Like most graduates of the University of Michigan, I’m well aware of certain remarkable people who have attended my alma mater. Stories and sightings of celebrities like Madonna, Tom Brady, Arthur Miller, Gerald Ford, and James Earl Jones reside in the communal knowledge space of Michigan alumni. Then there are the mega-rich. People like multi-billionaire Stephen Ross who made his massive fortune on Wall Street and requires his name be prominently affixed to each of the projects he funds.
I recently learned, however, of an exceptional yet forgotten graduate from the class of 1876 when an article about her long-lost bust appeared in my inbox. Missing for nearly 50 years, the mysterious statue of Alice Freeman Palmer disappeared in 1977. No one seemed to have noticed the absence of this striking memorial to one of Michigan’s earliest female graduates—a woman who dedicated her life to improving education and opportunities for women.
In reading the story, I was surprised to learn that one of my neighbors had played a role in saving the charming bust. My quest to learn more led to further details that possibly time or space omitted from the original article. What follows is a summary of Alice Freeman Palmer’s fascinating life along with new information regarding the circuitous journey of the missing sculpture.
An Audacious Undertaking
Born in 1855, Alice Elvira Freeman grew up on her family’s farm in New York State. Until the age of 10, she was schooled by her mother who was 17 when Alice was born. Alice helped raise her three younger siblings and assisted her mother in running the farm when her father left to attend Albany Medical School. When her parents moved to the nearby town of Windsor, Alice entered an academy largely devoted to preparing women for careers as teachers. While such students were often college-bound, entrance requirements for women’s universities were not as rigorous as those for men’s.
By 1870, the University of Michigan had a strong international reputation and was considered one of America’s leading institutions of higher education. In 1871, Michigan accepted its first female student and the following year, Alice E. Freeman was one of a small cohort of women who applied and were accepted. It’s astonishing that at the age of 17, Miss Freeman was willing to travel so far from home to plunge into a sea of male classmates, many of whom probably didn’t appreciate her participation. Youth and inexperience may have played a part in setting her on this course, but exuberance, determination, and a passion for learning also seem to have been significant factors.
Neither the university nor Alice’s parents were as enthusiastic about her attendance as they might have been. Miss Freeman lacked the scholarship normally required of applicants and her parents hadn’t planned to send a daughter to college. However, Michigan’s acceptance committee agreed to her enrollment if she independently studied those areas in which she was deficient. She did so while simultaneously taking a full-time load. Concurrently, her parents agreed to relinquish their hold on the family’s most productive offspring if Alice agreed to help support the family and fund her younger siblings’ studies after her graduation.
A Penchant for Excellence
By the end of her freshman year, Miss Freeman had fully caught up with her peers and established herself as a leading student—not only excelling in her studies, but also organizing social activities, participating in the college debate club, and acting as an officer in the Students’ Christian Association. In December 1874, however, torrential rains flooded the Susquehanna River, devastating her family’s farm. Her father wrote asking her to return home. Fortunately, Alice’s professors helped her remain in school but she must have completed her junior year remotely since she was simultaneously employed as a high school teacher in Ottawa, Illinois (300 miles from Ann Arbor), sending the bulk of her earnings back to New York.
Despite these added challenges, Alice E. Freeman graduated first in her class and was asked to deliver a commencement address that she titled The Conflict between Science and Poetry. After graduation, she briefly taught at a private girls’ school in Wisconsin before becoming a high school principal in Saginaw, Michigan. When her younger sister became gravely ill, Alice rushed to her bedside, forgoing an opportunity to teach at Wellesley College. Sadly, the sister died, but the loss only strengthened Alice’s determination to better the position of women in society.
In 1879, Miss Freeman joined the faculty at Wellesley and by 1882, at the age of twenty-six, she became its president, making her the first female president of a U.S. college. Prior to President Freeman’s arrival, the college seemed weighed down by tradition and founding principles that didn’t match the standards of the country’s leading educational institutions. Over the course of her 6-year tenure (she was acting president for one year before her position became official), Freeman reorganized the staff, grew the student body by 33%, and brought about major changes to the curriculum. Despite the upheaval, by the time she resigned in 1887, she’d won the adoration of her students and the respect of her fellow educators.
