Ethel Chandler

As Miss Ethel Chandler was on the faculty of Wilson College during one academic year, 1913-1914, most of the correspondence in the Wilson file that is germane to Miss Chandler focuses upon her application to Wilson in 1913 and recommendations for employment after she left Wilson in 1914. When Miss Chandler at age thirty-one applied to Wilson in April 1913, she stated that she had received an A.B. degree from Mount Holyoke College in 1903 and that she expected to receive her A.M. degree in 1913 from Radcliffe College. She also stated that she had taught in the high school in Vergennes, Vermont, from 1905 to1908, the high school in Little Falls, New York, from 1908 to 1910, and the high school in Northampton, Massachusetts, from 1910 to 1912.

After having sought and received several references about Miss Chandler’s academic work and classroom skills, Dr. McKeag favored her above other candidates. Although all of the authors of the references noted her excellent character and her scholarship, the long, hand-written letter from the principal of the Northampton High School was the most thorough, the most thoughtful, and the most perceptive. Having reviewed her other good qualities as a teacher, he added: “She is also a thorough teacher, hard-working, painstaking and not afraid of the drudgery that belongs to the work of every teacher of English who is not working on the most advanced lines.” Upon these recommendations and after having interviewed Miss Chandler in Boston, Dr. McKeag recommended to the Board of Trustees that she be hired as an instructor of Freshman English at a salary of $600 and housing.

However, in the spring semester of 1914 the decision to reduce the number of instructors in the English Department from three to two was made so that Dr. McKeag wrote to Miss Chandler: “In making application for a position for next year, you are at liberty to state that the reason for your not receiving a re-appointment at Wilson College is a re-arrangement of work in the English department which will make possible a reduction in the force. The position which you now fill will not be filled by a regular teacher, but will be filled by a distribution of work among other members of the faculty.” Dr. McKeag added: “You have my cordial good wishes for your future professional work and you are at liberty to use this letter in making application to other school authorities and also to use my name as a reference.”

Although the Wilson files do not contain any letters of reference for Miss Chandler written in 1914, in the spring of 1915 Dr. McKeag wrote letters of reference for her. In those letters, she stated that Miss Chandler was a hard worker who had prepared her lessons in a careful, painstaking manner, affirming the thoughts of the principal of Northampton High School. In one of those letters, she summed her thoughts about Miss Chandler’s year at Wilson by saying: “She carried the good will of Wilson with her and we hope she may secure a good position.”