Mary Stewart Howarth, Chi Omega, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2021

Posted on March 21, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Mary Stewart (Howarth) was the first woman in Florida to attend law school and graduate. She was born in DeLand, Florida in 1886. A grandfather was an early settler and land developer. Her father, Isaac Stewart, was an attorney and judge.

She earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1906. A charter member of the Eta Chapter of Chi Omega, she also served on the Michiganesian staff.

When she entered the John B. Stetson University College of Law, she was the only female in her class. A member of Phi Delta Delta legal fraternity, she graduated with a law degree in 1908. On June 20 of that year she was admitted to the Florida Bar after an oral examination with the Florida Supreme Court. She entered into practice with her father.

On June 1, 1912, she married Caspar Howarth of Chester, Pennsylvania. He was a friend of the family and 20 years her senior. The Howarths lived in Chester and had three daughters in quick succession.

Howarth was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1914 and the U.S. District Court a year later. While in Chester, she established a residence for working women and the first child care center.

When Caspar Howarth had a heart attack in 1925, the family headed to Florida and Mary rejoined the family law firm.

She argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and taught constitutional law part-time at Stetson. The Howarths established the Surety Bank of DeLand and she had a hand in the running of the family’s orange groves. Casper died in 1933. She remarried late in the 1940s, but her second husband died a short time after the marriage.

One of her daughters, Catherine, a Zeta Tau Alpha, was the 112th graduate of Stetson’s College of Law and yesterday’s blog post subject. Mother and daughter worked together in the family law firm.  Mary’s other daughters, Sara and Mary, became surgeons.

Mary Stewart Howarth died on January 23, 1976 at the age of 90.

 

 

 

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Catherine Stewart Howarth Carter-Lewia, Zeta Tau Alpha, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2021

Posted on March 20, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Catherine Stewart Howarth (Carter-Lewia) was born on September 30, 1913 in Chester, Pennsylvania. Catherine Carter was her professional name. Her mother, Mary Stewart Howarth-Hewitt, a Chi Omega, was the first woman to attend and graduate from John B. Stetson University’s College of Law. In fact, Howarth-Hewitt was the first Florida woman to hold that honor. Mary’s father and Catherine’s grandfather was a prominent lawyer and judge in DeLand, Florida.

Carter enrolled at Stetson where she was a member of several organizations including a local sorority, Sigma Alpha Phi, which began in 1926. After she received her Bachelor’s degree, she enrolled at George Washington University. There she became a member of the Beta Alpha Chapter of Zeta Tau Alpha. At GWU she received a Master’s in International Law.

She was 20 when she received her Bachelor of Law degree. An attorney was required to be 21 years of age to practice law in Florida, but she petitioned to be admitted to practice early and it was granted on June 30, 1934. She was the 112th woman admitted to the Florida Bar. She then entered into private practice with her mother, Mary Stewart Howarth-Hewitt, and her uncle, Tom B. Stewart. Stewart and Stewart was one of the oldest law firms in Florida. Her grandfather established it in 1882.

In 1934, Sigma Alpha Phi, the local sorority she had pledged at Stetson became the Beta Psi Chapter of Zeta Tau Alpha. The pledging ceremony took place at the Howarth home on October 12, 1934. For many years, Carter served as chapter advisor to Zeta Tau Alpha’s chapter at Stetson.

She married J. Howard Carter in 1935 and the law firm took on the name Stewart, Howarth and Carter. The Carters had four children.

Carter specialized in domestic relations law, wills, trusts, probate and real estate. In 1947, she became a founding trustee of the Lawyers’ Title Guaranty Fund (now Attorneys’ Title Insurance Fund). For about two decades, from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s, Carter did marriage counseling.

In the late 1940s, the Carters divorced. She remarried in April 1958. Her second husband, Harry G. Lewia died in 1974.

In 1984, the Florida Bar gave Carter a silver plate to honor her 50 years of legal practice in Florida. She died on August 17, 2000. After her death she was honored at a ceremonial session of Florida’s Supreme Court which recognized the state’s first 150 female attorneys.

