Community and Kinship at Smith College in the Early Twentieth Century
A Monetary Commitment to Future Smith Women
Without love letters or diary entries, monetary contributions from these professors express the strongest evidence of their lasting love and commitment to the women of Smith. These women were in a unique situation because they belonged to the first generation of American women to own homes.1 As unmarried women without children they had property which would be passed on after their death. The chosen recipients of their property and estates are revealing of how they organized their lives. These women left money to classmates, students, and lovers in their wills. All of them left money to Smith, and many of them also left their homes. In lieu of biological family, these professors left their estates to Smith College and its women. This shows their lasting commitment to women at Smith across generations.
Ruth Goulding Wood
Sketches of persons in Smith College history known by MSG, undated, Margaret Storrs Grierson papers, Box 2, Folder 7, Smith College Archives.
In 1918, Ruth Wood advised Margaret S. Grierson, then an undergraduate student at Smith against pursuing a career in Mathematics because “women were not given fair play in the field.” While Margaret S. Grierson’s description of Ruth Wood might lend to an interpretation of Ruth as an unenthusiastic professor, Ruth Wood’s 33 year career at the college might say otherwise. Joining the Smith faculty in 1902 Ruth did not retire until 1935.
Upon her death in 1939 Ruth Wood’s friends and fellow professors Suzan Benedict, Florence Gragg, and Susan Rambo described her lasting impact on her students, writing: “Many generations of students have found stimulus in her friendly criticism, encouragement in her sympathetic understanding, inspiration in her scholarship. Her colleagues have profited by her ready cooperation, keen intelligence and substantial common sense. No one of them can forget her sturdy insistence on careful thinking and honest dealing.”2
Wood, Ruth Goulding, Office of the President Jill Ker Conway Files, Box 197, Folder 6, Smith College Archives.
Ruth Wood’s estate is telling. Her will left a diamond pin to her classmate Adeline F. Wing, Class of 1898 and a share of a trust was to go to Helen Wright, Class of 1905, one of her students. And to the Trustees of Smith College she left $352,000 (which is equal to $1,648,158 in 2025), under the stipulation that the money goes to raising the salary of one or more women professors in the mathematics department to equal that of the highest paid teaching staff at Smith.
Ruth Wood’s will intended to extend the connection between women at Smith beyond generations. Wood sought to rectify gender discrimination she felt within the mathematics department which kept women from reaching full professor. Ironically, Wood’s money never supplemented any professors’ salaries because the request to pay a junior woman on the mathematics department more than a man violated the Equal Pay Act, Title VII, and the Civil Rights Act.
Suzan Rose Benedict
Suzan Rose Benedict’s will left her estate estimated to be worth $33,000 to two beneficiaries, Susan Miller Rambo (her life partner) and Smith College. In May of 1945 the Smith Alumnae Quarterly announced: “Sue Rambo has relinquished the life tenure of the house which she had shared in Northampton for about 20 years with Suzan Benedict ’95. She has bought a charming little house at 71 Ridge-wood Ter., on the edge of town and moved in March. The Barrett Place house, by the terms of Miss Benedict’s will, reverts to the College, to be sold and the proceeds used to establish a scholarship for a student majoring in mathematics.”3 The progression of the property to her partner and then to Smith marks the significance of both Suzan Benedict and Susan Rambo’s relationship but also the two women’s dedication to Smith College and its students.
- Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women’s Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s. University of Massachusetts Press, 1993; 190. ↩︎
- Ruth Goulding Wood, Died May 5, 1939. Faculty and staff biographical files. Smith College Archives. Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. ↩︎
- Smith Alumnae Quarterly, May, 1945 p. 149. https://saqonline.smith.edu/may-1945/page-149 ↩︎