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Throughout many decades, Wesleyan women writers have not only recorded history but also shaped history. Many have been writers by profession, while many others leveraged their writing talents to advance primary careers, advocate change, or enrich their personal lives. From novelists, poets, bloggers, songwriters, and playwrights to historians, nonfiction authors, speech writers, and journalists, Wesleyan women writers are winning awards and proving the value of the written word. From its earliest days, Wesleyan College prepared women to be extraordinary writers. During the mid-nineteenth century it was mandatory for each graduating Wesleyan woman to orally present a written composition. The graduates publicly read their papers in front of Macon notables, clergy, trustees, faculty, family members, and friends. In a 2006 Wesleyan Magazine article, Julia Stillwell Ketcham ’58 describes the compositions as a rare window into the minds of educated nineteenth century women. “The rhetoric,” Ketcham noted, “sounds self-assured, forceful, and clear. The papers have an academic content revealing something a graduate of any time would want – to be current, informed, prepared to take part in the cultural milieu of her time.” The papers never have a misspelled word and the grammar is perfect. 2004 Georgia Women of Achievement Inductee Louise Frederick Hays (class of 1900) was one of these educated nineteenth century graduates. She was the state of Georgia’s second female historian and archivist and is known for 2
her dedication to many social causes and her commitment to women, humankind in general, and her beloved Georgia. She was president of the Philomathean Society, editor of the College’s first yearbook (The Phi Mu Annual of 1900), and valedictorian of her class. After graduation, she began fighting for women’s suffrage, promoting the idea of coeducation, encouraging women to be leaders in Georgia, and serving with the Federated Women’s Clubs. She wrote acclaimed histories of the FrederickRumph families and Hero of Hornet’s Nest: A Biography of General Elijah Clark. Louise was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from UGA in 1924 and was the first woman in the United States to receive an honorary degree for club work. Louise’s legacy set a high example for other Wesleyan historical non-fiction writers including Jane Anne Mallet Settle ’47 who recently recorded her family’s history in The Women of the House: One Hundred Years, One Georgia Family, and Sue Lott Clark ’46 who wrote Southern Letters and Life in the Mid 1800s about her mother’s family
and Lott-Bailey Families and Their Relationship to Waycross, Ware County, Georgia, about her father’s family. Former Wesleyan Trustee Arline Atkins Finch ’56 co-authored a book in the Library of Congress, P.E.O. Fifty Years in Florida, a historical account of the women’s educational philanthropic organization to which she belongs. Most know Dr. Virginia Sumerford York ‘60 as an internationally recognized economist who has studied at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; Schule Klessheim, Salsburg, Austria; the University of Texas; and Georgia State University, among others. But as a nonfiction author, she wrote The Gene Sumerford Place: Memories of Childhood on an Americus, Georgia Farm and also co-authored the book Historical Churches of Mobile, Alabama with another member of the Mobile Historical Society. Another Wesleyanne, Anne McGee Morganstern ’58, documented the historical significance of tombs in her book, Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries and England.