Founder of Smith College, Sophia Smith – daughter of a miser and sister of a penny-pincher, leaves half a million dollar bequest to found women’s college.
Smith
College is one of the finest colleges in the US and was the first women’s
college in North America. An online exhibit of Sophia Smith’s story
can be found at http://clio.fivecolleges.edu/smith/sophia/index.htm.
When Sophia’s father died, her brother Austin managed the family’s assets. Austin was a miser, “devoid of community spirit”.
He was against public education and especially the education of women. Austin, used to charge his sisters a shilling to ride in the family carriage.
Sophia Smith’s pastor, John Morton Greene, was influential in Sophia’s decision to endow a women’s college.
In his journal, Rev. Greene describes Sophia Smith’s visit asking him to advise her about the disposition of her newly inherited wealth.
“Then I told her if I had anything to do with the matter, she must first settle it in her mind that she herself was responsible for disposition of the property. God had allowed her brother Austin to accumulate it, but evidently He appointed her as the one to determine the uses to which it should be put.”
Rev. Greene’s journal describes three plans which were proposed, one of which included a “deaf-mute” institution. None of these were for a women’s college, which had been dropped as ‘unfeasible’.
But then an institution for the “deaf mute” was created elsewhere in the State, and Rev. Greene raised the idea again of a women’s college. “The subject of women’s education, women’s rights and privileges, is to be the next great step to progress in our State.”
| Furniture | 2,885.00 |
| Misc. | 558.00 |
| Jewelry | 1,073.00 |
| Bank Stocks | 225,096.00 |
| Railroad Stocks |
24,528.00 |
| Railroad Bonds | 54,470.00 |
| State Bonds | 14,000.00 |
| United States Bonds | 55,420.00 |
| Promissory Notes | 72,859.29 |
| Cash on Hand | 2,954.64 |
| Real Estate | 15,000.00 |
Total |
$468,843.93 |
Visit by Sophia Smith - "This afternoon Miss Sophia Smith has been into my study to confer with me about changing her will…”
The inventory of the estate of Miss Sophia Smith. The estate amounted to a greater sum than was supposed by anyone.