Edith G. Stedman OBE | |
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 Edith Stedman, before 1941 | |
| Born | December 29, 1888 Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Died | July 16, 1978 (aged 89) |
| Occupation | social worker |
Edith Gratia Stedman, OBE (December 29, 1888 - July 16, 1978) was an American social worker, educator, writer and volunteer. She is best known for her vocational programming created at Radcliffe starting in the Great Depression and also for her help in restoring Dorchester Abbey.
Stedman was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the family later moved to Belmont, Massachusetts, where she attended high school. [1] Stedman enjoyed high school, writing, "I think I worked harder and got more academic pleasure out of some of my work in high school than I ever did in college." [2] She went on to Radcliffe College where she graduated in 1910. [3]
After school, she worked for a time at the Framingham Reformatory for Women until her brother convinced her to quit in order to run the family's candy store, a job she later discovered she hated. [3] After two years, she quit and went to Europe with the YMCA to help the war effort there in 1917. [3] [1] She was a canteen worker in France and Germany working for the YMCA until 1919. [1] Back in the United States, Stedman did not find work that interested her. [4] Stedman then traveled to China in 1920, where she worked as a medical social worker in Hankou at an Episocopal Mission. [5] [6] She stayed until 1927, returning to Boston, where she started working as an executive secretary for the Judge Baker Foundation. [6] [1]
Ada Louise Comstock invited Stedman to come for the Appointment Bureau at Radcliffe in 1930. [1] Stedman developed vocational programs for women in the 1930s. [1] Undergraduates and graduate students were both helped by Stedman in finding employment. [7] She created and directed the Training Course in Personnel Administration and supported professional training for women. [8] Stedman worked as the director of the Training Course until 1941. [1] Students could be awarded a fellowship grant in her name. [9] [10] She also created the Radcliffe Publishing Course, which has launched the careers of many editors and still continues today as a part of Columbia University. [11] Stedman stayed at Radcliffe until 1954, when she retired. [1]
As a retiree, she worked as a volunteer in different capacities. Between 1955 and 1959, Stedman volunteered at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. [1] In 1959, she started spending half the year living with friends at the Manor House, Dorchester. [1] Stedman created a group, the American Friends of Dorchester Abbey, which raised money for both the Abbey and the surrounding gardens. [1] Stedman also wrote during her retirement. [1]
Her last years were spent living in Sherrill House, a nursing home in Boston run by the Episcopal church. [1] She lived with Ménière's disease and had deafness. [1] Stedman died in Boston on July 16, 1978. [12]
Stedman was awarded as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1976 for her work supporting the restoration of Dorchester Abbey. [12] [13] She was given the award at the British embassy in Washington, D.C. [14] A stone carving of Stedman is located above the west door of the Abbey. [15]
Gratia Alta Countryman was a nationally-known librarian who led the Minneapolis Public Library from 1904 to 1936. She was the daughter of immigrant farmers Alta and Levi Countryman. She pioneered many ways to make the library more accessible and user-friendly to all of the city's residents, regardless of age or economic position. Countryman was called the "first lady of Minneapolis" and the "Jane Addams of the libraries".
Edith Rogers was an American social welfare volunteer and politician who served as a Republican in the United States Congress. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. Until 2012, she was the longest serving Congresswoman and was the longest serving female Representative until 2018. In her 35 years in the House of Representatives she was a powerful voice for veterans and sponsored seminal legislation, including the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, which provided educational and financial benefits for veterans returning home from World War II, the 1942 bill that created the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), and the 1943 bill that created the Women's Army Corps (WAC). She was also instrumental in bringing federal appropriations to her constituency, Massachusetts's 5th congressional district. Her love and devotion to veterans and their complex needs upon returning to civilian life is represented by the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford Massachusetts that is named in her honor.
Alice Stone Blackwell was an American feminist, suffragist, journalist, radical socialist, and human rights advocate.
Boston Latin Academy (BLA) is a public exam school founded in 1878 in Boston, Massachusetts providing students in grades 7th through 12th a classical preparatory education.
