M. Carey Thomas Papers

Martha Carey Thomas was born January 2, 1857, in Baltimore, Maryland. Her parents were James Carey Thomas and Mary Whitall Thomas. Her father and paternal grandfather were physicians. Her mother was the youngest daughter of John Mickle Whitall, a wealthy Philadelphia glass merchant, and Mary Tatum Whitall.

The Thomases and Whitalls were active members of the Society of Friends, and their religion almost certainly reinforced their family bonds. This may be observed in the correspondence of Mary Whitall Thomas with her sister Sarah Whitall Nicholson, whose daughter, Rebecca, was M. Carey Thomas’s childhood friend.

Religion was even more central in the life of Mary’s other sister, Hannah Whitall Smith, who, along with her husband Robert Pearsall Smith, became a well-known Evangelist. Hannah’s children—Frank, Mary (later married to Bernard Berenson), Alys (the first wife of Bertrand Russell), and Logan—were the cousins that Thomas had the most enduring relationships with.

James and Mary Thomas, both Quaker ministers, had a large family. M. Carey Thomas had nine siblings, five brothers and four sisters: John Mickle Whitall, b. 1859; Henry M., b. 1861; Bond Valentine, b. 1863; James Whitall, b. 1865 (died in infancy); Mary Grace, b. 1866; Margaret Cheston, b. 1869; Helen Whitall, b. 1871; Frank S., b. 1873; and Dora C., b. 1877 (died in infancy).

Thomas appears to have been a healthy child with no major illnesses until she suffered a serious household accident at the age of seven. While playing in the kitchen, her clothes caught fire, resulting in extensive and very severe burns on her lower body. Her recuperation took over a year. Following her recovery, Thomas was active in sports, including swimming, hiking, riding, and ice skating.

Thomas attended a local Quaker school as a young child. In 1872, she enrolled at Howland Institute, a Quaker boarding school for girls near Ithaca, New York. Jane Slocum, a teacher at Howland, pushed Thomas towards Cornell University and advanced scholarship. Thomas graduated from Howland in 1874, spent a year at home preparing herself for Cornell entrance examinations, and entered the University as a junior in the fall of 1875.

In 1877 she received her A.B. degree. Returning to her parents’ home, she sought admission to the graduate school of the newly established Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins enrolled her in a degree program, but refused to permit her to attend classes and seminars with its male students. Thomas attempted to follow a program of directed private scholarship, but ultimately resigned from the program in October 1878.

Until she left Cornell University, M. Carey Thomas’s correspondence indicates that she continued to attend church services regularly and practiced private devotions in accordance with her parents’ wishes. By the time she returned home, Thomas no longer believed that her parents' beliefs were relevant to her life. After discussing the matter with her mother, Thomas agreed to keep these attitudes private. Later, as president of Bryn Mawr College, she attended Quaker meetings during the academic year and did not resign her membership in the Society of Friends until after her retirement.

Following her graduation from Cornell, Thomas developed a network of friendships with a number of young, wealthy, white, Quaker women in Baltimore. Through her cousin, Elizabeth (Bessie) Tabor King, M. Carey Thomas was introduced to three other women who began to call themselves the “Friday Night” group. These women included Mary Elizabeth Garrett and Mary (Mamie) Mackall Gwinn—both of whom would later be Thomas’s partners—as well as Julia Rebecca Rogers. The group met fortnightly to discuss social issues, including the education of women.

With the support of her mother, Thomas decided to attend a German university to obtain an advanced degree. Mamie Gwinn accompanied Thomas to Germany, where they were housemates and likely romantic partners. Thomas first enrolled in a graduate program in philology at the University of Leipzig. When, as Thomas neared the completion of her studies, the German government proscribed the award of advanced degrees to women, she transferred to the University of Zurich, and in the fall of 1882 received a doctoral degree.

Thomas and Gwinn returned to the United States in the fall of 1883, and Thomas began her involvement with Bryn Mawr College. Thomas wanted to be President of the college, but was named Dean in 1884, the year before Bryn Mawr opened, instead. As Dean, Thomas proposed a series of academic policies to President James E. Rhoads and the Board of Trustees modelled after Johns Hopkins University and the German university system. She instituted a rigorous entrance examination, pushed for faculty members to be required to hold PhDs, and established graduate departments and fellowships at Bryn Mawr College. When the college opened in 1885, Thomas served as both the Dean and professor of literature.

In the same year that Bryn Mawr College’s first classes enrolled, Thomas and the other members of the Friday Night group founded a girls’ preparatory school in Baltimore, called The Bryn Mawr School. This school, too, was rigorously academic. To graduate, students had to successfully complete Bryn Mawr College’s entrance examination.

The same group, apart from Julia Rogers, began focusing on expanding educational access and career opportunities for—primarily white—women shortly after founding The Bryn Mawr School. In partnership with a national system of women’s committees—which they were heavily involved in organizing—and relying heavily on Mary Garrett’s financial and administrative contributions, they raised funds to endow a medical school at Johns Hopkins University. As a condition of the gift, the committee required women to be admitted to the medical school on the same terms as men, and that college degrees should be required for admission.

In 1893, while matters related to the medical school were being decided, President Rhoads announced his intention to resign from his position. Thomas once again put herself forward as a candidate for President of Bryn Mawr College. Although she had the support of Rhoads, her father, her uncle James Whitall, and from a cousin, David Scull—all of whom were on the Board of Trustees—as well as from Mary Garrett, who promised the college a substantial donation if Thomas was president, her appointment was opposed by the more conservative board members. Thomas was narrowly elected to her presidency in 1893 and took office at the end of the school term the following spring, in 1894.

