USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume I > Part 18
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The other member of the family, Miss Sara Walden, has always devoted her attention to educational work since reaching adult age. Liberal training was accorded her, for after completing her public school course, she attended the Kent Normal School, Heidelberg University and Bowling Green State University. She engaged in teaching for fourteen years, covering the period from 1916 to 1930, spending the first three years as teacher near Clyde, Ohio, and then teaching for thirteen years in the elementary grades and in the junior high school of Clyde.
In 1930 she came to Bucyrus to take up her duties as matron at Maple- crest, the state King's Daughters home for girls, and is still filling this position. She has been a member of the King's Daughters since 1919 and now has membership in Melior Circle at Bucyrus and she also belongs to the Delphian Society, a study group, and to the Methodist Church at Clyde. Since coming to Maplecrest she has been a real "mother" to the girls, ranging from pre-school age to the age of eighteen years, the average enrollment being about twenty. These girls at Maplecrest enjoy an intimate home life and the matron is more a mother or sister to them than an overseer. Inasmuch as each girl is the ward of some particular circle in the state, as well as of the Ohio branch, she is accorded privileges that the child in an ordinary institution is not given and in her work Miss Walden is reaching out toward high ideals of service for the individual girl and for the Home and in unusual manner has the love and confidence of those at Maplecrest.
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CLAIRE WALTERS
CLAIRE WALTERS, expert psychologist with the Bureau of Attendance and Placement, Cleveland Public Schools, was born in Cleveland, attended the Cleveland School of Education, took special courses in psychology at Harvard University, Columbia University, New York University, University of Pittsburgh and Johns Hopkins University.
Her special work is with delinquency and adjustment cases, in the understanding of which she is regarded as unusually gifted. Miss Walters assisted in organization of the Juvenile Detention Home at Cleveland and is in much demand for lectures on psychological subjects.
BERTHA EVANS WARD
BERTHA EVANS WARD teacher of English at Hughes High School, was born at Moss Point, Miss., of Scotch descent. Her ancestors came to North Carolina about 1746 and later generations made their way along the southern coastal plains, finally settling in Mississippi.
Miss Ward received her A.B. at the University of Chicago; her M.A. at the University of Cincinnati and taught for a few years in private schools of the south. She came to Cincinnati in 1909 to teach, first in elementary and later in high school.
Despite her professional responsibilities she managed to find time for editorial work of definite value and importance. Among published books which she edited are "Short Stories of Today," "Essays of Our Day" "Reds of the Midi" and "Tom Sawyer." She collaborated with Louis Untermeyer and Ruth Stauffer on "Doorways to Poetry" and has contributed articles to "The English Journal" that have challenged critical interest.
FLORENCE WARNER
FLORENCE WARNER, teacher in charge of the Cincinnati Oral School for the Deaf, has never wavered from a desire that was implanted in her mind when she was six years old. That was-to teach deaf children to speak.
Born in Austin, Texas, she went through school in her native state and obtained a first grade state certificate upon completing the second years' work at the Southwest Texas State Normal. She was trained for one year to teach the deaf by the principal of the Texas School and the following year became a member of the faculty.
Eager to continue her own education in her chosen field she attended an outstanding school for teaching the deaf in Northampton, Mass., this after she had taught in Texas two years. From the east she returned to Texas and taught there until several years later when Central Institute for the Deaf was established in St. Louis.
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She furthered her education at Central Institute, returned to teach her eleventh year in Texas and then went to Philadelphia where she taught three years.
An offer to teach at Central Institute took her to that school where she spent 14 years, the last 12 as head teacher and supervisor of mathematics and religious instruction. She also taught the arithmetic methods and some of the speech courses at Teachers' College and supervised part of the practice teaching done by the student teachers.
While at St. Louis, Miss Warner spent her summers attending different universities and in 1934 was graduated from Washington University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Education. She includes among her affilia- tions, Mu Iota Sigma, an honorary professional fraternity.
In 1935 she resigned her position in St. Louis to teach at the Oral School in Cincinnati because she saw the opportunity of building again. The school in St. Louis is acknowledged to be the best school for the deaf in the world and it is Miss Warner's hope that in her new field, with the help of her associates, the deaf children who attend the Oral School may be taught to speak as well, and in every way approach the normal, as closely as it is possible for handicapped children to do.