Mary Jane "Kip" Tiernan was a social activist.
Edith Roelker Curtis (1893–1977) was a New England writer, historian, and diarist.
North Bennet Street School (NBSS) is a private vocational school in Boston, Massachusetts. NBSS offers nine full-time programs, including bookbinding, cabinet and furniture making, carpentry, jewelry making and repair, locksmithing and security technology, basic piano technology, advanced piano technology, preservation carpentry, and violin making and repair, as well as a range of short courses and continuing education opportunities. Housed for more than 130 years at 39 North Bennet Street, near the Old North Church in Boston's North End, the School completed renovations on the former Police Station One and former City of Boston Printing Plant in September 2013. The subsequent move to the fully renovated 65,000 sq. ft. facility at 150 North Street brought all of their programs under one roof.
The Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration was a joint program of Radcliffe College and Harvard Business School intended to provide women with post-graduate education in business administration.
Donald Lacey Priestley was an English cricketer who played for Gloucestershire County Cricket Club from 1909 to 1910. He made his debut in the County Championship against Sussex at the County Ground, Hove. In May 1910, he scored fifty-one runs against Hampshire at the County Ground, Southampton. His final first class appearance for Gloucestershire was against Worcestershire at the War Memorial Ground, Stourbridge.
Sara Murray Jordan was an American gastroenterologist and former president of the American Gastroenterological Association. She practiced largely in Boston and specialized in peptic ulcer disease and gastric cancer.
Lucy Miller Mitchell was an early childhood education specialist and community activist from Boston who was instrumental in getting the state to regulate day care centers. She is credited with modernizing the day care system in Massachusetts.
Abigail Adams Eliot was an American educator and a leading authority on early childhood education. She was a founding member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration's nursery school program in New England in the 1930s, and co-founded the Eliot Community Mental Health Center in Concord, Massachusetts. The Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study at Tufts University is named for Eliot and her colleague, Elizabeth W. Pearson.
Ellen Swepson Jackson was an American educator and activist. She is best known for founding Operation Exodus, a program that bused students from overcrowded, predominantly black Boston schools to less crowded, predominantly white schools in the 1960s. The program paved the way for the desegregation of Boston's public schools.
Delia Villegas Vorhauer was an American Latina social worker, who successfully ran programs to assist the Hispanic communities in Illinois, Ohio and Michigan. She was awarded a presidential medal for her efforts in development. She founded Mujeres Unidas de Michigan as an advocacy group for Spanish-speaking women and as a result of their activism the group sent six delegates to the 1977 National Women's Conference, which was a part of the UN International Women's Year programs. Vorhauer served as vice chair of the delegation to the conference. She authored the Mason Miller Report, an evaluation of minorities and higher education, which became the model for analyzing participation of minorities in colleges and universities throughout Michigan, leading to a state bi-lingual education law. When she lost her sight, due to diabetes, Vorhauer became an advocate for the blind. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1990, the first Latina to be honored in the hall.
Frieda S. Miller was an American labor activist, government administrator and women's rights activist. She served as the Industrial Commissioner of New York from 1938 to 1942 and the director of the United States Women's Bureau from 1944 to 1953. From 1936 through the 1950s, she worked with the International Labour Organization advising on women's employment issues. In the 1960s, she served in various capacities as a delegate to the United Nations focused on issues for women and children.
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The Soldiers' Free Library was established in Washington, D.C. during the American Civil War, to supply Union troops with reading material. The library also held other items for the troops' use, including crutches, stationery, and clothing, many of these handmade donations from women's organizations.
Edith Nason Buckingham was an American zoologist, dog breeder, and chicken farmer. She was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in zoology at Radcliffe College.
Sarah Ethel Thomas Curwood was an American educator, college professor, activist, and tree farmer.
The Columbia Publishing Course, formerly known as the Radcliffe Publishing Course, is a six-week graduate-level summer course on book, magazine, and digital publishing at Columbia University.
edith stedman radcliffe.
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