author
M. Carey (Martha Carey) Thomas
1857–1935
A forceful champion of women’s higher education, she helped shape Bryn Mawr College into one of the most demanding academic institutions open to women in her era. Her life also carries harder truths, including views on race and immigration that later generations have confronted directly.
1 Audiobook
Education of Women
by M. Carey (Martha Carey) Thomas
About the author
Born in Baltimore on January 2, 1857, Martha Carey Thomas grew up in a prominent Quaker family and went on to become an educator, suffragist, and linguist. After studying at Cornell and then in Europe, she built a reputation as a serious scholar at a time when advanced academic opportunities for women were still sharply limited.
Thomas became Bryn Mawr College’s first dean in 1885 and its second president in 1894, serving until 1922. She pushed for rigorous entrance standards and strong graduate study, and she played a major role in establishing Bryn Mawr as a leading college for women.
She was also active in the movement for women’s rights, including woman suffrage. At the same time, Bryn Mawr itself has emphasized that her legacy is deeply complicated: alongside her achievements, Thomas expressed racist and anti-Semitic views that the college and historians have since examined critically. She died in Philadelphia on December 2, 1935.