A paper written for an American Church History course:

Helen Barrett Montgomery (1861-1934) was a college-educated social reformer, prolific author, and woman of many firsts in the world of education and missions. She held public positions of authority, including being the first female elected to the Rochester Board of Education[1] and the first female President of a major Protestant denomination.[2] Her fervent efforts toward “progressive Christianization of culture”[3] had a global impact.[4] Yet, to Mrs. Montgomery the “absolutely essential profession,” the one which she deemed the “highest in the world” was modeled by those who “turning their backs on fame and glory” found “in a humble home their sphere of service” as mothers.[5]

Where did this “both and” thinking come from? During this Victorian era, hard battle lines were being drawn between the “professional”[6] woman and the “Queen of the home.”[7] While fledgling women’s colleges like Bryn Mawr strongly dissuaded students from choosing “suffocating marriage,”[8] biologists, like Herbert Spencer, were arguing that “in the highest societies” women are “restricted to domestic duties and rearing children.”[9] Women, these biologists asserted, who sought a “public” life, including “work” and the “vote” were “moving society…a step backwards toward savagery.”[10] Yet Helen Barrett Montgomery seemed to follow a third path, one that included both high regard for the domestic sphere and motherhood coupled with a compulsion toward the public life of a social reformer. It is the purpose of this paper to show that she discovered her “New Woman”[11] calling, to a great measure, while under the tutelage of her “favorite role model,”[12] Wellesley College President Alice E. Freeman.

Reflecting on her years as a student at Wellesley, Helen wrote:

During the Fall term of my second year, three of us, hugging ourselves with joy, sat at Miss Freeman’s table, and I can still see her, merry brown eyes smiling, softly curling brown hair waving from her brow, gay laughter bubbling through the conversation. She was a brilliant talker, and those were the days. Never would there be such days again.[13]

Indeed, Alice Freeman was a brilliant talker. A contemporary[14] wrote of her: “The charm of her personality and the wisdom of her methods have won all hearts; her own enthusiasm is contagious and every student regards her as a personal sympathetic friend to whom she may go at all hours for council and comfort.”[15] In her letters home, Helen referred to her own “long talk(s)”[16] with Miss Freeman concerning future aspirations: “There are so many ways of doing good in the world and so much need in every direction that I feel bewildered in trying to decide in which way to turn my attention.”[17]

In her reflections on her childhood,[18] Helen often referred to the admirable undertakings of her father, first in his years as a college student, then as a school principal and ultimately as the senior pastor of Lake Avenue Baptist Church.[19] “The way I like to think of you… my dear Papa, is standing out among the flowers utterly lost in thought, but with such a warm and appreciative smile on your face that the buds start out and every plant blossoms just because it is so sure of your sympathy.”[20] Of her mother she had less to say: “I loved both my parents with all the affection within me. But I am not quite sure that my mother’s authority was completely successful. She was obeyed because she belonged.”[21] In Alice Freeman, co-ed Helen discovered a “new” model for womanhood:

Miss Freeman is progressive and is jogging things out of the ruts. She does so magnificently as President. She reminds me of Papa so much in her way of handling the girls. She can be severe, but in her chapel talks she never uses sarcasm and never comes at us with the meat ax, but she makes the girls feel just as she wants them to feel, and if she but suggests anything most of the girls are eager to do just as she wishes. After one of her lectures we go out feeling that we are “moral agents” and not naughty children who have been scolded.[22]

But exactly how did Miss Freeman want the Wellesley girls to “feel?”

Edson and Saunders observe that, “although a forerunner in educational advancements for women, [Alice Freeman] Palmer reflected conventional gender doctrines of her times, believing that women’s character was ‘so delicately organized as to be fitted peculiarly for the graces and domesticities of life.’”[23] Mobley concurs: “Alice Freeman regarded motherhood as ‘the most sacred work of women, and dearest to them, of every class” adding that Freeman “believed college education could make women better wives and mothers.”[24]