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Merze Tate, Ph.D., Alpha Kappa Alpha, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2021

Posted on March 19, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Dr. Merze Tate was born Vernice “Vernie” Merze Tate on February 6, 1905 in Blanchard, Michigan. She was named valedictorian of Blanchard High School after the school burned and all students received diplomas in the 10th grade. She was 13 at the time. Although she was tops in the class, she it wasn’t prepared for college admission. She moved to Battle Creek and took a job as a maid to continue her high school education. In 1922, she graduated from Battle Creek Central High School.

She excelled at Battle Creek and her counselor sent an application to the University of Michigan. Her acceptance was rescinded when the school found out her race. Her employers contacted the president of Western State Teachers College (now Western Michigan University), Dr. Dwight Waldo, and told him about her. He gave her a scholarship and off she went to Kalamazoo. He also made the introduction to a family seeking a maid. Tate lived with the family and worked for them while attending classes.

She graduated in three years and in 1927 became the first African American woman to graduate from Western State Teachers College. However, she was unable to secure a secondary school teaching job in Michigan because of her race. She taught elementary school and then took a job at the segregated Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis, Indiana which opened in 1927.

During the summers, she worked on a Master’s degree in history from Columbia University. In 1930, she completed the next rung of her academic career.

Back in Indianapolis, she began a club, the Merze Tate Travel Club and later known as the Merze Tate Explorers. She took students on field trips throughout the country.

Indiana News, March 19, 1932

She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. for most of her adult life having become a member when in Indianapolis.  She won an Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. fellowship for foreign study in 1932. It was to have been a $1,000 but it was increased to $2,000 at the organization’s Boule. With the funding, she travelled to England in and earned a degree in International Relations from Oxford University in 1935. She was the first African American woman to attend Oxford. Tate defended her research paper, “Movement for Disarmament 1863-1914,”  from an invalid’s chair because she broke her foot in a bicycle accident. She also missed the graduation ceremonies as she was confined to a nursing home while recovering from the injury.

Indiana News, January 2, 1932

While in Europe she traveled extensively. After her return to the United States, she earned a doctoral degree from Radcliffe College, the women’s coordinate of Harvard University. The degree was in government and international relations and she was the first African American woman to do so.

Alabama Tribune (Montgomery, Alabama), July 8, 1960

Between Cambridge and Washington, D.C. where she would live the rest of her life, she taught at several historically Black institutions, including Barber-Scotia Junior College, Bennett College and Morgan State University. She was a 1941 inductee of  Phi Beta Kappa. Howard University offered her a job in 1942. She was one of the first two women to teach in Howard’s Department of History. She retired in 1977.

The National Urban League recognized her for outstanding achievement with its award in 1948. A globetrotter, she spent time as a Fulbright Scholar in India in 1950-51. She also served as a representative for the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

In 1970, Western Michigan recognized her with a Distinguished Alumni Award. In 1981, she gave the university, $150,000 to create an information processing center for graduate research. Nine years later, she established the Merze Tate Student Academic Endowment Fund at Western Michigan University with a $1 million donation. She also endowed two Medallion Scholarship at the institution, WMU’s Sangren Hall is home to the Merze Tate Grant and Innovation Center.

Photo courtesy of Western Michigan University

She died on June 27, 1996, in Washington, DC at the age of 91 and is buried in Michigan.

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Ann Brewington, Alpha Sigma Alpha, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2021

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Ann Brewington was born in Clarence, Missouri, on July 22, 1889. Her parents thought a woman’s place was in the home, so she did not attend college after graduating from high school. She worked for coal mining companies for seven years. Perhaps it was when she saved up enough or grew tired of the work she was doing that she enrolled at State Teacher’s College (now Truman State) in Kirksville, Missouri.  

1920 yearbook

She was a member of the Alpha Beta Chapter of Alpha Sigma Alpha. The sorority’s 1918 convention, elected Brewington as editor of The Phoenix of Alpha Sigma Alpha.

After leaving Kirksville, she earned a Bachelor’s in philosophy and a Master’s at the University of Chicago. She joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1923 and worked there for 31 years. For 16 of the summers at Chicago she taught summer sessions around the country. She retired from the institution in 1954.

Brewington authored several books including Direct-method materials for Gregg shorthand and Lessons plans for teaching Gregg shorthand by the direct method.