Since coming to Cincinnati Miss Warner has attended classes at the University of Cincinnati and has taken work at Columbia University.
She is a member of five organizations of teachers of the deaf, the Amer- ican Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, the Con- ference of Executives of American Schools for the Deaf, the Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf, the Progressive Oral Advocates and the Ohio Association of Supervisors and Teachers of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children.
Several other organizations are included among Miss Warner's affilia- tions, the American Association of University Women, Washington Alumni Association, National Education Association, the Ohio Education Association, the Southwestern Ohio Teachers Association, the Cincinnati Teachers Asso- ciation and Cincinnati Council of Childhood Education.
She has brought the education of the deaf to the attention of various civic and fraternal groups through talks and demonstrations.
Fond of music and travel she finds time to enjoy both of these hobbies. She is a member of Walnut Hills Christian Church.
DR. M. LaVINIA WARNER
DR. M. LaVINIA WARNER, a clinical psychologist, now superintendent of the department of public health and welfare of the Blossom Hill School of Cleveland, to which position she was appointed January 15, 1934, is giving
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close study to the varied and complex problems for which she must find solution in her work and the results she has achieved show that her solutions are usually correct for she has produced most valuable results. Miss Warner was born in Dundas, Ohio, August 11, 1895, a daughter of Leonard and Sara Jane (Axtell) Warner, the former born September 2, 1855, and the latter March 27, 1860.
After her graduation from high school at McArthur, Ohio, with the class of 1913, M. La Vinia Warner continued her education in Ohio Uni- versity at Athens, where the Bachelor of Science degree was conferred upon her in 1918. She gained her Master of Arts degree at Columbia Uni- versity of New York in 1922 and her Doctor of Philosophy degree in clinical psychology at Indiana University at Bloomington, Indiana in 1928. Some years before, she had taken her initial step in teaching in the public schools of her native town and was assistant director of the bureau of psychological and educational measurements in the public schools of Youngstown, Ohio from 1918 to 1922. It was then that she did her special work at Columbia University and from 1922 to 1928 she was director of the department of special education of Ohio University and also director of the department of special education of the city schools of Bloomington, Indiana, on leave from Ohio University. In 1928 she became director of the school for psychopathic children of the Bureau of Juvenile Research of the State Department of Welfare at Columbus, Ohio, so continuing until 1931, when she was made chief psychologist of the Pennsylvania Training School at Morganza, Penn- sylvania, where she remained until 1934. Since that time she has been super- intendent of the department of public health and welfare of the Blossom Hill School of Cleveland, a school for socially maladjusted girls.
Dr. Warner has many interesting professional, scientific and social mem- bership connections. She belongs to Pi Lambda Theta, Pi Gamma Mu, Zonta International, Business and Professional Women's Club, League of Women Voters, Cleveland Woman's City Club, the International Council for Excep- tional Children, of which she was one of the twelve organizers and the executive secretary for the first five years, the American Association of Applied Psychology, the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Ohio Research Association, the American Association of Mental Deficiency and the Ohio Psychologist Association, all of which indicates the great scope of her interests and activities that lead far beyond the point of majority interests into the realm of scientific achievement and understanding, whereby is attained a knowledge of the basic and fundamental development of the individual, leading always to possible improvement. In her religious connection Dr. Warner is a Methodist.
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MARY HOLLOWAY WEATHERLEY
MARY HOLLOWAY WEATHERLEY is a niece of Miss Amelia Taylor whose mother was also a teacher in the early days of Cincinnati. Mary teaches French and English in the Harriet Beecher Stowe Jr. High School. She received her education here at the University of Cincinnati and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.
MARY JANE WHITE
MARY JANE WHITE, assistant principal-in-charge of Cheviot -School, Cincinnati, brings to her present prominent place in the public school system a thorough training and a ripe experience.
A graduate of the Harrison, Ohio, High School, she entered Miami Uni- versity for her first pedagogical training, receiving there a certificate for special education. A Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Cincinnati and a Master of Arts degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, complete her intensive preparation for her life work.