It has been argued[25] that “as early as 1887” Wellesley faculty were teaching a radical “Symmetrical Womanhood,” which held that a woman could be “healthy, emotionally well-balanced, educated, and able to be happy without marriage.”[26] This same year (1887) Columbia University conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters on Wellesley President Alice Freeman[27] and Harvard professor George Herbert Palmer proposed marriage.[28] When Freeman tendered her resignation from the “public service” of the presidency of the college in exchange for the “private fulfillment” of marriage, some colleagues were unkind, remarking, “Especially base is it for one who had proved her power to win an unwilling public to look with favor on the education of women now to snatch at the selfish seclusion of home, and so confirm the popular fancy that a woman will drop the weightiest charge if enticed with a bit of sentiment.”[29] On December 23, 1887, after a six month delay due to the difficulty the Wellesley Trustees experienced in replacing her,[30] Alice Freeman and George Herbert Palmer married. September of this same year (1887) Wellesley graduate (Class of 1884) Helen Barrett Montgomery- with offers of women’s college presidencies and a faculty position at Wellesley on the table- also stepped into the “other” role of the New Woman, turning down various job offers for one of marriage.[31] Years later, in a 1903 tribute to Alice Freeman Palmer for Wellesley Magazine, Helen Barrett Montgomery would connect the two concepts of sphere and symmetry remarking that Palmer was “the ideal woman [who] made real to us the possibility of a rounded and symmetrical womanhood. To add to one’s attainment in scholarship, culture; to culture, social tact; to conjoin high enthusiasm with a sense of proportion; it was this that we believed should belong to the ideal of every college woman.”[32]

Prolific is so many other ways, neither Alice Freeman Palmer nor Helen Barrett Montgomery bore any children of their own. To fill this void, Alice took in strays here and there. Reflecting on this nurturing aspect of his wife, George Palmer wrote,

Naturally, having created so beautiful a home, [Alice] used it liberally for entertainment… Three children of friends were with us for more than a year each, and almost every meal had also its interesting guest…college students…young women whose opening fortunes required an assisting hand…poor people, whose only reason for coming was hopelessness…and Harvard[33] students…already counting themselves her children, and easily getting their slender claims acknowledged…[34]

William and Helen Montgomery, after eight years of marriage, adopted a five-year-old daughter named Edith. Edith, herself, would, in 1913, become a graduate of Wellesley College. [35] Believing children to be a mother’s “first responsibility and greatest legacy,”[36] Montgomery reflected in a 1922,

Perhaps not all women should marry. I am quite sure that those who plan to shift the burden of responsibility for the care of their children onto others should not marry. It is a harder thing to build a good child than to paint a picture or write a book or carve a statue. It requires absolute devotion of self; but the task is worthwhile. A group of beautiful, good, and clever children is the best work that a woman can contribute to her own generation.[37]

The role of Alice Freeman Palmer as a model of New Womanhood to Helen Barrett Montgomery did not stop the year they each entered into marriage. Though the public struggle for suffrage as well as full political and financial emancipation of women were battles yet to be won, Palmer and Montgomery each married generous and supportive men. Palmer, in his biography of his beloved, departed wife reported, “Both she and I were members of the Equal Suffrage Association.”[38] In discussing her decision to resign from Wellesley, Palmer defends, “I had no idea of closing her career. Those who protested against this were quite right. Talents so obviously meant for mankind no one had a right to seize for himself.”[39] And, when the Central Committee on the United Study of Missions needed another book, William Montgomery was called upon to give his consent (and financial provision) for his wife (and bestselling author[40]) to take a mission trip around the world. Mr. Montgomery responded, “When I married Helen Barrett I realized that she had ability and training to do what I could never do. I resolved, therefore, never to interfere with any call that might come to her. If Helen cares to go, I will help her in every possible way.”[41] This spousal empowerment flowed through Alice Freeman Palmer and Helen Barrett Montgomery and out into the waiting world of social reform.[42]

Certainly there were other powerful women influencing the life choices of Helen Barrett Montgomery. Yet, in many instances, it was the impression that she had made on them that inspired their relationships. For example, when the formidable feminine forces of Susan B. Anthony, Dr. Sarah R. Adamson and Mrs. Mary T.L. Gannett joined to create the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union of Rochester, NY in 1893, it was Helen Barrett Montgomery whom they called upon to serve as its first president.[43] Helen had been so influential in motivating the women of Rochester toward an “educated motherhood”[44] through her lectures and leadership in various social clubs and Sunday school classes, her selection was manifest.[45]

She followed no woman into some of the “firsts” in her life. Nor did she model her behavior after men. While running for what would become the first female-occupied seat on the Rochester Board of Education Helen defended her feminine perspective: “I am set to represent the mothers and homes of Rochester. We ask not that women be dragged into politics; but that the schools be lifted out of politics…I do not represent women who wish to do the work of men. I wish to do a woman’s work in a woman’s way.”[46] Though some have argued that Helen modeled her social efforts on the “social gospel” championed by her fellow Rochesterite, Walter Rauschenbusch, both Mobley[47] and Warner[48] suggest otherwise. In fact, Rauschenbusch chaired a committee against many of the reforms supported by Montgomery while she served on the Rochester Board of Education.[49] Helen Barrett Montgomery would go on to employ the phrase “women’s work for women”[50] to advance other causes as well. And Helen’s election to the presidency of the Northern Baptist Convention in 1921, another female first, required no campaigning on her part. Rather, it was a response to Helen’s extraordinary success in another traditionally masculine role: fund-raising.[51]

