We Were Always Here: Celebrating All Women at Yale

Any student of women’s history can tell you that their aim is to eradicate the field, that women should be included in general history classes and not be in a separate realm. Women have always contributed to the history and life of Yale University, starting with its founding and early development. 

The Pierson parsonage—located in Killingworth (now Clinton), Connecticut—was the first home of the Collegiate School, which would become Yale University.

The first rector, or president, Abraham Pierson, a minister in Killingworth (now Clinton), Connecticut, operated what was then known as the Collegiate School in his home, as recorded in Yale history. What wasn’t written was that Abigail Clark Pierson (1653–1727), his wife, opened her home to male students to support their endeavors as students. According to Reuben A. Holden, author of Profiles and Portraits of Yale University Presidents, “By 1704 there were in all twenty students, most of them boarders at the Pierson home, which was handsomely managed by Mrs. Pierson.” Was this perhaps the start of the first residential college?

Women were always here, mostly in supportive roles and not publicly recognized. There was perhaps a better chance of an upper-class white woman, such as the wife of a university president, being remembered through mentions in publications and depictions in photos, than a food-service worker who needed to strike for better wages and respect. A rare photograph below, from about 1914, depicts the Old Campus laundry lady, who was remembered as “God Bless You Mary” and was frequently seen around campus toting a heavy cart carrying students’ laundry.

The Old Campus Laundry Lady, circa 1914

A dining hall payroll record from 1893.

Traces of women’s lives are found in the treasurer’s and payroll records, directories, diaries, travel photos, and other people’s memoirs. The Yale College dining hall at the time of this payroll record, seen on the right, was the Old Gymnasium on Library Street (now the pedestrian walkway from High Street to York Street between Branford and Jonathan Edwards colleges). It was converted from a gymnasium in 1892 and served as a dining hall until the opening of today’s Commons in 1901.

The annual published directory below listed campus employees with their titles and office and home addresses, indicating marital status using “(M)” for married employees. The pages shown illustrate the range of women’s occupations at Yale in the 1940s, including Neurology Instructor (Dr. Margaret Lennox); Senior Serial Cataloger (Minnie Lewis); Assistant Secretary (Hannah Lindevall); and Research Assistant (Dorothy Livingston).

Directory of the Officers, Faculty, and Assistants of Yale University, 1943-44.

Moving forward through Yale’s history, buildings were funded by women, sometimes honoring their late husbands. Women formed organizations for the betterment of Yale University, bringing in speakers, organizing events, and becoming fellows. In 1905, pathologist Florence Bingham Kinne became Yale’s first woman instructor, and then, in 1923, Annie Goodrich became the university’s first female dean, of the Yale School of Nursing.

Hanna Holburn Gray

Hanna Holborn Gray (b. 1930) is a woman of many Yale firsts. Gray served as Yale’s provost (1974–1977), acting president (1977–1978), and one of the first women on the Yale Corporation (1971–1974). She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Yale in 1978.

Another notable Yale woman, Margaretta Palmer (1862–1924), graduated from Vassar College, where she studied with Maria Mitchell, America’s first recognized woman astronomer. She came to Yale as an assistant at the University Observatory in 1889. When Yale began accepting women graduate students in 1892, Palmer enrolled and earned her Ph.D. in 1894. She was the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. in astronomy from an American university. She can be seen, circled in red, in the group photograph below.

Margaretta Palmer at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society held at Smith College in 1920.

Women switchboard operators, circa 1916

As technology advanced, women became secretaries, programmers, and telephone operators. In 1878 the world’s first telephone exchange opened in New Haven. The university established its own service in 1911. By 1936 the 80-line switchboards and 1,800 exchanges handled 4,500 calls a day, some from as far away as Honolulu and Berlin. The Yale Daily News noted that the first operators, all women, were “middle-aged and matronly.” Then, as the number of calls increased, highly trained younger women were hired. The Round House “telephone girl” is memorialized in a small 1930s relief sculpture on the north wall of Berkeley College, where the exchange once stood.