Her appointment as principal of the Elementary School of North Bend, Ohio, was followed by several years teaching in the Morgan School, a part of the Cincinnati public school system, where among other duties, she taught a special class for mental defectives. In 1936 she became assistant principal at Morgan school, a position she held until her appointment in 1937 as assistant principal-in-charge of Cheviot School, where at present she ably and efficiently upholds the high standard established by Cincinnati public school teachers.
Miss White is a member of the National Education Association, Ohio Education Association, Southwestern Teachers Association and the Cincinnati Teachers Association. She also belongs to the Progressive Education Asso- ciation, Childhood Education Association, Upper Grades Study Council and Assistant Principals Club.
She is a member of the Cincinnati Peace League, and a former member of the Foreign Policy Association. She is affiliated with Central Christian Church.
FLORENCE LEONA WILSON
FLORENCE LEONA WILSON, born in Cincinnati in 1880 and graduated from the Liberal Arts College, University of Cincinnati, was a teacher of social studies at Woodward High School from September, 1911 until her sudden death, April 6th, 1914.
She was an educator of rare ability and was one of the pioneers in the introduction of civics into the public schools of Cincinnati. Her chapter on "Pioneer Life" in the Citizens Book, edited by Goodwin and Hebble, is
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regarded as a highly valuable civic study dealing with the elements of community life.
Her sister, ELLA J. WILSON, served for twenty years as registrar in the Cincinnati Kindergarten Training and since then as librarian in the administration building of the Cincinnati Board of Education.
In these and other important capacities the efficient and dependable services of Miss Ella Wilson have proven an important factor in the func- tioning of the school system.
ESTELLE HANKINS WILSON
ESTELLE HANKINS WILSON, for the past twelve years special teacher at Stowe School, Cincinnati, Ohio, was class poet of Cincinnati's classical Walnut Hills High School. Estelle wrote the lyrics for class songs and read the class poem at the school's closing exercises, an honor bestowed on no other member of her group in the history of Cincinnati schools.
Miss Wilson has contributed a number of outstanding articles and poems to local daily papers; to school and current magazines. Her goal is the production of a book of poems and articles which will merit top ranking.
A graduate of Smith College and of the University of Cincinnati, Miss Wilson is an active member of Sigma Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, journalist of College Women's Club and an affiliate of the Y.W.C.A. and of the N.A.A.C.P. She is deeply community-minded and has had important parts in movements for social and civic progress.
"The Spirit of Education" which heads this chapter, was written by this intellectually and spiritually gifted educator and has been widely com- mended for its literary merit as well as for its far visioned implications.
FLORENCE WRIGHT
In her entire 49 years of service, FLORENCE WRIGHT, of Cincinnati, who retired in June, 1938, as teacher at Kilgour school, was absent only one single day. This is believed to constitute an all city and possibly, and all state record.
Intensely interested in the progress of her pupils, Miss Wright has ob- served and studied the work of other teachers whose methods would assist her in stimulating her own classroom to achieve. The opinions of successful teachers has been more highly regarded by Miss Wright than any academic honors.
Native of Chillicothe and the daughter of David S. and Margaret Jane Wright, who were born in New England, Miss Wright began her teaching career in the Chillicothe schools in 1890. She attended Western College for Women at Oxford, Ohio, the National Normal University at Lebanon where
ESTELLE H. WILSON Cincinnati teacher, author of "Spirit of Education"
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she obtained her B. S. degree, and on two occasions went to Cook County Normal School in Chicago where she studied with Col. Parker, among others.
In 1905, the second time she was enrolled at the Normal School, she was an assistant to fifth and third grade teachers, one of whom was Gudrun Thorne Thomsen. The summer of 1906 she was one of a party of three teachers and 15 assistants who made a trip from Chicago to the Atlantic coast in the interests of the study of geography, geology and history. The group marching through little towns with their equipment and geology hammers were on num- erous occasions mistaken by loiterers before saloons as "Carrie Nations." The study would continue all day and reports would be made at night.