Thomas’s influence on the development of the college had a deep impact on the student body. Thomas had a very specific kind of student in mind for Bryn Mawr—one which was shaped by her racism, antisemitism, and belief in eugenics. Black and Jewish students in particular were not part of Thomas’s vision for Bryn Mawr. Although her prejudices were not unique, even for the time Thomas’s stringent eugenicist views were more extreme than most.

M. Carey Thomas was president of Bryn Mawr College for twenty-eight years. Under her direction, the campus added dormitories, a library, and other auxiliary buildings designed in Bryn Mawr’s Collegiate Gothic style. During her tenure, Bryn Mawr College opened an experimental model school as an adjunct to the Education Department, opened the Graduate School of Social Work, and began the Summer School for Women Workers on the Bryn Mawr campus. During her time as Dean, Thomas encouraged the creation of the Self-Government Association, a student-led organization that Thomas continued to support and defend as President. Thomas was involved in most aspects of the College’s life—she participated in fund raising, in building construction planning, faculty recruitment, curriculum and course development, buildings and grounds upkeep, and budgetary and other administrative matters, as well as being deeply involved with student housing, health, and welfare.

After taking over as President of the College in 1894, Thomas actively worked to keep Black students out of Bryn Mawr. Her campaign to send Jessie Redmon Fauset to Cornell to prevent her from attending Bryn Mawr is documented in Letterbook 23. Her support of exclusionary, white supremacist policies continued throughout her tenure, and influenced policy at Bryn Mawr College long after she left. It should be noted that although Thomas was the instigator of many of these policies, she did not operate in a vacuum. The systemic endorsement of white supremacy on the societal level, and the beliefs of Thomas’s contemporaries, are both important components in understanding the College’s history and Thomas’s place in it.

Thomas had several detractors in her time. The Trustees who opposed her in 1893 continued to attempt to oust her from office throughout the 1890s, and often disagreed with her policies and programs. The major issue for these Trustees was Thomas’s push to secularize Bryn Mawr College. Thomas saw secularization as essential to the college’s future development, as she believed that moving away from a steadfast commitment to uphold Quaker values would allow greater intellectual and academic freedom. By the end of the 1890s, Thomas and the Trustees reached a détente, with the college accommodating some of the Trustees wishes—for example, music was not taught in classes, and drama was limited—and in return, Thomas could pursue her goal of having no religious observances imposed on the student body.

This balance did not last. In 1906, the Trustees undertook an investigation into Thomas’s administration and personal character in response to complaints that Thomas was distrusted by faculty members, and didn’t respond to the authority of the Trustees. While Thomas’s archives and the Board of Trustees minutes don’t contain the results of this investigation, Thomas remained in power and seemed to emerge with a strengthened position with the Trustees.

In 1916, Thomas once again faced a governance crisis, this time with protests from faculty members. Some faculty protested Thomas’s autocratic use of the power and privilege of her office in Philadelphia newspapers. The protest caused a reform in the structure of college governance, giving the faculty direct authority in matters of faculty recruitment, promotion, termination of contracts, etc.

When M. Carey Thomas moved to Bryn Mawr in 1884, she was allotted one of three cottages provided as faculty housing. This cottage, nicknamed the Deanery, was Thomas’s residence for the next fifty years. Thomas first shared the Deanery with Mamie Gwinn, who became a graduate student and then a professor of literature at the college. When Gwinn eloped with Bryn Mawr professor Alfred Hodder in 1904, Mary E. Garrett moved into the Deanery with Thomas. Shortly after, Thomas and Garrett began renovating the Deanery, employing importer/decoraters like Lockwood de Forest to furnish and lavishly decorate the house. Garrett lived with M. Carey Thomas until her death in 1915. Thomas moved out in 1933, deeding the house and most of its furnishings and artwork to the alumnae.

Thomas and Garrett were both involved in the women’s suffrage movement. They donated large amounts of Garrett’s wealth to suffrage causes, and Thomas was one of the leaders in establishing the College Equal Suffrage League. Thomas was active in several organizations that fought for women’s rights, especially in the education sector, including the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, later renamed the American Association of University Women; the Naples Table Association, which supported women scientists at the Naples Research Station; the College Entrance Examination Board; the International Federation of University Women; the Athens Hostel, for use by women scholars at the American School for Classical Research at Athens; and the peace movement.

M. Carey Thomas retired in 1922, at age sixty-five. As President-emeritus she remained a member of the Board of Directors until her death, continuing her interest in—and control of—many aspects of the college. Outside of Bryn Mawr, she continued to support the peace movement and the Athens Hostel, as well as the Equal Rights Amendment and other causes. The vast majority of her time, however, went towards enjoying her retirement. Mary Garrett’s will left her fortune to Thomas, with the caveat that it would pass on to Bryn Mawr after M. Carey Thomas’s death. In retirement, Thomas travelled extensively, enjoying art, music, and theatre around the world. She planned to write an autobiography and collected material and notes for her planned book throughout the rest of her life, although the actual autobiography was never written.

She died on December 2, 1935, less than a month after the celebration of Bryn Mawr College's 50th Anniversary—which she took part in. By the time of Thomas’s death, the Great Depression and Thomas’s heavy expenditures had seriously eroded the fortune, and she left an estate appraised at about $100,000. In accordance with her wishes, her body was cremated, and her ashes buried in the cloisters of Old Library.