Gill Laura Drake was an American educator. Also, he was a pioneer in vocational placemen.
Background
Laura Drake Gill was of early Massachusetts stock, the daughter of Elisha and Huldah (Capen) Gill. She was born August 24, 1860, in Chesterville, Maine, while her father, who was threatened with tuberculosis, was living there on a farm. He returned to Massachusetts when Laura was six years old and on May 1, 1873, he died.
Education
An aunt, Bessie T. Capen, principal of a girl’s school in Northampton, helped Laura to secure an education. She graduated from Smith College in 1881 and then joined the faculty of Miss Capen’s school, where she taught mathematics for seventeen years. Smith awarded her a master’s degree in 1885, and between 1890 and 1893, she did graduate work in mathematics at the University of Leipzig, at Geneva, and at the Sorbonne.
Career
The outbreak of war with Spain afforded Laura an opportunity to show the rare organizing gift for which she became widely known. Weary of teaching, she was one of the first women to register for executive service under the Red Cross and sailed on the adventurous voyage of the Lampasas in charge of the first party of nurses dispatched to Cuba.
She was later detailed to Chickamauga to select and place nurses in the Leiter General Hospital, and to Montauk Point, Long Island, for similar work. At all other times, she had charge of the transportation of nurses to and from New York.
At the close of the war, she helped to organize the schools of Cuba under Gen. Leonard Wood, and undertook educational and relief work for the Cuban Orphans’ Society. Her qualities as executive and teacher won her, in 1901, an appointment as dean of Barnard College, where she remained for seven years.
The tinder was ready for the spark when, toward the close of 1909, Dr. Susan Kingsbury, then of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, Boston, consulted her about the reorganization of their old business and domestic agency.
The following January saw her in Boston, laying down lines for the first vocational bureau for college women.
After leaving Boston in 1911, she was engaged for two years in organization work at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, which institution had given her in 1907 the degree of Doctor of Civil Law.
She did similar work at Trinity College, Durham, North Carolina. During the World War, she was a special agent in the field organization, United States Employment Service, Department of Labor.
Later, she became interested in work for mountain boys. She spent the last seven years of her life at Pine Mountain Settlement, Kentucky, and at Berea College, where, while serving as house-mother and teacher, she died.
Views
Laura's interest in vocational opportunities for women, awakened during her work with nurses, was deepened by her experiences at Barnard, and also by the problems of college women seeking professional advancement, which came to her notice during her presidency of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae.
She was uncompromising in her effort to hold trained women to the highest standard of scholarship and business efficiency, and indefatigable in her attempts to find freer scope for the native abilities of applicants, secure them better remuneration, and swing them into the service of social and civic movements where they were needed.