Middlebury History Online
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Julian Willis Abernethy
Educator, author, philologian, and bibliophile, Julian W. Abernethy bequeathed Middlebury his legacy, his library of over 5,000 volumes, which remain in the College’s collection to this day. Born in New Haven, Vermont January 23, 1853, Abernethy graduated from Middlebury in 1876 and went on to earn a PhD in Anglo-Saxon and English Literature at Yale […]
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Viola Chittenden White
Viola Chittenden White (1890-1977) was hired as Middlebury College’s first Curator of the Abernethy Library of American Literature in 1933 and held this title (and later the additional title of Assistant Professor) until her retirement in 1956. Raised in Brooklyn, White graduated from Wellesley College in 1911 and drifted between jobs, too independent to settle […]
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Marjorie Lamberti
Marjorie Lamberti, Charles A. Dana Professor of History was the second woman at Middlebury to be appointed full professor. She grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where she studied German in high school and developed a passionate interest in German culture. She matriculated to Smith College, where she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa […]
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May Belle Chellis
One of the first three women admitted to Middlebury College, and the first woman to graduate in 1886, May Belle Chellis’ presence and accomplishments forced the trustees to make accommodations for women to attend the College.
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Rhoda Mabel White
On May 26, 1909, Rhoda Mabel White, doctoral fellow in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, responded to President John Martin Thomas’s call for a Dean for the Women’s College of Middlebury, stating that she could aid the College as a “builder of women […not as] a ‘house mother’ or ‘social advisor,’ but [as] a […]
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Eleanor Sybil Ross
Eleanor Sybil Ross graduated from Middlebury in 1895 and returned to Middlebury in 1915 to serve as an Assistant Professor of English and as the Dean of Women for the next 30 years, making her Middlebury’s first alumna administrator.
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