The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer

354 pp. Alice Elvira Freeman Palmer (born Feb. 21, 1855, Colesville [near Binghamton], N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 6, 1902, Paris, France) was an American educator who exerted a strong and lasting influence on the academic and administrative character of Wellesley (Massachusetts) College during her brief tenure as its president. Alice Freeman had taught herself to read by the time she entered local district school at the age of four. In 1872 she sat for the entrance examination at the University of Michigan, then the foremost university to which women were admitted, and although she proved deficient in some areas, the deep impression she made on the university’s president, James B. Angell, induced him to admit her. She quickly made up her deficiencies and graduated in 1876. Over the next three years she taught school in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and then served as head of the high school in Saginaw, Michigan, while pursuing graduate studies at the university in the summers. The need to support her family forced her to decline Henry F. Durant’s offers of instructorships in mathematics and then in Greek at Wellesley College in 1877 and 1878, but in 1879 she was at last free to accept the post of head of the history department. -Britannica