Unrelenting Commitment
Exhausted by her monumental achievements and looking forward to a leisurely recuperation, Alice married George Herbert Palmer, a professor of philosophy at Harvard. Never one to rest for long, however, she assumed a position on Wellesley’s Board of Trustees. Now Mrs. Palmer, she traveled the country presenting her vision for the future of women’s education, including women of color. She was a founder of what later became the American Association of University Women. And, in 1892 she became dean of graduate schools and colleges at the newly-formed University of Chicago, a post she held for three years, residing on campus for a third of each academic calendar.
Throughout her career, Freeman Palmer’s contributions were widely recognized, earning her honorary graduate degrees from several universities, including a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1882 and an L.H.D. from Columbia University in 1887. Additional posts include President of the Woman’s Education Association of Boston, twice President and finally General Secretary of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, chief executive officer of the Association for Promoting Scientific Research by Women, President of the International Institute for Girls in Spain, and member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education. Yet, according to her husband George, at home she found time for sewing, birdwatching, photography, and poetry writing.
Travel Abroad
During George’s sabbaticals, the couple traveled to Europe, visiting their favorite cities and bicycling through the countryside. In September 1902, they sailed to England and a month later, crossed the channel to France. At Alice’s request, they visited Père Lachaise Cemetery on All Saint’s Day, hunting the graves of renowned artists, authors, musicians, and politicians just as tourists do today. The outing seems to have thrown Alice into a reflective mood and that night she outlined various steps to be taken in the event of her death.
Weeks later she complained of abdominal pain. The attacks were intermittent, but her condition worsened and she was admitted to a Catholic hospital in Paris. Believing her intestines to be blocked, doctors ordered surgery. Meanwhile, knowing the risks of the dangerous procedure, Alice canceled all future engagements and instructed George on how to continue without her and handle her remains. Immediately after the operation, the couple had reason to be hopeful. Alice was in good spirits and she and George believed she was on the road to recovery. Three days later, however, on December 6, her heart gave out. At the age of 47, Alice Freeman Palmer’s life of devoted service to the betterment of women came to an end.
An Inexplicable Disappearance
George Palmer survived for another three decades, dying in 1933 at 91. He remained devoted to his considerably younger wife, writing her biography, The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer, establishing a Professorship fund to improve pay parity for female professors, and commissioning multiple busts and monuments in her memory. One of these, he donated to the University of Michigan in 1924.
At the time, the main building on campus hosting women’s activities was the Barbour Gymnasium, erected in the 1890s. It was the perfect home for the new bust as it held not only a gym and small swimming pool but also parlors for holding social events, the office of the Dean of Women, and a theater on the second floor.
Five years later, in 1929, the university opened a new space for women’s events, the Michigan League. Designed by the same architects behind the Michigan Union (which was restricted to male students until 1956), the League is simultaneously high-brow and welcoming. Its stained glass windows, slate flooring, and wooden paneled hallways captured my mother’s heart when she was a graduate student at Michigan (MA 1948) as well as mine (BSE 1982 and MSE 1984). Within walking distance from my house, I still drop in regularly to read in one of the League’s comfortable study areas or take in a performance at its Lydia Mendelssohn Theater.
The League would have been the perfect setting for Alice Freeman Palmer’s bust, but for some reason it was never transferred to the new building. It remained in Barbour Gymnasium until 1977 when the gym was torn down. Fast forward 40 years, when a curious, three-time Michigan alumna, and former college athlete, Sheryl Szady, was conducting an audit of the school’s endowments and came across a fund in the name of Alice Freeman Palmer. Digging through records, Szady learned of the donated bust and wondered if it still existed.