Though Helen Barrett Montgomery out-published[52] and out-lectured[53] her superior, the impetus for Helen’s successful balancing act as a “New Woman” can be traced back to her “lovely…and gifted…Miss Freeman.”[54] In writing Helen’s recommendation letter after graduation, Alice Freeman wrote, “Her reputation for blameless character and fine scholarship and Christian womanliness is so long and well established here that I recommend her without reserve…her instructors in Wellesley will congratulate that school which secures her services and watch her work with constant interest and support.”[55] In a tribute to Helen written by a classmate we read:

Helen Barrett – like Alice Freeman Palmer, who was the inspiring leader of the Wellesley of our day- made it seem easy to do things, and with her nothing appeared to be beyond the reach of possibility. Her gift of enthusiastic imagination, her confidence in herself and in the strength of right, her faith in God and calm dependence upon His help, gave her courage to undertake tasks of great magnitude and the power to carry them to successful completion.[56]

Similarly, Mr. Palmer spoke these words in tribute to his dear wife, Alice: “In the public interest or in helping those she loved she never faltered. No difficulty, risk, or misconception stopped her serene advance…wherever there was human need she turned without measuring powers or preferences.”[57]

And in the “domestic” personalities of their New Womanhood, both women drew deep contentment. Of Helen, Lucy Waterbury- close friend and co-activist in women’s mission efforts- wrote that “no one really knew Helen Barrett Montgomery…who did not know her in her home…as daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, mother, and in later years as grandmother, she was at her best.”[58] Alice Freeman Palmer left her own impression of wedded bliss when she penned this verse on what would be her “Last Anniversary:”[59]

Fifteen years ago, dear,

Fifteen years to-day!

Let us walk our fields together

While we may.

Shall we find the roses, dear,

Still beside the Run,

As that morning when beside them

Life begun?

Will the brook sing on, dear,

The same song to-night

As that evening when our darkness

Turned to light?

One third of my life, dear,

Since I heard you call,

And put by my work and, rising,

Gave you all.

Lay your hand in mine, dear,

Let me hear you say

I have made you gladder always

Since that day!

Bolton, Sarah K. 1888. Successful Women. Boston: Lothrop Publishing Company.

Cattan, Louise Armstrong. 1972. Lamps are for Lighting: The Story of Helen Barrett Montgomery and Lucy Waterbury. Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s.

Holland, J.G. 1876. Every Day Topics. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Company.

Mobley, Kendal P. 2009. Helen Barrett Montgomery: The Global Mission of Domestic Feminism. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.

Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1940. Helen Barrett Montgomery: From Campus to World Citizenship. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company.

Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1915. The King’s Highway. West Medford, MA: The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions.

Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1910. Western Women in Eastern Lands: An Outline Study of Fifty Years of Woman’s Work in Foreign Missions. New York: The MacMillan Company.

Palmer, Alice Freeman. 1915. A Marriage Cycle. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Palmer, George Herbert. 1908. The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Russett, Cynthia Eagle. 1989. Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Seller, Maxine Schwartz, ed. 1994. Women educators in the United States: 1820-1993: a bio-bibliographic sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Warner, Laceye. 2004. Kingdom Witness and Helen Barrett Montgomery’s Biblical Theology. Review and Expositor 101 (Summer):22.

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[1] Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1940. Helen Barrett Montgomery: From Campus to World Citizenship. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 89

[2] Mobley, Kendal P. 2009. Helen Barrett Montgomery: The Global Mission of Domestic Feminism. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. 2

[3] Ibid. 261

[4] Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1915. The King’s Highway. West Medford, MA: The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions. Preface

[5] (Mobley 2009) 1-2

[6] (Mobley 2009) 40

[7] Holland, J.G. 1876. Every Day Topics. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Company. 254

[8] (Mobley 2009) 40

[9] Russett, Cynthia Eagle. 1989. Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 148

[10] (Russett 1989) 149

[11] (Mobley 2009) 41

[12] Ibid. 34

[13] (Montgomery 1940) 34

[14] Bolton, Sarah K. 1888. Successful Women. Boston: Lothrop Publishing Company.

[15] Ibid. 231-232

[16] (Montgomery 1940) 62

[17] Ibid. 55

[18] Ibid. 19-71

[19] Ibid. 20-28

[20] (Montgomery 1940) 52-53

[21] (Montgomery 1940) 22

[22] (Montgomery 1940) 56

[23] Seller, Maxine Schwartz, ed. 1994. Women Educators in the United States, 1820-1993. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 357

[24] (Mobley 2009) 40

[25] Ibid. 41 Mobley referencing Palmieri’s focus on the radical Vida Scudder, who began her teaching and writing career at Wellesley College in 1887.

