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A Selection of Ruth Dickson's Letters to Her Mother During Her Time at Abbot Academy 

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A Selection of Ruth Dickson's Letters to Her Mother During Her Time at Abbot Academy 

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November 15th, 1918

My Dearest Mother,

I am so very sorry for not writing sooner. It has been rather dreary here in Andover this month. Fall and the hues of red and orange have left us with sad, forlorn trees, naked to the frost that has descended on us.

Mother, some of that chill is the disquiet we are all feeling about the wave of influenza that has blighted our neighbors. We haven’t been able to celebrate the long awaited end of the dreaded war because of it. What a downer this disease is! Marion B. told us at dinner last night that her brother who boards at Exeter Academy 1 was sick for weeks in the infirmary that the school set up to care for their sick students. 2 He’s gone home to convalesce now and Marion doesn’t think he will be able to return to school till after Christmas.3 We have been fortunate that our school has escaped with only a few cases of influenza. Though poor Martha Miller, a senior girl at Abbot, is also terribly ill and won’t return until after Christmas.  It must be awful for her to miss all the schoolwork and activities in her senior year. I do miss her easy smile at our Fidelio rehearsals and the Courant newsroom.⁴

Headmistress Bailey reminds us to pray at Sunday service for the afflicted and the families who have lost. 5  She also reminds us to be grateful that our school has remained open while most of the schools in our country have had to close because of the influenza. After the service, Headmistress Bailey read out a letter from Marion McPherson of the class of 1917, who has volunteered as an emergency care nurse for the poor who are affected by the epidemic in Boston.6 It was such a brave and inspiring letter Mother, and made me proud to be a part of this wonderful school.

I am off to basketball practice now so I will write more soon. Please reply soon as receiving your letters always cheers me up. Please also send me some wine gums and lifesavers? 7 I shared my last stash and it made me ever so popular.

Very Truly,

Ruth

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1.  Phillips Exeter Academy was far more adversely affected by the Spanish flu pandemic than Abbot or Phillips Academy in Andover
2. Huang, Lina, Max Park, and Anya Tang. "The Exonian Reflects on 1918 Influenza

Pandemic." The Exonian. https://theexonian.net/news/

the-exonian-reflects-on-1918-influenza-pandemic.
3. Roberts, Paige. "Lives lost and the country at a standstill." Andover. Last

modified May 6, 2020. https://www.andover.edu/news/2020/

lives-lost-and-the-country-at-a-standstill.

4. The Courant was a student run publication that had three to four issues published a year.
5. Description of Library and Religious Influence, 1916-1921, Abbot Academy Circular of Information, 89, Archives and Special Collections, Abbot Academy, Andover, MA

6. Roberts, Paige, "Lives lost and the country at a standstill.", 2020
7.  Tanya. "Top 10 Candies From the Early 1900s." Candy District.

https://www.candydistrict.com/blogs/sweet-talk-blog/

top-ten-candies-from-the-early-1900s.

To include the "trendy" items and foods of their time, I added names of popular candies during the early 1900s.

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Student profile of Martha Miller along with her extracurricular activities at the academy

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March 15th, 1919

Dearest Mother,

I know you have received a letter from Headmistress Bailey about my recent behavior. I can imagine your disappointment but please read this letter with some reflection to my point of view.

In the first of the two incidents in question, I was not a girl with “no sense of propriety” that has been suggested by you know who. Rachel O., devious thing, told me that Norman G. had Lucky Strike cigarettes that all modern women are smoking these days.¹ Rachel said the outstanding Lucy Burns 2 3 of the National woman’s party had started to smoke them and dared me to go to Day Hall in the heart of the boy’s campus to fetch them for our girls at Sherman. 4 5 Well, Day’s housemaster caught me and reported me to Mistress Bailey. Both our dorms are now “closed” and I am blamed for everything. 6 7 It is so unjust that Rachel shouldn’t get some of the blame. It is undeniable she is Mistress Bailey’s pet as a senior and the president of the Abbot Christian Association. 8 I do not mean to be sore and unchristian, but I hope you understand the frustration I feel. ⁹

The second incident of the absent bloomers ¹⁰ was not my fault. Emily C. accidentally tripped up my feet at basketball practice making me fall. My skirt flew up and it was discovered I wasn’t wearing the required bloomers underneath.11 This is because Nelly H. had taken mine without asking from my wardrobe. Mistress Bailey has asked me to write a note to Nelly asking her to secure me permission before using my things.

It has quite honestly been a septem horribilis.  Please reconsider your punishment to dock my allowance for a month. I feel I have suffered enough. I have truly learned my lesson and will conduct myself with dignity and propriety.

It must be said that Mistress Bailey’s principles belong to a different time. It is so disappointing to us as she is so wise and well informed at other times.¹² The girls and I feel confined to the rigid rules that stifle our burgeoning need to express ourselves as modern women. After all, look at the outstanding achievements of our very own Alice Stone Blackwell, an Abbot girl who made large strides in our strife for feminine equality. 13 You are a forward thinking woman, mother! That’s why I admire and miss you.

Yours Truly,

Ruth

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1. Wikipedia contributors, "Women and smoking,"  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Women_and_smoking&oldid=993050759(accessed February 13, 2021).