Following that trip she was asked to become a substitute teacher in Chilli- cothe but before her work began she was called by Dayton to teach elementary work in Dayton schools. She was there between 1906 and 1911 and then came to Cincinnati where she has taught ever since. She has been at Kilgour school since the second year that the school was opened.
Miss Wright cannot praise too highly the work of Anna Logan, retired, of the late Dr. Frank Dyer and Miss Sutherland, now of the Cincinnati Public School faculty, nor that of Hiram Carson of Cornell, of Dr. Ruth Streitz, now of Ohio State University, and of Frances Jenkins of Cincinnati University, whose influence she has found invaluable during her own years of study.
After her retirement she looks forward to tutoring private pupils, and increased activity with numerous organizations as well as more home life with her mother, with whom she lives at 2842 Pine Grove Avenue, Hyde Park.
Miss Wright belongs to the Cincinnati Crafters Company, the World Caravan Guild, Zeta Beta Phi sorority, Foreign Policy Association and Satur- day Library Club.
Her educational affiliations include the National Educational Association, Ohio Education Association, Cincinnati Teachers Association, and Southwest- ern Teachers Association.
PEARL M. WRIGHT
PEARL M. WRIGHT is widely known as the principal of Clifton, one of Cincinnati's leading public schools. Her teaching career with the exception of summer sessions at Ohio State University and New York University, has been in Cincinnati where she received her A. B. and M. A. degrees from the University of Cincinnati. She held a fellowship in Teachers Collge, 1928-1929, and worked towards her Ph. D., in Columbia University.
She began her teaching in the graded schools and for five years was a demonstration teacher at the University of Cincinnati. She also served as a training teacher in Teachers College, University of Cincinnati.
She is a charter member of Kappa Delta Pi, Zeta chapter, which she has served as president, secretary and treasurer. She is also a charter member
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of the state Delta Kappa Gamma, and of Xi chapter which she is serving in 1939 as vice president and program chairman.
Miss Wright is identified with educational, civic and church organizations. She belongs to the National Education Association, Progressive Education Association, Association for Childhood Education and the Department of Elementary School Principals, a national association. She is also a member of the Ohio Education Association.
Included among her affiliations are: American Association of University Women, University of Cincinnati Alumnal Association, Walnut Hills High School Alumnal Association, National Congress of Parents and Teachers, Clif- ton Parent Teachers Association, Clifton Kindergarten and Primary Mothers Club.
American Red Cross, Cincinnati Business and Professional Women's Club, National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs are other groups which have engaged her support.
She is a committee member of the Girl Scouts and holds membership with the Cincinnati Council of Childhood Education, Upper Grade Study Council, Cincinnati Elementary Principals Club, Graduate Club, Teachers College; Cincinnati Columbia Club, Teachers College Alumnal Association.
Her church membership is with the Church of the Advent, Episcopal. and she has been a teacher in the church school. She is a group associate of the Girls Friendly Society of the same church and has been supervisor of the primary department of Calvary Church.
GERTRUDE C. HAWKINS
GERTRUDE C. HAWKINS, research assistant in the Bureau of Educa- tional Research Board of Education, Cleveland, Ohio, is a woman whose wide interests extend beyond her office duties and reach into many channels where the influence of her educational achievements is of great value.
A daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Hawkins, now of San Diego, Cal., Miss Hawkins is a graduate of the Cleveland Kindergarten Training School. She received her B.A. degree at San Diego State University; her M.A. degree from Western Reserve University and before entering upon her present work was Supervisor of City Playgrounds in Cleveland and prior to this was a teacher in schools of Cleveland and San Diego.
She is a member of the American Educational Research Association. She has contributed to educational research, particularly as it reveals various phases of the physical, mental and emotional aspects of child growth and development.
She has to her credit as co-author many books on nature study, now used in the Cleveland public school system ; also the Cleveland Kindergarten Classi- fication test and other tests and is a contributor to many national educational magazines.
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She is a member of the Catholic Collegiate Association, Cleveland; a member of the advisory board of the Cleveland Diocesan Council, National Council of Catholic Women, and is its director of Education and is a member of the honorary educational society, Kappa Delta Phi.