[26] Ibid. 41

[27] Palmer, George Herbert. 1908. The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 153

[28] Ibid. 170

[29] (Palmer 1908) 172-173

[30] Charles William Eliot, longest running president of Harvard College (1869-1909), said of Alice Freeman, “After six years of masterly work at Wellesley College, in which she exhibited the keenest intelligence, large executive ability, and a remarkable capacity for winning affection and respect, she laid down these functions, married at the age of thirty-two, and apparently entered on a wholly new career. Alice Freeman thus gave the most striking testimony she could give of her faith in the fundamental social principle that love between man and woman, and the family life which results therefrom, afford for each sex the conditions of its greatest usefulness and honor, and of its supreme happiness. The opponents of the higher education of women had always argued that such education would tend to prevent marriage and to dispossess the family as the cornerstone of society. Alice Freeman gave the whole force of her conspicuous example to disprove that objection. She illustrated in her own case the supremacy of love and of family life in the heart of both man and woman.” (Palmer 1908) 177-178

[31] Helen and her sister, Anne, had become quite close to Alice Freeman during their years as Wellesley students. Remarked Helen in a letter home dated Dec 1882, “We feel that we really know her [Alice Freeman] for herself and not merely as President of Wellesley. She was delighted with her little [Christmas] gift – a flashlight- and told us she took a “spark” every night to light her to bed, and she called us her little “sparks of light.” Anne’s bright, impulsive loving little ways just rest Miss Freeman, and Anne is never so happy as when she can be near her in some way.”(64) Alice Freeman and Helen Montgomery were, little doubt, in contact during the year of their marriages (1887). Alice certainly would have known of the offer of the faculty position to Helen, and Helen’s fiancé, William Montgomery had provided funds for Helen’s sister, Anne, to “spend the holidays with Miss Freeman” that year, as well.  (Montgomery 1940) 74

[32] (Mobley 2009) 41

[33] At this time, George Herbert Palmer was a professor of philosophy at Harvard.

[34] (Palmer 1908) 226-227

[35] Cattan, Louise Armstrong. 1972. Lamps are for Lighting: The Story of Helen Barrett Montgomery and Lucy Waterbury. Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s. 67 That same year, Helen and Edith went on a six month “global mission tour” with another mother-daughter team, Lucy and Norma Waterbury.

[36] (Mobley 2009) 61

[37] Ibid. 61

[38] (Palmer 1908) 241

[39] (Palmer 1908) 176-177

[40] Helen Barrett Montgomery’s book, written on occasion of the Committee’s Golden Jubilee, Western Women in Eastern Lands, had broken “all records for a mission study book.” (Cattan 1972) 66

[41] Ibid.

[42] For example, Palmer continued to serve on the Board of Trustees of Wellesley College as well as serving as the president of the Women’s Education Association of Boston. (Palmer 1908) 175 & 236 Montgomery served as the president of the Rochester WEIU and on the Rochester Board of Education. (Mobley 2009) 104 & 114.

[43] (Mobley 2009) 104

[44] Ibid. 84

[45] Helen served as president of the Union for twenty years. (Cattan 1972) 33.

[46] (Mobley 2009) 120

[47] Ibid. 155

[48] Warner, Laceye. 2004. Kingdom Witness and Helen Barrett Montgomery’s Biblical Theology. Review and Expositor 101 (Summer):22. 458

[49] (Mobley 2009) 168

[50] Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1910. Western Women in Eastern Lands: An Outline Study of Fifty Years of Woman’s Work in Foreign Missions. New York: The MacMillan Company.

[51] (Mobley 2009) 245. During the Jubilee fund-raising campaign of the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, Montgomery raised over $450,000 which she presented to the Northern Baptist Convention “as a gift” from the Society.

[52] Helen Barrett Montgomery published over a dozen books, including an original translation of the New Testament, The Centenary “Montgomery” New Testament; Alice Freeman Palmer published, but one address entitled “Why Go to College?” Her husband, George Herbert Palmer, published a collection of her poems posthumously (1916).

[53] Alice Freeman Palmer’s poor health greatly reduced her ability to accept speaking engagements and ultimately led to an early death (1855-1902).

[54] (Montgomery 1940) 51

[55] Ibid. 59-70

[56] Ibid. 137-138

[57] (Palmer 1908) 344

[58] (Cattan 1972) 35

[59] Palmer, Alice Freeman. 1915. A Marriage Cycle. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 67-68