She contacted the Michigan League but they were clueless regarding the statue’s whereabouts. Not knowing where else to turn, Szady assumed the bust had either been lost or destroyed. Yet, she must have been impressed enough with its honoree to keep her eyes and ears open as an active alumna and extensive supporter of women’s athletics.
An Eagle Eye
Three years later, while attending a board meeting for the Kinesiology Alumni Society, Szady noticed a female bust, prominently displayed between exercise texts mounted on easels. As the statue was devoid of identification, no one in the Kinesiology Department knew anything about the block of carved stone other than the fact it had once graced the office of my neighbor, Professor Emerita of Kinesiology, Katarina Borer. During the meeting, Szady whipped out her smartphone and compared the female subject’s modest chignon and quaint lace collar with historic photos of Freeman Palmer. Eureka! She’d found her woman.
As if pulled from a rubbish heap, the bust was discolored and contained several chips. Enter Michigan alumna, Meg Brown, acting historian of the Michigan chapter of the American Association of University Women—the very organization that Freeman Palmer co-founded back in 1881. Brown took the bust to Ken Katz, a former conservator at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and founder of Detroit’s Conservation and Museum Services. Months later, the bust was restored and in November of 2023, Alice Freeman Palmer finally made her way to her rightful new home in the Michigan League.
Missing Pieces of the Puzzle
After reading the article in the paper, I wanted to know more about my neighbor Katarina’s involvement. On a beautiful spring afternoon, we sat outside drinking tea while Katarina filled in some of the gaps in the story. According to Katarina, she’d always assumed that Harry McLaughlin, an administrator in the Kinesiology Department, rescued the statue when Barbour Gym was being demolished. She’d first noticed the bust in McLaughlin’s office and “fell in love with its beauty and dignity”. She made her fondness known, suggesting to Harry that he give the statue to her if he ever decided to get rid of it. This he did upon retirement in 2014.
Neither Harry nor Katarina had any inkling as to the bust’s origins. Something about the statue simply spoke to them. Once in possession of it, Katarina brought the effigy home to make some repairs with plaster of Paris and adorn its pedestal with a modest strip of gold paint. Returning the bust to campus, Katarina placed it in her office window where passersby might notice its unassuming gaze. But when her office moved to the basement of Observatory Lodge, she no longer had a window through which she could share the stately figure so she gifted it to the new dean of the School of Kinesiology, Lori Ploutz Snyder and it was Snyder who placed it in the conference room where it caught Szady’s attention.
The article, however, claims that the bust came into McLaughlin’s possession in the early 2000s, begging the question of who had it before he did. Katarina figured that McLaughlin knew the answer. After our tête-à-tête, she tracked down McLaughlin and learned a bit more about the memorial stone’s unceremonious trajectory. According to McLaughlin, he inherited the bust from Professor of Kinesiology Ruth W. Harris when she retired in 1987 after a 41-year career at Michigan.
Harris’ office was also once located in Barbour Gym but as she never said anything to McLaughlin regarding how she came to possess the bust or who it represented, it seems that she too was clueless regarding the statue’s origins. Such details make Szady’s discovery even more remarkable.
An Unassuming Tribute
When Alice Freeman Palmer died, her husband George wrote that he received “nearly two thousand letters from statesmen, schoolgirls, clerks, lawyers, teachers, country wives, outcasts, millionaires, ministers, men of letters, — a heterogeneous and to me largely unknown company, but alike in feeling the marvel of her personality and the loss her death had caused them.” By all accounts, however, Alice was never interested in notoriety. She dedicated her energies to improving the lives of others, often neglecting her health, indifferent to financial gain, and unconcerned with taking credit.
A few days ago, I visited her bust, which is located in a pleasant alcove on the third floor of the Michigan League. More than 40 years ago, I regularly studied at one of a dozen tables lining that very hallway, wondering if I’d chosen the proper field. During my 6 years as an engineering student, I had two female professors, only one of whom taught in the Engineering School.