LA Times, June 1, 1931 National Education Association meeting

Her younger sister Ida Brewington Pittman, also an Alpha Sigma Alpha, was the the First Lady of Nevada. That may have been why Brewington moved to Nevada after she left Chicago. She helped established the School of Business at the University’s Southern Regional Division when the branch was founded at Las Vegas in 1954. She retired again, this time from the University of Nevada in Las Vegas at the age of 70.

In 1981, Brewington became a “Distinguished Nevadan” for her work with the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. The UNLV archives includes a collection of items she donated.

Imperial Beach Star-News (Imperial Beach, CA), June 18, 1981

 

At her 98th birthday (Courtesy of the UNLV collection)

Brewington died on August 21, 1993 at the age of 104.

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Ida Bienstock Landau, Delta Phi Epsilon, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2021

Posted on March 17, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

On March 17, 1917, five coeds at New York University School of Law founded Delta Phi Epsilon. There were only about two dozen women enrolled in the college. The DIMES, as they are referred to, are Dorothy Cohen Schwartzman, Ida Bienstock Landau, Minna Goldsmith Mahler, Eva Effron Robin, and Sylvia Steierman Cohn. Delta Phi Epsilon was formally incorporated under New York State law on March 17, 1922.

That these five women were law students back in the day before women could vote in a federal election is impressive. Today, one must have a bachelor’s degree to apply to law school. In 1917, this was not the case. While the American Bar Association was formed in 1878, the first two women to join the organization did so a year after Delta Phi Epsilon was founded. In 1906, the Association of American Law Schools adopted a requirement that law be a three-year course of study.

Delta Phi Epsilon’s founders were between the ages of 17 and 19 when they formed the organization. I suspect they were working on an undergraduate degree in law, rather than what Delta Phi Epsilon members of today aspiring to be lawyers would do, spend additional years of study after obtaining a bachelor’s degree.

Ida Bienstock Landau

Ida Landau later in life

Ida Landau later in life

In 1920, Ida Bienstock (Landau) graduated and was admitted to the New York Bar. On October 2, 1921, she married an Austrian, Jacob Landau. He founded the Jewish Telegraph Agency in The Hague in 1917. Landau lost her citizenship and her right to practice law when she married a foreigner. Interestingly, men who married foreigners at this time did not forfeit American citizenship. This case attracted national attention and it led to the adoption of the Cable Act (or the Married Woman’s Act) on September 22, 1922. It allows women who marry foreigners to keep their United States citizenship.

Ida Landau served as the assistant general manager of the Agency for many years. From 1942-51, she served as manager of the Overseas News Agency. She also served as a war correspondent. In 1943, she covered the Bermuda Refugee Conference and two years later, she toured the liberated countries of Europe. Her reports focused on the plight of Jewish refugees. In 1950, she organized the Transworld Features Syndicate.

The Landau’s son, Albert Einstein Landau, was born in 1933. His name honors his godfather, the esteemed scientist.  Ida Landau died on May 4, 1986 at the age of 86.

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Dora Shaw Heffner, Kappa Alpha Theta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2021

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Dora Shaw (Heffner) was born in Maine where her father was a judge and served as Attorney General of Maine. She attended Bates College in Maine from 1902-04 and she is listed among the alumni of the class of 1906. However, she graduated from the University of Southern California in 1906. While there, she was a member of Alpha Rho local sorority. Kappa Alpha Theta installed a chapter in 1887. It became inactive in 1895. In 1917, Alpha Rho sorority became Kappa Alpha Theta. A 1958 Kappa Alpha Theta identifies Dora Shaw Heffner as a 1925 initiate of Omicron Chapter.

Los Angeles Times, October 1, 1905

She married Robert Armstrong Heffner on August 15, 1906. Dr. George R. Bovard, President of USC, officiated at the ceremony.

Early in her marriage, she filled her time with volunteer work. During World War I, she dedicated herself to the Red Cross war effort. She was a member of the board of trustees at the Florence Crittenden home for girls. This work prompted her she to attend law school. She wanted to be able to defend the young, unwed, pregnant women who found themselves in the Crittenden homes.

Eighteen years after she graduated with a Bachelor’s, she started working on a  law degree from the University of Southern California. She earned her law degree in 1927, with Order of Coif honors.  She became a member of the California Bar the same year.