2. "Selected Leaders of the National Woman's Party." Library of Congress (LOC).

https://www.loc.gov/collections/women-of-protest/articles-and-essays/

selected-leaders-of-the-national-womans-party/.

3. Lucy Burns was a female activist who had a vibrant persona and might have been a popular role model to female youth interested in feminist reform. Important to include possible female influences and icons!

4. Images of Abbot Academy Buildings, 1929, Memorial Hall Library Collection, 25, Archives and Special Collections, Abbot Academy, Andover, MA.
5. Day Hall." Phillips Academy 59ers. http://www.pa59ers.com/map/key/history/

047.html.

6. "Bertha Bailey House." Phillips Academy 59ers. http://www.pa59ers.com/map/key

history/063.html

7. Dorms were ‘closed’ as a disciplinary action to censure students who behaved inappropriately. For example, if girls visited boys’ dorms without permission.

8. Abbot Academy Yearbook, 1917, The Circle Collection, 8, Archives and Special Collections, Abbot Academy, Andover, MA.
9. Lloyd, Susan McIntosh. A Singular School, Abbot Academy, 1828-1973.
10.  Bloomers are a special kind of underwear that were often worn under skirts when women were doing physical exercise.
11. Abbot Academy Yearbook, 1917, The Circle Collection, 8, Archives and Special Collections, Abbot Academy, Andover, MA.
12. Mcintosh, A Singular School, Abbot Academy
13."Alice Stone Blackwell." PeoplePill. https://peoplepill.com/people/

alice-stone-blackwell.

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Abbot Academy Basketball Team

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September 10th, 1920

My Dearest Mother,

I begin by saying what bliss it is to be a senior at this excellent school at this extraordinary time. I almost shouted a “whoopty doo!” ¹when Ms. A told me I was assigned as proctor of Sherman. ² I do like finally being a figure the other girls can look up to. My first duty as proctor was to lay down house rules for the first years and juniors. ³ ⁴They are an unruly bunch! I am very sure I was not like them at their age.

The girls are all excited about the ratification of the 19th amendment, even though it has been weeks since it was ratified. ⁵ At school, as you know, we have had a lengthy and illustrious history of student government and committees. ⁶ In the cosseted and safe environs of our school, we have long been used to expressing our opinions. 7 Our faculty and particularly headmistress Bailey encourages us to speak up, forging a strong affinity to leadership. 8

I have experienced this in the various activities I do at school but especially as editor for The Abbot Courant. It has been such a pleasure to read the thoughts of girls like me, which are often a reflection of my own. One poem in particular really struck me as an apt description of our role as women in this new decade. It is One Day Last Week by Bernice B, 1917. ⁹ She repeats ”Mighty lak’ a Rose” over and over again to describe our journey as women, culminating in our right to vote - to decide for ourselves who we want to speak for us. To finally be able to own our own property, like true equals, forging our space in this country. Like roses, hardy and strong, but retaining our quintessential femininity. Towards the end of Bernice’s poem, she writes, “But ---- yesterday is not to-day; And I am not the same.” ¹⁰ Indeed, we are not the same as we were before the 19th amendment. Isn’t it wonderful? I found it in the archives of old editions of The Abbot Courant and I will copy it out and send it to you.

I hear the girls in the student parlor! 11 Gosh, they are noisy. I will stop here and go scold them before house mistress needs to come up and admonish us all! Write soon mother and give my regards to granny and father.

Very Truly,

Ruth

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1. “Whoopty doo” or “Whoopie dee doo” was a slang used to express joy or excitement in the early 1900s.
2. Images of Abbot Academy Buildings, 1929, Memorial Hall Library Collection, 25, Archives and Special Collections, Abbot Academy, Andover, MA

3. Abbot Academy Circular of Information, 1916-1921, Archives and Special Collections, 255, Archives and Special Collections, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA.
4. Just like today at Phillips Academy, Abbot Academy appointed proctors to act as mentors and prefects for younger students.

5. The 19th Amendment, Doc. (). https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/

featured-documents/amendment-
6. Abbot Academy Circular of Information, 1916-1921, Archives and Special Collections, 221, Archives and Special Collections, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA.
7. It is important to note that Student Government and other club committees were an active way for Abbot students to show leadership and express their opinions and ideas. This tradition really established itself during 1860-90s under the leadership of the McKeen sisters.
8. Mcintosh, A Singular School, Abbot Academy
9. One Day Last Week was written by Bernice Boutwell, 1917. I chose it because it really reflects the possible feelings of a young female activist who just crossed into a new era of equality and freedom.
10. The Abbot Courant, 1917-1919, Archives and Special Collections, 31, Abbot Academy Association Archives, Abbot Academy, Andover, MA

11. Images of Abbot Academy, 1929, Memorial Hall Library Collections, 21, Abbot Academy, Andover, MA.

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The Student parlor is where students at Abbot academy gathered to socialize in a dorm, much like the present day common room.

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Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQLFG2eUkPzdBaDE1Ir4xhx9ZkVPRq0hd66ertyfdeDuxVpiK1LTobWFIK0m2zTvs8ZmwNNlrFEPWaU/pub