

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Mark Twain's First Love: The Girl Who Became Becky Thatcher

Mark Twain in front of his boyhood home in Hannibal (1902); public domain image

Mark Twain’s wry wit and quick humor made him a celebrity in his time. His deep understanding of the human condition infused the books he wrote, earning them a place among the classics. Although Twain departed from this Earth on March 21, 1910, his quotes resound today. Who doesn’t smile at: “Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.” This quip provides food for thought: “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Here’s my personal favorite: “Books are the liberated spirits of men.”

A figure like Mark Twain can seem larger than life, much like the characters he created. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn remain with us long after we read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Who can forget Huck fishing by the river or Tom tricking his friends into whitewashing his aunt’s fence? We may grow up, but in true Peter-Pan fashion, those two never will.

The appeal of Twain’s characters might be due to the fact that he based them on people he actually knew. Twain drew Huck Finn from a childhood friend, the son of an sawmill worker with a drinking problem. In his autobiography, Mark Twain (or Samuel Langhorne Clemens—his birth name) admitted: “In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was.” 

The origins of Tom Sawyer are a subject of debate, but Smithsonian Magazine claims to have solved the riddle. Tom Sawyer, Samuel Clemen’s firefighter friend, was a hero credited with saving 90 lives during the sinking of the steamship “Independence.” However, some believe that Samuel drew from his own childhood to create his fictional Tom Sawyer. He must have liked to honor people he admired by naming characters after them, as he later named one of his characters after the girl who inspired Becky Thatcher.

(Anna) Laura Hawkins was only a couple of years old when she moved with her family from Georgetown, Kentucky to Hannibal, Missouri. Laura lived in a two-story frame house on Hill Street, across from the Clemens home. She and Samuel became childhood sweethearts. Here's Laura's account of her early romance (with a few typo corrections) which appeared in the Norfolk Post, Number 223, 27 February 1922: “Mark and 1 started going to school the same year,” Mrs. Frazier says. "He was seven and I was six. Our houses were across the street from each other right here in Hannibal. Mark had long, golden curls hanging over his shoulders. He used to carry my books to school every morning and carry them home in the afternoon. And he’d treat me to apples and oranges and divide his candy with me. In the winter Mark spent most of his time on the ice. I couldn’t skate, he always arranged for mo to go along. He used to push me along the ice on a split-bottom chair. He was a fine skater, too; in fact, he was good at anything he undertook. The first time I ever saw Mark was on a hot summer day. He came out of his house and started showing off, turning handsprings and cutting capers. His heel hit me and I was thrown to the ground and knocked unconscious. I recall hearing the children talking about how scared Mark was.”

Laura Hawkin's Hannibal home, the "Becky Thatcher House), photograph by Andrew Balet, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Tragedy struck the Clemens household in 1847. John Marshall Clemens, Samuel’s father, died of pneumonia. To help his family, Samuel left school at age 11 and took a job as a printer’s apprentice for a newspaper. He went to work as a typesetter for his older brother, Orion, who owned a local paper. He wrote short, satirical pieces for his brother’s paper. Samuel left Hannibal in 1853 at age 17 and shifted about working as a printer. In 1857, he apprenticed as a Mississippi steamboat pilot.

Samuel took his pen name during his steamboat employment. “Mark twain” meant “two fathoms, or 12 feet, which was a safe depth for a steamboat.

Laura went on to higher studies at Van Rensselaer Presbyterial Academy in Rensselaer, Missouri. She married James W. Frazer, a physician, in 1858. They had two children, both sons.

Samuel lost his younger brother, Henry, following a boiler explosion on the steamboat “Pennsylvania.” Although heartbroken, Samuel got his pilot’s license in 1859. He worked along the Mississippi until the Civil War ended commercial steamboat traffic in 1861. 

Samuel joined his brother, Orion on a westward journey that he detailed in his semi-autobiographic book, “Roughing It.” Life in the West brought many adventures his way. He gained prominence in 1865 after an author friend invited him to contribute to a book. Samuel sent a lively account of the Calaveras County Jumping Frog Contest that essentially launched his own writing career.

Mark Twain at age 31 in 1867; public domain image

In 1870, the evening before he married Olivia “Livy” Langdon, Samuel scribbled something on a note card, which he then sealed and mailed it to Laura Hawkin’s brother in Hannibal with instructions to deliver it to her. Whatever that note contained went to the grave with them both.

Olivia Langdon (1845-1904) at about 24 years old, taken on October 29, 1869; public domain image 

We don't know much about the adult life of Laura Hawkins Frazer. Her husband died in 1875. Later, in 1895, Laura hired on as matron of a Hannibal home for orphans and indigent.  

