Mary Caroline Spalding, Ph.D.

Mary Caroline Spalding taught English at Wilson College from the fall semester in 1914 until the end of the spring semester in 1919. In 1912, when Miss Spalding at age thirty-five first applied to Dr. Anna J. McKeag, the president of the college, she noted: her home address was Cranford, New Jersey, she had earned an A.B. degree from Vassar College in 1901, she had pursued graduate work at Bryn Mawr College from 1906-1912, she expected to earn her doctorate from Bryn Mawr College in June 1912, and for nine years she had taught English at the Misses Shipley’s School. With her application, she submitted the names of three people who would write references about her.

In January 1913, she wrote to Dr. McKeag that she had to refuse a position at Western College because of family responsibilities and that for part of the year she was doing secretarial work at the Misses Shipley’s School. She ended her letter with the request that Dr. McKeag consider her a candidate, if a vacancy occurred in the English Department.

On April 20, 1914, Dr. McKeag wrote to Miss Spalding with the information that she intended to recommend her appointment to the Edgar Memorial Professorship of English with a salary of $1,200 and “home.” She added, “Home includes board, room, and plain laundry for the portions of the year when the College is in session.” In writing about the position, Dr. McKeag stated that the department was being reorganized and that an instructor would have the assignment of teaching mathematics as a substitute teacher would have the assignment of teaching freshman English. She added: “You feel, I think, as I do that we need for freshman work an instructor who will emphasize punctuation, capitalization, relations of clauses, clearness of exposition, etc., and I think I have found some one [sic] who will be very valuable in this field.”

Their correspondence continued over the summer of 1918. In June, Dr. McKeag wrote to Miss Spalding to say that she had received a copy of her thesis, “which I want to look over carefully after the strenuous days of Commencement,” and added that she had shown it to some of the members of the Board of Trustees. On August 15 of that year, Dr. McKeag, addressing Miss Spalding for the first time as Dr. Spalding, stated that she had received a list of the books Miss Spalding wanted for her classes. She also wrote that Miss Voss, the teacher of freshman English, had chosen Wooley’s Grammar and that she prefers “to make her own text as she goes along as there is so little in any one of the composition books which would be useful for our students here.” Dr. McKeag ended this letter tactfully but firmly by stating, “It is good to know that you and Miss Voss are so thoroughly in sympathy with the ideals for the department which I have talked over with you.” Two days later, Dr. McKeag wrote to Dr. Spalding with the information that nine students had elected to take English IV (advanced composition), that seventeen students had elected to take English VI (nineteenth century poetry), and that eight students had elected to take English XI (drama). She added that “practically the entire sophomore class” would be taking English II (English literature from the beginning through Johnson).

The next letters in the Wilson College file date from the presidency of Dr. Ethelbert Warfield. In these years, international and national events impinged upon the college. Evidently, in the winter of 1916-1917, the English department, or Dr. Spalding representing the English department, had asked for additional staff or additional help in the English department as Dr. Warfield replied that it was unlikely that the Board of Trustees would approve any additional expenditures for the next academic year unless there were some change in “international politics” or increased registration in the college. In early fall of 1918, Dr. Spalding asked for her resignation to be effective for the second semester of 1919. After a misunderstanding between Dr. Warfield and her had grown out of a conversation about this request, he responded on November 5, 1918, that when he had talked with her, he was very much disturbed about the illness in the college and the town and that “pressed upon me very much during the past month.” In that letter, he stated that he had written to a large number of colleges and teachers’ agencies but could not find a replacement for Dr. Spalding who would be worthy to replace her.

Dr. Spalding seems to have been determined to leave Wilson for the second semester of 1919 as she replied that she had already made plans to enter upon training of mission work and that she would be inconvenienced if she had to change those plans. She suggested that a Mrs. Gordon Fulcher, a friend, who had received her doctorate from Bryn Mawr at the same time that she had received her would, she thought, be willing to come to Wilson. She added, however, that she would not recommend Mrs. Fulcher was a permanent faculty member as she was married. Although the Wilson file does not include the resolution of this misunderstanding, Dr. Spalding was still teaching at Wilson in the spring of 1919. In April 1919, she was appointed chair of a committee that included Misses Davison and Hafer “to take into consideration the membership of students in College organizations, considering the propriety of limiting the number of organizations to which a student may belong, and the other questions germane thereto.”

On May 26, 1919, Dr. Warfield sent Dr. Spalding a letter noting that faculty of the English department for the year 1919-1920. He stated that Miss Alta A. Robinson, who received an A.B. and A.M. from the University of Iowa and was doing graduate work at the University of Chicago and had been Dean of Beaver College, would be professor of English and head of the department. He added that Miss Alice I. Hazeltine, who had received an A.B. and A.M. from Wellesley College, had had several successful years of teaching English and who thesis had been favorably reviewed in the Nation, would be the second member of the department. He concluded this information by saying that the third member of the department would be Miss Joyce H. Jones, who had earned her A.B. at Goucher College and her A.M. at the University of Pennsylvania and was now teaching English at Juniata College. He ended this letter by stating, “While I profoundly regret the changes in the English department, especially your own resignation, I feel considerable confidence in the new staff.”

On the following day, May 27, Dr. Warfield wrote again to Dr. Spalding this time in her capacity as chair of the committee on student activities and expressed his displeasure in having learned that the choir and two choruses were considered student activities and were being weighted with points, “the effect of which is to keep the students from being members of these organizations.” He stated that he was interested in having every person who was capable sing in the choir and “take part in the public worship of the College…” He added that Miss Bachman had been brought to the college in order to promote community singing and asked Dr. Spalding’s committee to eliminate membership in the choir and the two choruses from the “point list.”

The last letter in the Spalding correspondence in the Wilson College file is one Dr. Warfield wrote to Dr. Spalding at 140 North 15^th Street, Philadelphia, on June 10, 1919, in which Dr. Warfield noted, “The Board of Trustees of Wilson College greatly regret your retirement from the professorship of English, which you have filled with such significant success, and I am directed to convey to you the cordial appreciation of the Trustees for your service, and their best wishes for your success in your new work.”

The sixty-two letters in the Wilson collection, all between Dr. Spalding and Dr. McKeag or Dr. Warfield, and the letters of reference stating her scholarship and her personal qualities reveal Dr. Spalding to have been a conscientious teacher who was alert to the needs of her department.