Pioneers in Home Economics

 

Catherine Beecher

Catherine, along with her sister Harriet, were staunch supporters of domestic sciences in the mid 1800s. Catherine wrote one of the first books in 1841, Treatise on Domestic Economy. Together, the sisters wrote The American Woman’s Home in 1869. At the time, these were landmark works on the subject of domestic sciences, and are quite interesting to read about home life more than 165 years ago.

Photo courtesy of Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, Connecticut

Harriett Beecher Stowe Center

 


Ellen Swallow Richards

Probably better known as the founder of the American Home Economics Association in 1909, Ellen was the first woman to ever attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1870, the first woman graduate, and the first woman instructor at MIT. She was a tireless advocate for women’s education and conducted one of the first correspondence courses to update women teaching science. She is credited with starting the school lunch program that is still in place today as well as providing nutritional information to consumers. She believed in the “art of right living” and worked her entire life to improve air and water quality as she knew these were the keys to a healthy life.

Picture retrieved from AAFCS Archives, Cornell University Kroc Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections

 

Nellie Kedzie Jones

A nationally recognized pioneer in home economics, Nellie Kedzie Jones was a champion for rural women homemakers, bringing them the latest scientific research through her role as state leader of Home Economics Extension in Wisconsin.

Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society

Wisconsin Historical Society: Nellie Kedzie Jones


 

Caroline Hunt

Caroline Hunt was a contemporary of Ellen Swallow Richards and attended the Lake Placid Conferences. She was an early pioneer at the University of Wisconsin in establishing the home economics program. After leaving Wisconsin, she worked extensively in Washington, DC, as an advocate for home economics and a writer for the U. S. Department of Agriculture. She wrote the first biography of Ellen Richards at the request of Robert Richards, Ellen’s husband.

Photo courtesy of the University of Wisconsin College of Human Ecology Histoary and Archives

 

Isabel Bevier

Isabel Bevier was a contemporary of Ellen Richards and attended the Lake Placid Conferences. She was instrumental in founding the home economics program at Illinois University and is often credited as the founder of women’s collegiate programs in home economics throughout the country. A building is named for her on the campus of Illinois University at Champaign.

Martha Van Rensselaer

Martha Van Rensselaer was an early 20th century leader in home economics. Born in upstate New York, she came to Cornell University and was instrumental in establishing the early home economics program there. She was a nutrition assistant to W. O. Atwater, a leader in nutrition research in the early 1900s. In 1900, she organized an extension program for New York State's rural women, and under her leadership, the fledgling program blossomed. She believed that only by adopting new scientific strategies and applying them to their daily tasks could women ease the burdens of farm life. In less than five years, the program enrolled more than 20,000 women members from across the state. In 1908, she joined the home economics department at Cornell University. From 1920–26, she was home economics editor of the popular woman’s magazine, Delineator.

Cornell University, Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections

 

Beatrice Paolucci

Beatrice Paolucci was a more recent pioneer in home economics who was able to grasp the synergistic, holistic nature of the discipline and articulate this to other professionals in ways that propelled the discipline forward in the mid to late 1970s. She was on the faculty at Michigan State University for 25 years in human ecology until her untimely death at age 63 in 1983. She and Marjorie Brown wrote one of the definitive works for the profession called Home Economics: A Definition in 1979.

Picture retrieved from Michigan State University Archives and Historical Collections

Beatrice Paolucci: Shaping Destiny through Everyday Life
Michigan State University, University Archives & Historical Collections


W.O. Atwater

W. O. Atwater is best known for his studies of human nutrition. He invented and used a machine called the respiration calorimeter that aided in food analysis, dietary evolution, work energy consumption, and digestible food. With this machine, the dynamics of metabolism could be quantified. After lengthy study, Atwater concluded that Americans consumed too much fat and sweets and did not exercise enough. In 1894, he was instrumental in having federal money appropriated for food and nutrition research.

Picture retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilbur_Olin_Atwater
"America's Fascination with Nutrition," Food Review (volume 23, issue 1)


 

Virginia Meredith

Virginia Meredith was the first woman trustee for Purdue University. As the widow of a wealthy Indiana stockman, she became a champion for women and education as she became the first woman speaker for the farmer’s institutes in 1889. She taught and organized the School of Home Economics at the University of Minnesota and organized the Indiana Federation of Women’s Clubs. Meredith Hall is named in her honor.

Photo courtesy of Purdue University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections
Purdue University Archives, Purdue Legends

Lella Gaddis

In 1914, Lella Gaddis was appointed the first state leader of home demonstration work in Indiana. She traveled throughout the state to “discover the needs of the people and to devise a way to meet the needs.”

 

Mary Matthews

Mary Matthews was the adopted daughter of Virginia Meredith. Mary followed her mother on the lecture circuit, including the farmer’s institutes. She earned the first bachelor’s degree in home economics at the University of Minnesota in 1904. She joined Purdue as an extension home economics instructor in 1910, and two years later became head of the Department of Household Economics. When the department became a school in 1926, she was named dean. During her tenure, enrollment swelled to more than 1,000 students and male undergraduates were admitted to the school and graduated. Also under her leadership, the home economics cafeteria opened in 1923 and as well as the first nursery school in Indiana in 1926. Matthews Hall is named in her honor.

Photo courtesy of Purdue University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections

 

Eva. L. Goble

In 1941, Eva Goble began her tenure with Purdue as a home demonstration agent in Vigo County. From there, she became a home management specialist, state leader of home demonstration agents, and assistant director of Extension. Under her leadership, the Extension Homemakers Clubs in Indiana enjoyed the largest enrollment of any state in the nation. In 1967, she became dean of the School of Home Economics, and during her term, enrollment in the school nearly doubled. In 1972, she was named co-recipient of the first Frederick L. Hovde Award of Excellence in Educational Service to the Rural People of Indiana. To honor her contributions, the College of Consumer and Family Sciences established the Eva Goble Lecture Series in 1992. Dean Emerita Goble received an honorary doctorate from Purdue in 1999.