Ada Howard was born on December 19, 1829 in Temple, New Hampshire. She was the daughter of William Hawkins and Lydia Adaline (Cowden) Howard. Her biographers have with one accord cited the fact that she possessed three ancestors who were officers in the Revolutionary army, but it was probably of more importance to her future career that she possessed a father who was something of a student and interested in his daughter's education.
After being instructed by her father, she went to the New Ipswich Academy, to the Lowell High School, and to Mount Holyoke Seminary, from which she graduated in 1853.
Five years later she returned after her study to Mount Holyoke as a teacher, where she remained until 1861. During the year 1861-62 she taught at the Western College for Women, Oxford, Ohio, and from 1866 to 1869 she was principal of the department for women of Knox College, Galesburg, Ill. , from which place she went to a school of her own, Ivy Hall, Bridgeton, N. J. Here Henry F. Durant, searching for a president for Wellesley College who should combine scholarship, experience, and high Christian character, found her, and transferred her to his new college, which opened in September 1875.
Her position was not easy, but its difficulties were not those incident to the selection of a faculty, the formulating of sound educational policies, or the creation of a curriculum which should place the college training of women on a level with that available for men. These were matters of which the founder took charge. No department of the college failed to interest his active imagination or seemed too trivial for his attention. To the president fell the duty of carrying out his policies, which may often have seemed decidedly questionable to her more conventional mind. If ever she rebelled at the complete subordination of her position, or questioned the wisdom of Durant's action, that fact has not become a matter of record. A more aggressive person, or one with educational policies of her own which she wished to put into effect, might have hampered the growth of the institution by creating obstacles or by failing to throw herself wholeheartedly into activities which she had not originated. As it was, the early years of the institution were free from such difficulties.
Miss Howard was able to lend dignity to an office which, while Durant lived, was entirely lacking in the power which is wont to accompany the title. A month after his death, ill health forced her to resign, so that she was never called upon to meet the demands of the presidency without his guidance. Her last years, in which continued ill health kept her from active life, were divided between Methuen, Massachussets, and Brooklyn, N. Y. , where she died.