Heffner served as a judge in the juvenile court from 1927-29. In 1928 she was the first woman to receive an international prize for the best legal article. At about this time, she and two colleagues  founded the Legal Aid Clinic Association. For the next seven years she served one of its attorneys. She then became a referee of the Los Angeles Juvenile Court and was in that position for two years. Heffner was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1934.

In 1943, California Governor Earl Warren appointed her as California’s Director of Mental Hygiene. She supervised the state institutions for those who were mentally ill and developmentally disabled. Her salary was $6,000 a year. She was the first woman in the state to serve in this position.

Heffner served as president of Omicron Chapter’s Advisory Board. Heffner was the “chum and counselor of each college member,” according to an article in the March 1931 Kappa Alpha Theta. In November 1932, the Omicron Chapter assisted Heffner in giving a tea at the Florence Crittenden home. They held a bazaar at the same time and donated the funds to the home.

In 1940, Bates College awarded her an honorary degree. An illness forced her retirement in 1949. She died in 1957 at the age of 73.

 

 

 

 

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Margaret Sprague Carhart, Ph.D., Delta Gamma, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2021

Posted on March 15, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Margaret Sprague Carhart, Ph.D., was born into an academic family. Her father Henry Smith Carhart, a physicist, taught at Northwestern University from 1872-86 and at the University of Michigan after that. On August 30, 1876, he married Ellen M. Soulé Carhart. She taught French and succeeded Frances Willard (an Alpha Phi) as Dean of Women at Northwestern serving from 1874-77.  The couple’s eldest child, Margaret Sprague Carhart, was born on June 28, 1877.

In 1886, the family moved to Ann Arbor when the University of Michigan offered Henry Smith Carhart a job. Mrs. Henry S. Carhart became an Honorary member of Delta Gamma’s Xi Chapter, a chapter which her daughters Margaret and Rose would later join.

A poem by Margaret Sprague Carhart’s mother which appeared in the January 1894 Anchora

Margaret Sprague Carhart earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s at the University of Michigan where she was a member of Delta Gamma. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and she was a member of Chi Delta Phi, an English honorary.

A passport application

She went to the University of Colorado to do graduate work and later served as an instructor at the university. Her chapter of initiation noted that at Boulder she had “the delightful comradeship of the Delta Gamma chapter there.”

1906 Anchora

Carhart served as Secretary for Delta Gamma’s 1907 Convention. Delta Gamma publications identify her as a member of Xi (University of Michigan) and Phi (University of Colorado) chapters. In 1911, she gave the Xi Chapter a “beautiful Delta Gamma banner,” according to a chapter report.

In the early 1910s, she headed to California where she taught at Pasadena High School and then at Union High School in Palo Alto. She also served as Educational Director and Assistant Superintendent at the State School for Girls in Ventura.

The Southern Branch of the University of California was established in 1919. Carhart joined the faculty in 1920 when it was open to freshmen and sophomores only. She remained at the University of California at Los Angeles, as it became known, for the rest of her academic career.

In 1921, she earned a Ph.D. in English from Yale University. Her dissertation on the life of Joanna Baillie was published in 1923. She was an authority on modern poetry and contemporary drama.

Carhart was a charter member and later president of the UCLA chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. She was an active member of Delta Gamma, aiding in the establishment of the Alpha Sigma chapter at UCLA in 1925.

Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, November 1, 1934

 

Late in her life she was working on a book on the life of Oscar Wilde. She was pursuing funding to travel abroad for research purposes. She died on December 19, 1953 at the age of 76.

A tribute by her colleagues ended with these words:

She had lived a vigorous, full, and useful life, within the University and without, up to the very end. She gave unstintingly of herself to others. She made an indelible impression on her many students and friends, who will regard her passing with a deep sense of both personal and professional loss.

 

 

 

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Helen Sher Shopmaker, Phi Sigma Sigma, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2021

Posted on March 14, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Helen Beryl Sher (Shopmaker) enrolled at the University of Illinois after graduating from University City High School in St. Louis, Missouri. At Illinois, she became a member of Phi Sigma Sigma as well as the French and Spanish honoraries, Pi Delta Phi and Sigma Delta Pi, respectively. A Phi Beta Kappa, she was salutatorian of the class of 1945. She also earned a Master’s degree from Illinois and taught at Illinois until her marriage.

