This summer, I worked with Gretchen Lieb researching the lives of three female Vassar professors and their activism. These professors, Laura J. Wylie, Lucy M. Salmon, and Gertrude Buck, were jumping off points to learn more about female activism in the post-suffrage era. At the end of the project, we created an interactive timeline of selected primary sources that will be available for the entire Vassar community to read.

A screenshot of the front page of the timeline.

To achieve this goal, we looked through Vassar’s records for more leads. We explored the archives and pulled correspondence, newspaper clippings, and other documents related to our subjects.

I was impressed with how interconnected the lives of our subjects were. Vassar holds a lot of correspondence from and among these women. Reading these documents allowed us to discover what key events and terminologies would be helpful for students hoping to research post-suffrage women’s activism. Additionally, this research helped us add a fourth “life” to our research: Helen Lockwood, for whom the 1976 addition of the library is named.

I loved all of the research connections we made. In the spirit of our collaborative women, Gretchen and I engaged with researchers and librarians not only in and around the Hudson Valley, but also at other seven-sister colleges. We worked closely with librarians at the Adriance Public Library in Poughkeepsie, and scanned documents from their archives. 

From left to right: Shannon Butler (Adriance), Allie Verdesca (VC ’22), Kira Thompson (Adriance), and Gretchen Lieb (Vassar Library).

This project allowed me to take a deeper look at a subject that I am passionate about: women’s social movements. Researching these women gave me a newfound respect for the strengths and weaknesses of the women’s movement. Our database is a living document that can be expanded as more documents are digitized. I am glad I contributed to the fascinating scholarship written by Vassar women, and could make it more accessible.