Samuel and Olivia seemed to have a happy marriage, although tragedy did touch them. The first of their children, a boy they named Langdon, suffered from fragile health. He died of diphtheria at 19 months, leaving his distraught parents. They consoled themselves by doting on his younger sister, Olivia Susan “Susy.” Two more girls joined the family. Clara acquired the nickname “Bay” for her older sister’s pronunciation of "baby." Jane, the youngest, suffered from epilepsy. Both Susy and Jane died in their twenties. Clara lived a long life and died at 88. Her daughter, Nina Gabrilowitsch had no children. Samuel Clemens’s line died out with her passing in 1966.

Olivia, always frail, died in 1904. She may have suffered a heart attack. As her health took a turn for the worse, doctors recommended she keep away from her husband to avoid becoming overexcited. She and Samuel went months without seeing one another, but he broke the rule to exchange love letters and kisses.

Samuel visited Laura Hawkins Frazer in Hannibal in 1902. Life had carried them apart, and this was the first they’d seen of one another in 50 years.

Photograph taken in 1902 of Mark Twain with Anna Laura (Elizabeth) Hawkins Frazer; public domain image

Laura and Samuel got together again in 1908 in Redding Connecticut, four years after Olivia's death. Although Samuel and Laura never revived their romance, they remained friends. In the end, he imparted to her something of his own fame by immortalizing her in his writing.

About Janalyn Voigt

Escape into creative worlds of fiction with Janalyn Voigt. Her unique blend of adventure, romance, suspense, and fantasy creates worlds of beauty and danger for readers. The Montana Gold series explores the faith, courage, and loves of an Irish-immigrant family making a way for themselves in the Wild West. Tales of Faeraven, her medieval epic fantasy series, carries the reader into a land only imagined in dreams. When she's not writing, Janalyn loves spending time discovering the great outdoors.

Learn more about Janalyn Voigt and her books.

The History Behind The Nutcracker Ballet

Patty Smith Hall here, and with Christmas coming up, I find my thoughts going back to Christmases past, especially those of my childhood and early teenage years.  Those years, while full of family reunions and fun with friends, also meant long hours at Ms Iris Hensley's ballet studio, preparing for the annual Christmas performances of The Nutcracker. For most ballet companies, these December performances bring in almost half of their yearly operating budget and for us, it was an opportunity to introduce the art of dance to school children in our area who came on field trips to watch the story of Claire and her Nutcracker Prince. But where did the story originate? What is the history behind The Nutcracker?


It started in Germany, 1816 when E.T.A. Hoffman, a writer and composer, penned a Christmas story called The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. A novelist who combined romance, fantasy and horror, Hoffman's tale of Marie(in later versions, Claire,) her nutcracker prince and their constant battle with the mouse king was darker, more sinister, more in line with of the works of Byron and Poe than the sweet Christmas confection that's presented today. In 1844, famed author Alexander Dumas streamlined Hoffman's story, and it was this version that caught the eye of choreographer Marius Petipa. Working with composer Peter Tchaikovsky, Petipa created the Sugar Plum Fairy, Mother Ginger and all the inhabitants of the Land of Sweets which were not initially in Hoffman's story.




The ballet premiered in St. Petersburg, Russia in December of 1892 on a double-bill with Tchaikovsky's newest opera and opened to mixed reviews. Over the next several decades, it would be revived--some replacing the Sugar Plum Fairy with an adult Claire (which is more in line with Hoffman's original story.) But it was not until 1944 when the San Francisco Ballet performed the full-length ballet for the first time that The Nutcracker became a holiday classic. Choreographer George Balanchine's 1954 version is considered the standard from which most ballet companies and schools around the country adapt their versions or incorporate certain parts such as the Waltz of the Flowers or Mother Ginger into their Christmas performances. 

Patty as Snow in The Nutcracker

Patty Smith Hall has been making up stories since she was forced on boring Sunday drives into the Georgia countryside when she was too young to stay home. Now she's happy to share her wild imagination and love of history with others, including her husband of 30 years, Danny, two smart and gorgeous daughters, and a yorkie that she spoils like a baby. Her latest release is The Doctor's Bride(Harlequin/Heartsong.)

The Doctor's Bride

Dr. Joshua McClain is headed west

First stop: Hillsdale, Michigan, to break the marriage contract his late mother arranged between him and Katie Clark. Years ago, Katie left him behind in Charleston. But after a train crash, he comes face-to-face with Dr. Kathleen Clark, his childhood friend all grown up.

When Josh shows up in town, claiming they're betrothed, Katie refuses to consider an arranged marriage. She'll marry for love or not at all. Besides, he's headed for Kansas Territory; her practice is here in Hillsdale. So why are they both finding it hard to break their betrothal and say goodbye?