Lucy Maynard Salmon

Background

She was born on July 27, 1853 in Fulton, New York, United States. Her parents, George and Maria Clara (Maynard) Salmon, were both natives of Massachusetts.

Education

She attended Falley Seminary in Fulton and had a year of preparation at the Ann Arbor (Mich. ) high school before she entered the University of Michigan, from which she received the A. B. degree in 1876.

She studied at University of Michigan under Charles Kendall Adams and took the A. M. degree in 1883. Her thesis, the "History of the Appointing Power of the President, " was published in the first volume of the Papers of the American Historical Association (1886). Later she returned to graduate study, this time to Bryn Mawr College.

In 1912, Salmon received an honorary Doctor of Human Letters from Colgate University, and an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Michigan in 1926.

Career

After five years spent in McGregor, Iowa, where she was principal of the high school, she returned to the University of Michigan for graduate work in history. There For three years then she taught history at the Indiana state normal school and returned to graduate study.

As fellow in history, 1886-87, she worked under Woodrow Wilson, then in his second year of teaching at Bryn Mawr. In 1887 she went to Vassar College, first as associate professor, and two years later as professor of history, and made that the center of her life work. She was still in active teaching at the time of her death.

Under her teaching the library was the laboratory of the student of history. She made it her special concern to see that the college library was well equipped with original sources for research. In the field of history teaching her influence spread far beyond her own class-room.

She was a member of the committee of seven of the American Historical Association, 1896-99. Her volume, Domestic Service (1897) was written as an examination of the common sphere of the household for the elucidation of historical and economic forces. The two companion volumes, The Newspaper and the Historian and The Newspaper and Authority, both published in 1923, are undoubtedly the works by which her quality as historical scholar will be measured.

In 1926, the year before her death, her former students and other friends established at Vassar the "Lucy Maynard Salmon Fund for Research, " and under this fund the first publication was her posthumous volume, Why is History Rewritten? (1929).

Achievements

• She was the first woman to be a member of the executive committee of the American Historical Association, whose report The Study of History in Schools (1899), formed the standard guide for the teaching of history in secondary schools for the next generation. She was founder and the first president of the Association of History Teachers of the Middle States and Maryland, 1903-04. While she wrote and published a number of books and articles, it was as teacher that her greatest influence was felt. The present day theory of making the student the chief agent in his own instruction was the cardinal principle of her teaching, and from this she never wavered. In the field of historical scholarship her most significant influence was in her fresh view of what constitutes historical material. The study of the newspaper as historical material was the most extensive of her published work. Her major works: History of the Appointing Power of the President, The Newspaper and Historian, The Newspaper and Authority, Domestic Service and others. In 1926, the year before her death, her former students and other friends established at Vassar the "Lucy Maynard Salmon Fund for Research, " and under this fund the first publication was her posthumous volume, Why is History Rewritten? (1929). Her another famous posthumous volume, Historical Material, was published in 1933.

Works

More photos

• book

  • History and the Texture of Modern Life: Selected Essays

    ( Almost a century ago Vassar professor Lucy Maynard Salm...)

  • Domestic service.

    (Trieste Publishing has a massive catalogue of classic boo...)

  • The Newspaper and Authority

    (First edition. "The object of the present volume is to di...)

  • Education in Michigan during the territorial period
  • Why Is History Rewritten?

Views

To her the matter from which history is to be written was not primarily the consciously significant document, the Constitution of the United States or Magna Carta, but the daily newspaper, a railway time-table, the place name of a region, something of ordinary observation on Main Street or in the back yard. She was profoundly interested in the material of every-day living as significant for interpretation of the past.

Membership

She was a member of the committee of seven of the American Historical Association, 1896-99.

Personality

She took active part in the civic life of Poughkeepsie and consistently impressed upon her students the ideals of good citizenship, whether the civic unit be the college campus or the home town or the nation. No one who knew her could fail to recall her continuous and consistent devotion to peace. Even in wartime she remained quietly and steadily loyal to this principle.

Connections

Father:

George Salmon

Mother:

Maria Clara (Maynard) Salmon

coworker:

Adelaide Underhill

teacher:

Charles Kendall Adams

References

• Go to the Sources: Lucy Maynard Salmon and the Teaching of History (History of Schools and Schooling)