Women's Studies Interest Group Spring Program at the Naval War College and Newport Historical Society, Newport, RI, on May 3, 2006  
 

An intermittently soggy, March-like May day did not deter nine WSIG members and friends from attending the Women's Studies Interest Group spring program, held at the Naval War College and the Newport Historical Society, in Newport, Rhode Island on May 3, 2006.  Evelyn Cherpak, Head, Naval Historical Collection, Naval War College, and co-chair of the Women's Studies Interest Group, greeted us in the Mahan Rotunda of Mahan Hall. Built in 1904 with three-foot-thick walls, Mahan Hall is named after Alfred Thayer Mahan, Rear Admiral, Naval War College president, and naval historian, who is known for his books, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, and The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812.  Evelyn provided us with copies of the brochure “Naval War College Naval Historical Collection,” and the winter/spring 2003 issue of Rhode Island History, which featured her article, “So Proudly They Served: Rhode Island Waves in World War II.”  She also provided coffee, tea, and delicious pastries while we socialized and looked at the exhibits in the Mahan Rotunda.   

We then moved into the adjacent Mahan Reading Room, where Evelyn prefaced her talk on Women's History Sources in the Naval Historical Collection with some background information on the Naval War College. The senior educational institution in the United States Navy, the Naval War College, the first such institution in the world, was founded in 1884 under the direction of Stephen B. Luce. The College's purpose, then and now, is to educate naval officers in the art and science of naval warfare. Coursework included tactics, strategy, logistics, international law, and naval history.  Today there are 600 students, both U.S. and foreign, career military officers from the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, as well as civilians from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. Since the 1990s the College has offered a Master of Arts degree in national security and strategic studies.  

The Naval Historical Collection, established in 1969, focuses on the history of naval warfare as studied and taught by the College, and historical source materials related to the Navy in the Narragansett Bay region. The Collection serves as the depository for the Naval War College Archives. A finding aid for the collection is available: A Guide to Archives, Manuscripts, and Oral Histories in the Naval Historical Collection.
 

Archives

The Archives encompass 1500 linear feet of administrative and curricular records, divided into 43 record groups. These include lectures, syllabi, theses, administrative correspondence, conference proceedings, war gaming materials, and more.  

The Naval Historical Collection  includes manuscripts, manuscript items, and oral histories.


Manuscript Collections

There are 253 manuscript collections, including corporate collections (such as the Newport Naval Base) and personal papers of naval officers or civilians associated with the College, as well as Navy wives and WAVES. Evelyn highlighted several manuscript collections documenting the lives of women connected to the military. Descriptions of the women-focused collections can be found in Evelyn's Guide to Research Source Materials on Women in the Naval Historical Collection.

*Wilma Miles Papers

The collection includes her letters describing her life as a Navy wife in China in the 1920s and 1930s, insights into political events, historical figures, and a way of life that has disappeared. She took photographs of harbors; the U.S. Navy used these photographs. The Miles family left China in 1939 over the Burma Road; this trip is also documented in her papers. The Mileses were amateur photographers and there are 67 photograph albums documenting their travels. Wilma Miles wrote an autobiography, Billy, Navy Wife.  

*WAVES in World War II

These collections include letters to family, photographs, booklets, certificates, and memorabilia. They supplement the oral histories of WAVES done by Evelyn.  

*Women Officers School

The Women Officers School was established after the passage of the Women's Armed Services Integration Act in 1948. This collection includes command histories, photo albums, newspaper clippings, and correspondence. In 1973 the Women Officers School merged with the Officer Candidate School and the OCS was transferred to Pensacola .  

A number of women's papers are found in the manuscript collections of their husbands or fathers. These include:  

*Reginald Belknap Papers

Photographs, letters and reminiscences of his wife, Julia, on life in Japan, China and the Philippines as a Navy wife.  

*Ethan Allan Hitchcock Papers

Letters of daughter, Anne, describing life in St. Petersburg, Russia while her father was ambassador.  

*Scott Umsted Papers

Personal and travel diaries, unpublished and published travel writings and fiction and poetry of his mother, Katherine Scott Umsted.  

*Raymond Spruance Papers

Transcript of an oral history of his wife, Margaret Spruance. Describes his assignments at the Naval War College and as ambassador to the Philippines.  

Manuscript Items

Manuscript items consist of single documents, letters, journals, scrapbooks, or reminiscences. Many manuscript items (reminiscences, for example) relate to women's history. These include:  

*A letter from Virginia Farragut requesting $2000 from Congress for her husband's funeral expenses  

*Reminiscences of Edith Wilson Crose on her life as a Navy wife, and on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic  

*Guide Right: A Handbook for WAVES & SPARS, 1944. A WWII handbook on etiquette, personal conduct, uniforms, etc.  

Oral Histories

There are some 375 transcripts of oral histories, 170 of women. Evelyn has conducted oral histories of women in the sea services in WWII:  WAVES. SPARS (Coast Guard), the Navy Nurse Corps, and women who served the Navy in other capacities or as civilians. To locate women to interview, Evelyn put a notice in  White Caps: The Newsletter for WAVES National. Evelyn sent letters to prospective interviewees, followed up with background questionnaires. All oral histories have been transcribed and edited. The oral histories include photographs of the interviewee in uniform and their papers. WAVES, or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, was established on July 20, 1942. Women had to be 20 years old, 5 feet tall, 95 pounds, and be in good health. WAVES served the duration of the war plus six months, and were eligible for the G.I. Bill. African American women were accepted into the WAVES in 1944. Enlisted women (those with only high school diplomas), trained at Hunter College; officers, (college educated) went to Smith College for basic training. WAVES became aviation mechanics' mates, air traffic controllers, gunnery trainers, storekeepers (payroll), pharmacists' assistants, cryptologists and intelligence officers. They taught, served in administrative and personnel positions. They joined because of a sense of patriotism, for the adventure, to travel. Some WAVES went on to pharmacy or medical school after their service ended.  

