Nancy Criswell

The correspondence in the file of Wilson College of and about Nancy J. Criswell extends from August 28, 1903, until September 17, 1914. When Miss Criswell began her relationship with the college and when she ended that relationship are not identified in the correspondence. Her work with the college with Mr. Reaser as president in 1903 was that of a language teacher, and by 1913 during the presidency of Dr. Anna J. McKeag she was the Assistant Dean of Students. As Assistant Dean of Students much of her correspondence focused upon student records and student needs. In November 1911 the president of the college wrote to her tell her that her salary for the first semester would be $150 a month for the five months beginning in September. In February 1912 she was reappointed Assistant Dean and in addition was named Secretary of the College. In that same month the president of the college wrote to her to reaffirm the policy of the preceding year that ministers' daughters who were resident at the college should receive free tuition and that non-resident students who were daughters of ministers should receive a fifty per cent discount in their tuition. 

In July 1913 Dr. McKeag asked her to go to Pottsvville to meet three high school seniors who were interested in attending Wilson College but whose families could not afford to pay the full tuition. Since Dr. McKeag was considering having student help in the dining room, she thought that having the girls work in the dining room could lower their tuition. In this manner both the college and the girls would benefit. In her directions to Miss Criswell she stated: "I feel that a representative of the College aught to see these students, in order to determine the following g points: first, whether the student is fully prepared for admission to our freshman class; second, whether she is a healthy, vigorous, and a clear skinned young woman, suitable for services in the dining room; third, whether her personality is such that she would probably work well under Miss Mc Walter's supervision ; fourth, whether she could pay the rest of the cost if she could earn $90 by dining room services." On her return from Pottsville Miss Criswell reported that she liked the girls and that two of them were "refined in manner, quite at ease, rather mature and attractive in appearance." The third girl Miss Criswell considered "much less attractive than the other two girls and not so refined, evidently from a family not so well-to-do, though she was first honor student and took both the Latin and German prizes." One of the girls Miss Criswell thought too delicate to work in the dining room. The girls, well aware of costs, agreed that they would be willing to live in "minimum priced rooms." 

Miss Criswell wrote two of her most interesting letters from Luzerne, Switzerland, in August 1914. Since she and her traveling companion, her cousin "Miss McElwain of Smith College," were in Europe at the beginning of World War I, they could not return home and, therefore, went to Switzerland as did many other American travelers from France, Germany, and Italy. As Robert Criswell, whose relationship to Miss Criswell is not identified in the letters, sent her a thousand U.S. dollars, she was comfortable in her enforced stay in Luzerne and while there read German and especially enjoyed reading the Wilhelm Tell. She wrote that they had planned to startt home on the U.S. St. Paul from Cherbourg on August 15 but learned that they could not cross France and that the ships were not sailing. She said that she and her cousin felt fortunate to be able to stay in the beautiful city of Luzerne. Some people, she wrote, had tried to cross into France but were turned back at the Swiss border. The 4,000 to 5,0000 Americans in Luzerne had had two mass meetings "and in true American spirit have organized a general committee and several sub-committees, on transportation, banking, registration, etc." She also stated that the Americans had organized a relief committee "consisting of ladies only." The committee with the highest responsibility was the transportation committee, in which everyone was interested and registered. The Americans agreed that those who had the most pressing responsibilities at home should be the ones who were to sail first. She stated that, since she needed to be at Wilson College by September 1, she desired to be on one of the first ships but recognized that she could not in any manner leave Luzerne soon. She noted that two trains a day went from Luzerne to Paris in "a round-about way" but that only soldiers and French citizens could travel on them. Being conscientious about her tasks as Assistant Dean and Secretary of the College, in her writing to Dr. McKeag she enumerated such responsibilities as scheduling and assigning classrooms that her office needed to accomplish before the beginning of the first semester and suggested colleagues who would be willing and capable of completing them.