Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is conceived as a long-term project. I am seeking artifacts and information about the curriculum that has shaped young economists as well as the about the “products” of the curriculum, i.e. the undergraduate economics majors and Ph.D. graduates.
Yesterday I randomly went into the annual report of the President of Radcliffe College to begin to follow another career of a woman Ph.D. in economics. And so the post for today was born. Who was Ethelwynn Rice Beckwith, Radcliffe Ph.D. 1925?
The first item below is all that is easy to know about her biography and career. From that point it takes some digging into genealogical archives (www.ancestry.com) and luck. Her vital dates: b. January 7, 1870 in Hartford, Connecticut; d. August 31, 1955 in Manitawoc, Wisconsin. She was married right out of college to William Erastus Beckwith [b. October 17, 1870 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts; d. June 26, 1904 in Wailuku, Hawaii] on July 2, 1900 in Lorain County Ohio. The couple moved to Hawaii where William was a “clerk at Custom House” at least as early as 1898. In 1905 she was living alone as a teacher at the Emma Willard School in Troy, N.Y. In the U.S. Census of 1910 she was recorded as a widow, living in Cleveland, Ohio as a boarder (April 16, 1910). To make things more complicated I have found a ship manifest that indicates Ethelwynn Beckwith was a cabin passenger, designated as “married”, on a ship from Yokohama (!) that arrived in Honolulu September 16, 1910 (with her ultimate destination given as San Francisco). We can go on to follow the young woman mathematician moving from Bryn Mawr to Western Reserve University to Göttingen in Germany and to Vassar before going for her graduate work at Radcliffe. From mathematics to economics, but then back to mathematics and astronomy at the Milwaukee women’s Downer College.
So why didn’t Ethelwynn do mathematics at Radcliffe? I’ll leave that to a historian of U.S. mathematics. Feel free to leave a comment below.
The maternal genealogy of William Erastus Beckwith (p. 80) is covered back to 1635. The best I can determine through the ancestry.com, William Erastus Beckwith was no close relation to Holmes Beckwith (Columbia Ph.D., 1913).
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Radcliffe Ph.D., 1925
Ethelwynn Rice Beckwith, A.M.
Subject, Economics. Special Field, Statistics. Dissertation, “Inequalities in the Distribution of Income, their Meaning and Measurement.”
Source: Radcliffe College. Report of the President of Radcliffe College 1924-25, p. 26.
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Dissertation included in the bibliography of Arthur Lyon Bowley (ed.) Studies in the National Income, 1924-1938, (Cambridge UK, 1942), p. 218.
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C.V. through 1925
Ethelwynn R. Beckwith, A.B., M.A. Assistant Professor of Mathematics
A.B., Oberlin, 1900; [Ph.B.]
M.A., Western Reserve University, 1909;
Principal of Wauluku, Hawaiian Islands, 1902-03
Teacher of Mathematics, Emma Willard School, 1905-07 [Troy, New York]
Graduate Student, Bryn Mawr, 1907-08
Graduate Student, Western Reserve University, 1908-09
Graduate Student, University of Göttingen, 1912-13
Instructor, Western Reserve University, 1913-17; Assistant Professor, 1917-20
Acting Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Vassar, 1921-.
Member Mathematic Association of America.
Source: Vassar College Yearbook, The 1922 Vassarion, vol. 34. p. 25.
Note: In the Poughkeepsie City Directory of 1925, Ethelwynn R. Beckwith was still listed as assistant professor at Vassar.
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Downer College (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy
1925-1947
Lawrence University (Appleton, Wisconsin) Archives
Milwaukee-Downer College People Files, 1850-1964. Series 1: A-L
Folder 15: Beckwith, Ethelwynn Rice, professor of Mathematics 1925-1947.
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Died as a result of an automobile accident
From a Sheboygan Press (Wisconsin) article published Saturday, August 27, 1955.
Mrs. Ethelwynn R. Beckwith, 77, of 2827 N. Farwell Ave., Milwaukee…was reported still in critical condition this morning at Holy Family Hospital in Manitowoc.
A retired professor of mathematics and astronomy at Milwaukee-Downer College, Mrs. Beckwith was still unconscious 28 hours after the accident. She sustained a skull fracture.
Driver of the other car, Louis Leischow, 66, of Forestville, died several hours after the accident. The coroner attributed death to a crushed chest.
Killed outright in the two-car collision was Miss Elizabeth Rossberg, 67, of 2512 E. Harford Ave., Milwaukee…
…The accident occurred shortly before 9 a.m. Friday [August 26] when cars driven by Leischow and Mrs. Beckwith collided head on on Highway 141, 1 1/2 miles south of Newton.
Sheriff deputies said the crash occurred when Mrs. Beckwith’s northbound car veered across the center line into the path of an auto driven by Leischow.
Miss Rossberg, professor of German at Milwaukee-Downer since 1912 and chairman of the curricula committee of the women’s college, was a passenger in the Beckwith auto.
She and Mrs. Beckwith had left Milwaukee early Friday morning to spend a week with friends near Ellison Bay in Door County, according to officials of the college….
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Image Source: Two faculty portraits of Ethelwynn Rice Beckwith from the Yearbook for Wilwaukee-Downer College, Cumtux (1930, 1931).