There are also oral histories of Navy wives and Navy juniors (children of Naval officers). They comment on the life and career of their spouses, their life together, or as children growing up on the Naval War College campus.  

In summary, Evelyn said that the collection serves as a rich source of material on the lives and careers of women connected to the military in the 19 th and 20 th centuries. The collections have been used for term paper, theses, and book research.  

Evelyn suggested a couple of books on women in the military:  

Ebbert, Jean, and Marie-Beth Hall. The First, the Few, the Forgotten: Navy and Marine Corps Women in World War I. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2002.  


Godson, Susan H. Serving Proudly: A History of Women in the U.S. Navy. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2001.  


The Naval War College Foundation holds copyright. Items come to the archives and museum through the Foundation. Because of this arrangement, other naval facilities cannot requisition any of these historical items.  

We took a brief tour downstairs in the Naval Historical Collection Reading Room. Evelyn had placed a number of items on tables for us to look at, including photograph albums of the Miles family in China just after the Japanese invasion; and letters and other documents from other collections she had spoken about in her talk.  

Newport Historical Society Library  

We headed over to the Newport Historical Society Library where Bert Lippincott, Reference Librarian, Genealogist, and Acting Curator of Manuscripts, was waiting for us. He welcomed us to the Newport Historical Society, founded in 1854 to collect and preserve books, manuscripts, and objects pertaining to Newport's history. The Newport Historical Society Library is attached to the 1730 Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House, the first permanent headquarters of the Newport Historical Society.  The Newport Historical Society has millions of pages of archival materials, including a financial document of the late 1500s bearing the signature of Queen Elizabeth I, 250,000 photographs, as well as maps and engravings. The Newport Historical Society's more recent collections include scrap from the recently demolished Jamestown Bridge.  


Bert took us through a chronological walk-through of women's collections at the Newport Historical Society Library. He talked about sources of women's history in the collection and passed a number of items from the collections around the table for us to examine.

 

Important Women's Collections at the Newport Historical Society  


*Minutes of the Women's Meeting of the Rhode Island Monthly Meeting of Friends, ca. 1670-1919. First Quaker congregation (1657).  Produced generations of reformers and abolitionists. Women had complete equality in the Religious Society of Friends and took their equality into the secular world. Records of the Women's Meeting (women and men had separate business meetings; minutes of their meetings often dealt with  marriage or finances.

 

*Land deed signed by Quaker martyr Mary Dyre  (Dyer)

Banished from Massachusetts along with Anne Hutchinson Mary and her husband settled in Rhode Island. Mary converted to Quakerism in England, and settled again in Rhode Island. After repeated trips to Massachusetts, in defiance of anti-Quaker laws, and after several arrests, Mary Dyer was hanged on Boston Common in 1660.  


*Ann Franklin printing business and press.

Ann was the wife of Ben's brother James and upon his death took over his printing business in Newport. The printing press is in the Museum of Newport History.  


*Sarah Osborn diaries. Great Awakening Congregationalist and teacher.  


*Robinson and Hunter family papers and diaries.

These are the largest collections in the library and these families figure into every facet of Newport history.

 

       - Thomas Dunn (China) diaries.  


*Julia Ward Howe and the Town & Country Club of New York and Boston reformers, artists, scientists and writers. Suffrage papers from Alva Vanderbilt Belmont.

Well-heeled Southerners, Bostonians, and New Yorkers summered in Newport. Julia Ward Howe's Town and Country Club gathered a number of the intellectuals of the day. Records include minutes of the Club and woman suffrage documents from Julia Ward Howe and Alva Belmont.  

*Katherine Prescott Wormeley, author, philanthropist, sanitary and hospital reformer.

One of the reformers in the Town & Country Club, Wormeley started the Women's Industrial School in Newport. The collection includes her letters.  


*Jane Stuart, artist, daughter of Gilbert Stuart.

The NHS has her paintings and letters. A biography of Jane Stuart has been published. There is a photograph of her in a gorilla costume.  


*Ida Lewis, keeper of Lime Rock Lighthouse, rescued drowning mariners.

She succeeded her father as lighthouse keeper. She rescued 12 drowning mariners in her rowboat. The NHS has her personal effects, including a ceremonial rescue lifeboat.

 

*Mary Edith Powel diaries and recollections.

Youngest unmarried daughter of a Philadelphia merchant family, “MEP” wrote articles for the Newport Historical Society.  


At the conclusion of his talk on women's sources in the Newport Historical Society collections, Bert took us into the 1730 Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House and spoke briefly about the building and the plans for its restoration.  


After ten years of co-chairing/chairing the Women's Studies Interest Group, Christina Smith is stepping down. The 2006-2007 co-chairs, Evelyn Cherpak and Susan Klein met over lunch to discuss ideas for future Women's Studies Interest Group programs.  

 

Christina Smith

Co-Chair, 1996-2006

Back