{"id":15,"date":"2022-03-07T17:04:57","date_gmt":"2022-03-07T22:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/thefive\/?page_id=15"},"modified":"2022-09-28T18:11:52","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T22:11:52","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/laurasstory\/history\/","title":{"rendered":"History"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Early History of Death at Smith College<\/span><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Professor Moses Stuart Phelps (1849-1883) was the first Philosphy professor and first death to affect the young campus.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Death continues to be highly unusual on campus. During the first eight years, only one student died of 500. Seelye was swift in ameliorating concern, writing that the young woman \u201chad the seeds of a fatal disease when she entered and only remained in the college ten weeks\u201d(59). Regardless, the year following this report would prove more trying. Only a few days before the beginning of the Fall 1883 term, Professor Moses Stuart Phelps had accidentally shot himself while hunting in the thick Maine woods. The young professor was only 34. Five years earlier Phelps had been appointed to teach \u201cMoral and Mental Philosophy\u201d to the new school in 1878, a now-obsolete study rooted in theology<\/span>. Standing at nearly 5\u201911 he was a handsome man, with oak-colored hair and beard, his thin face accentuated by deep grey eyes. Very soon after a student herself would die, the tragedy this time occurring as a drowning at a seaside resort. It proved too much to bear for the small campus, and three female professors would all resign within the next few months due to the emotional pain (61).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Sarah’s death, as written about in The Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 Nov 1888.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first known suicide on Smith College\u2019s campus occurred on the 11th of November 1888, by a first-year named Sarah Brainard Farrar living in Dewey House. Despite the event being particularly traumatic to the campus, all that is known about her in the Smith College archives is her empty grade page, silent in a tomb brimming with the hours and letter-grades of her living classmates, and a notecard referencing her suicide in the “Disasters” archive box. <\/span><\/p>\n

Researching local papers, a larger story is illuminated. Spending less than a month on campus, the nineteen-year-old Sarah was known as an anxious, depressed girl, frequently taking trips home due to the sadness of her father’s recent death. Papers describe her as particularly pretty, with blonde curly hair, though thin from nerves. Her only friend on campus was her roommate, a girl named Mary Louise Crehore. Sarah ended her life walking to the Connecticut River bridge (today the Calvin Coolidge Bridge) connecting Northampton to Hadley and jumping. Two twelve-year-old boys and three Smith students on the passenger bridge below witnessed the horrific event and described to the police how Sarah had attempted in vain to climb back up via her coat, screaming as her strength failed her and she fell below.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarah had not been on campus long enough to make any friends, but her body was brought back to Dewey House for a brief memorial from the local undertaker in town. Seelye arranged a viewing of her drowned body in the house parlor, read a sermon, and helped transport her body to the train station to laid to rest in her home of Keene, New Hampshire via local hearse\u2014her mother in a carriage behind it.<\/p>\n

While this occurred while Laura was finishing her high school education, her older sister Florrie witnessed the commotion on campus as a new junior. We have no records of how people on campus reacted to the death Sarah, but it is undeniable that Florrie would have remembered this while grieving for her sister only a few years later.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Early History of Wallace House<\/h1>\n