ed to the college: Freeman Cottage,
the gift of Mrs. Durant, and the Eliot, the joint gift of Mrs. Durant
and Mr. H. H. Hunnewell. Originally the Eliot had been used as
a boarding-house for the young women working in a shoe factory
at that time running in Wellesley village, but after Mrs. Durant
had enlarged and refurnished it, students who wished to pay a part
of their expenses by working their way through college were boarded
there. Some years later it was again enlarged, and used as a
village-house for freshmen.
In December, 1887, Miss Freeman resigned from Wellesley to marry
Professor George Herbert Palmer of Harvard; but her interest in
the college did not flag, and during her lifetime she continued
to be a member of the Board of Trustees. From 1892 to 1895 she
held the office of Dean of Women of the University of Chicago; and
Radcliffe, Bradford Academy, and the International Institute for
Girls, in Spain, can all claim a share in her fostering interest.
From 1889 until the end of her life, she was a member of the
Massachusetts Board of Education, having been appointed by
Governor Ames and reappointed by Governor Greenhalge and Governor
Crane.
In addition to the degree of Ph.D. received from Michigan in 1882,
Miss Freeman received the honorary degree of Litt.D. from Columbia
in 1887, and in 1895 the honorary degree of LL.D., from Union
University.
What she meant to the women who were her comrades at Wellesley
in those early days--the women who held up her hands--is expressed
in an address by Professor Whiting at the memorial service held
in the chapel in December, 1903:
"I think of her in her office, which was also her private parlor,
with not even a skilled secretary at first, toiling with all the
correspondence, seeing individual girls on academic and social
matters, setting them right in cases of discipline, interviewing
members of the faculty on necessary plans. The work was overwhelming
and sometimes her one assistant would urge her, late in the
evening, to nibble a bite from a tray which, to save time, had
been sent in to her room at the dinner hour, only to remain
untouched.... No wonder that professors often left their lectures
to be written in the wee small hours, to help in uncongenial
administrative work, which was not in the scope of their recognized
duties."
The pathos of her death in Paris, in December, 1902, came as a
shock to hundreds of people whose lives had been brightened by
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