On November 9, 1947, she married Captain Allen B. Shopmaker, who had earned his veterinary degree at Kansas State University. After he finished his Army service, the couple started a veterinary clinic in Clayton, Missouri.

 

Active in community activities, she served as President of the St. Louis chapter of AAUW from 1957-59. Shopmaker also served on the Missouri AAUW state board. St. Louis’ Springboard to Learning was a particular favorite and she served on its Board of Directors. For more than 25 years, the couple taught English as a second language at the International Institute. They traveled extensively with Japan being one of their favorite places.

The Shoemakers endowed a scholarship at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. The couple collected political buttons and memorabilia. The items were given to the University of Missouri, St. Louis and they are on permanent display in UMSL’s Mercantile Library. The collection is known as the Dr. Allen B. and Helen S. Shopmaker Political Print Gallery. UMSL awarded Helen Sher Shopmaker an honorary doctorate.

Helen Sher Shopmaker with a 2000 Florida voting booth, part of the Shopmaker’s collection. Photo courtesy of UMSL

Helen Sher Shopmaker died in December 2020 at the age of 97.

 

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Emma Harper Applegate, Alpha Delta Pi, #NotableSororityWoman, #WHM2021

Posted on March 13, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Emma Harper (Applegate) was born in 1890 in Wisconsin. She attended Lawrence College (now University) in Appleton, Wisconsin. There she joined Alpha Delta Pi and was a member of Theta Alpha, an honorary. Treasurer of her class, she was also a member of the Student Senate, YWCA Board, and Mortar Board.

Post-Crescent (Appleton, WI), November 10, 1914

After graduating in 1915, she spent a year as an assistant librarian at Lawrence. Then she began teaching English in the Appleton school system.

During World War I, when women’s opportunities to be of service during the war were quite limited, she became part of the YWCA effort. In 1918, she went to Europe with the YWCA and served a year as a librarian in France.

A description of her from her passport application

 

She also had to attest that she had no male relatives in Europe and that she was not signing up because she wanted to be near someone overseas.

After her return to Appleton she resumed her teaching duties. On October 26, 1921, she married Captain Harry Sammons Applegate.

She was a dedicated volunteer. Applegate was the Michigan State President of the League of Women Voters from 1936-38. She also served as the top officer of the Michigan Veterans of Foreign Wars auxiliary.

Lansing State Journal, May 2, 1937

Applegate gave a program on our “South American Neighbors” to the South Lansing Women’s Club in October 1943. “Women can exert tremendous influence in post war relations if they will only use their power,” she told the group, according to a newspaper account of the meeting.

In the early 1944 she ran for the nomination to the state house of representatives but her attempt was unsuccessful.

She helped set up psychiatric clinics for soldiers, served in a governor’s commission on government and was a member of the women’s division of the Lansing safety council.

After the death of her husband in 1944, she returned to teaching and spent a decade from 1946-1956 teaching in Lansing, Michigan, high schools.

Applegate attended the installation banquet of Alpha Delta Pi’s Gamma Omega chapter at Michigan State University on April 7, 1956. Her program booklet is part of Alpha Delta Pi’s historical collection.

She died on July 1, 1968 at the age of 76.

 

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Esther Mosher Schneider, Sigma Kappa, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2021

Posted on March 12, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Esther Mosher (Schneider), born in 1906, lived in Auburn, New York, her entire life, except for her time in college. She graduated from Cornell University in 1928 where she was a member of the Alpha Zeta Chapter of Sigma Kappa.

Sigma Kappa, September 1928

She received a law degree from Syracuse University’s School of Law in 1931. Mosher and Mosher was established when she went into practice with her father in Auburn.

She married George G. Schneider, a law school classmate on August 5, 1935 at the Auburn Calvary Church.

The law firm of Mosher and Mosher became Mosher and Schneider. She worked with her husband and father in the firm. The couple had two sons, John and Richard., born in 1936 and 1938, respectively.

She juggled motherhood and being a lawyer at a time when that was not the norm. Schneider was active in many organizations including the Cayuga County Bar Association, the Cayuga County Legal Auxiliary, Auburn College Club, Cornell University Club, Syracuse University Club, and the Sigma Kappa Alumni Association.

She died on March 20, 1977.

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