It’s clear to me that the unknown Michigan alumnae who came before me, did far more to cushion my path than superstars like those noted at the beginning of this piece. I’m in awe of early crusaders for women’s rights like Alice Freeman Palmer but also grateful for the uncountable multitudes of women like Sheryl Szady and Katarina Borer, each with their own remarkable backstories that may well be lost to history. If Alice were alive, she’d probably think that her bust on the third floor of the Michigan League is too great an honor. But if I had my way, I’d move her to the first floor for all who enter to discover.
Additional Resources
- Alice Freeman Palmer, A Memorial Sketch
- “A Dangerous Experiment”: Women at the University of Michigan
- The Bentley Historical Library
- Ann Arbor District Library
- University of Michigan Library, Online Exhibits, Growing the Campus: 1850s – 1869
- Michigan Alumni Association
Thank you for posting this — I had not previously known of her. What determination she must have had, to keep working forward despite so many obstacles and problems. It’s tragic that she died so young. If she had merely lived out a normal life span, she would have lived to see women in the US gain the vote, which would surely have meant a lot to her.
The recovery of the bust more than a century after her death is a remarkable story, and she certainly deserves to be remembered. But it sounds like the other monument you show, the one attributed to Daniel Chester French, is how she would most want to be known — guiding the young girl with a book and a lamp toward the future.
I agree that it would have been awesome if Freeman Palmer had lived to see women obtain the vote. It’s hard to imagine how difficult it must have been to excel given the extreme confines that society imposed upon women. She found a narrow niche in which she felt she could bring about change and stuck to it with a vengeance.
The memorial by French was made in her name but the figure guiding the girl is “Alma Mater”. I assume she would have preferred that to one that depicted her in some way. Your observation led me to try to find out more about it, but I came up empty-handed.
A very nice story about a pioneer. (I always think of Oxford who only started giving degrees to women in 1923… Good Lord!)
Whoa! I guess Oxford was behind the times but before writing this post, the 1923 date would not have surprised me. I was impressed with my Alma Mater when I learned that Michigan admitted its first Black student in 1853, pre Civil War. And, the first African-American woman student was admitted in 1876, the year that Freeman Palmer graduated.
Oxford and the French were laggards. 1853 was very early, even in the North. Well-done.
Now in terms of vote, I might have mentioned it before, but France was very late, not until 1944 did women get the right to vote in France. And because of the war I think the first election was in 1945. The UK was in 1928… I forgot when in the US, before WWII certainly.
Wow! 1945 is a bit tardy, ha! I guess the French don’t have a very progressive story to tell when it comes to women’s rights/roles. Women in the U.S. won the right to vote in 1920. Even though their career choices were limited, my grandmother (born 1905) and mother (born 1925) were both feminists; completely unwilling to take a backseat to the men in their lives.
It seems to me that French women are quite liberated but even today, relationships between French men and women seem more traditional than those between American men and women. My sense is that French women are more classically feminine and French men more classically masculine. But, I don’t mean to characterize an entire population. Qu’est-ce que tu en penses?
There are of course wide variations (+ or – 2 standard deviations in any “Normal” curve… LOL)
You might be right about “classic”. Now one thing I just read, where was it? Korea I think? Younger women tend to vote “left” (progressive) and young men more “right” conservative… It would be interesting to replicate the same survey in other countries…
Et je suis tout-à-fait d’accord. No backseat. (For either gender).
What an interesting pioneer. I’ll have to go and visit her.
Thank you!
I highly recommend it! 🙂
A fascinating story about an extraordinary woman. And apparently you played a role in piecing together the puzzle. Well done, Carol!
Glad you enjoyed the article Annie. I don’t feel like I played much of a role. Somehow, I think all of this would have been discovered without me and maybe was already known by someone. But, I had fun satisfying my curiosity.
Thank you for resurrecting another impressive woman lost to history.
Thanks Caroline. I had little to do with the resurrection other than being one of several people to document their view of events.