ANNE GERTRUDE MCCARTHY
ANNE GERTRUDE MCCARTHY, director of personnel of the Cleveland Public Schools, to which position she was appointed on October 6, 1938, climbed the ladder of success by the hard route, working her way up from the bottom rung. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, educated in West High School, Cleveland and received her Bachelor and Masters degrees from West- ern Reserve University, Cleveland. She started out as an elementary teacher, had class room experience in the three divisions, elementary, junior and senior high, graduated from the class room into the position of assistant principal, then as acting principal and from the assistant principalship walked into the position of Director of Personnel, one never before held by a woman in the Cleveland system.
In addition to her practical experience for the position she now holds, Anne McCarthy has the faculty of liking people and the ability to get along with them, it matters not their temperment or disposition.
When not busy with personnel problems, Mrs. McCarthy devotes her leisure time to her hobbies of music, reading, the movies, the radio, and automobile touring on week ends and for vacations.
She is a member of the Mathematics Club, the National Education Asso- ciation, and the College Club, Art Museum Association, the Women's City Club, League of Women Voters and a life member of the National Council of Catholic Women, all of Cleveland.
JULIA KOLBE
Retired teachers, no longer in service, who have given distinctive service as teachers in Westwood School, Cincinnati include JULIA KOLBE and MINNIE MOHR who taught in this community before Westwood became a part of Cincinnati. CORDELIA MUSEKAMP who taught from 1904 to 1937; KATE M. GREISER, 1896-1930; HARRIET HILDRETH and MARGARET DUNN WALTON. These outstanding teachers died while teaching at West- wood: BESS DISERENS, GERTRUDE FELS and LIDA M. KAY who passed away in 1935.
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WOMEN IN OHIO COLLEGES
There are now more than 40 colleges and universities of Ohio with women as faculty members and students. Virtually all professional and special schools and colleges for teaching of art, music, law, medicine, teacher training, nurs- ing, etc., are co-educational.
This was not always true. Distinction of first opening its doors to women belongs to Oberlin College. Even there at first, there was a differentiation in courses and in the academic standing and honors of the men and women graduates.
A woman-MRS. ELIZA DAUGHERTY MacCRACKEN, was foundress of Oxford College for Women in 1849. Eliza MacCracken was a woman of energy and of indomitable will. We have this fact on excellent authority- that of her grandson Henry Nogle MacCracken, now president of Vassar College.
When the plan of establishing, as a memorial to Caroline Scott Harrison, wife of President Benjamin Harrison and first president-general of the D. A. R., a dormitory for girls at Oxford College for Women was initiated, MRS. MARY B. BRANT, chairman for the project, wrote to the Vassar College head for his endorsement. In his response Dr. MacCracken said "As the grandson of its foundress, I am proud to acknowledge my personal debt to the spirit that created this fine institution. Eliza MacCracken found time to teach the daughters of Ohio years ago, while busily engaged as the wife of a minister and the mother of a large family.
"It is fitting that the west, which has in many instances anticipated the east in the encouragement of woman's higher education, should be loyally supported by all women interested in the progress of your state."
A woman, Vivian Blanche Small is at the time of this writing president of Lake Erie College at Painesville, Ohio. Seven Catholic colleges of the state have women as presidents. These are Mt. St. Joseph-on-the-Ohio, Mother Mary Rogina Russell; St. Mary-of-the-Springs, Columbus, Ohio, Sister M. Aloyso; Ursuline College for Women, Cleveland, Mother Mary Veronica; Notre Dame College, South Euclid, Mother Mary Evariste; Mary Manse College, Toledo, Sister M. Catherine Raynor and Our Lady of Cincinnati College, Sister M. H. Brennan.
Ohio has 65 hospitals which maintain recognized schools of nursing vir- tually all of them headed by women.
Women have had a part in the development of Ashland College, of Ash- land. O., since its founding in 1878, for it was established as a coeducational
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college at that time. The college was chartered by the authority and under the direction of the German Baptist Brethren. Later it was purchased by the progressive branch of the denomination, the Brethren Church and has con- tinued under these auspices since that time.
The institution is owned and controlled by the Brethren Church but is non-sectarian in its admissions policy.
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