Mary Latimer Gambrell was an American historian and college president.
Background
Gambrell was born on January 14, 1898 in Belton, South Carolina, the only daughter of Macie Amanda Latimer and Enoch Pepper Gambrell. The Gambrells had been prominent in South Carolina for several generations. Her father was a planter, banker, and businessman; two of her four brothers became banking executives in New York City, two of them leading lawyers in Atlanta.
Education
Mary Gambrell was educated at home and in the Belton public schools, and received a B. A. in 1917 from Greenville (South Carolina) Women's College. The College subsequently became part of Furman University, which awarded Gambrell a Litt. D. in 1951.
Career
From 1918 to 1925 Gambrell taught in the preparatory academy of the Women's College; from 1927 to 1930 she taught in the Belton High School. She then began graduate work in history at Columbia University, where Dixon Ryan Fox supervised her M. A. (1931). She received her Ph. D. in 1937, with a dissertation, "Ministerial Training in Eighteenth Century New England, " directed by Evarts Greene and John Krout; it was published that year by Columbia University Press. From 1932 to 1937 she was a popular instructor of History at New Haven State Teachers' College. Described by an administrator as "forceful, pleasing, dignified and charming, " she was soon made department chairman. In 1942, she gave the commencement address at New Haven; published under the title of "Old Wine in New Bottles" in Vital Speeches, it foreshadowed her lifelong commitment to traditional cultural and educational values and practices. In 1937 she learned of a faculty appointment to be made at New York's Hunter College. In those years, few universities and almost no men's colleges appointed women to the faculty. Those women appointed to women's colleges (as Hunter was then) had little prospect of a subsequent appointment elsewhere. Gambrell remained at Hunter for thirty years until her retirement in 1967. As instructor in history (1937-1944), assistant professor (1944-1949), associate professor (1949-1953), and professor (1953-1967), she was an effective teacher; her most popular course was on American cultural history. Neither then nor later was she an outspoken feminist. But she greatly valued the friendships the conference promoted. On occasion she traveled in Europe with Margaret Judson of Douglass College, whom she had met at a Berkshire meeting. Hunter College early recognized her administrative abilities. She served as chairman of the Department of History between 1948 and 1962. When her history department colleague, John Meng, was named president of Hunter, Gambrell assumed the "number two" role of dean of faculties from 1961 to 1966. She believed in orderly process. She put particular stress on the rights and obligations of the faculty, whom she regarded as "the embodiment of the college. " A defining moment for Gambrell occurred in 1967. Two years earlier, she had served as acting president during a short leave that Meng had secured. In the spring of 1966 Meng had resigned, and Gambrell was again asked to serve as acting president. When it became clear that the man chosen to succeed Meng would not be able to take office until the summer of 1967, Gambrell decided to be formally inaugurated president for the intervening months. The ceremony did not appreciably increase Gambrell's authority. But it reflected the appreciation of the college for thirty years of distinguished service, as other deans and presidents had come and gone. Furthermore, she was, Meng declared at the inauguration, the first woman to head a major coeducational college in the United States. As department chairman, dean, acting president, and president, Gambrell helped Hunter adjust to the admission of male students; she lobbied for a dramatic expansion of space at the Park Avenue campus; planned for the Bronx campus to become Lehman College; arranged for a new building for social work - all the while remaining intimately involved in a college of over 25, 000 students. Gambrell retired in June 1967.
Membership
President of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians (1947-1949)