Lucy Maynard Salmon (July 27, 1853 – February 14, 1927) was an American

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

whose work was foundational in the establishment of the field of

public history Public history is a broad range of activities undertaken by people with some training in the discipline of history who are generally working outside of specialized academic settings. Public history practice is deeply rooted in the areas of historic ...

. Salmon was a professor of history at

Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States. The college be ...

from 1889 until her death. Salmon was the first woman to serve on the Executive Committee of the

American Historical Association The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world, claiming over 10,000 members. Founded in 1884, AHA works to protect academic free ...

. Salmon published widely in historical journals and general magazines, and was highly active in civic affairs, supporting civil service reform and world and

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...

Education and early career

Salmon was born in 1853 in

Fulton, Oswego County, New York Fulton is a city in the western part of Oswego County, New York, United States. The population was 11,389 as of the 2020 census. The city is named after Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat. History The city of Fulton is a communi ...

, to George and Maria Clara Maynard Salmon. Salmon's mother, Maria Clara Maynard, was the first principal of the Fulton Female Seminary. Salmon attended Falley Seminary, in Fulton. Salmon moved to Ann Arbor in 1871, and graduated from Ann Arbor High School in 1872. Salmon entered the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

in 1872, one year after it began to admit women, and received her Bachelor's degree in History in 1876. Salmon served as assistant principal and later principal of McGregor High School in McGregor, Iowa, from 1876-1881. Salmon returned to the University of Michigan and received her History M.A. from the University of Michigan's School of Political Science in 1883. A version of her master's thesis, "History of the Appointing Power of the President," was published in the first volume of the ''Papers of the American Historical Association'' in 1886. In 1886 Salmon attended Bryn Mawr where she studied with

Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democrat to serve as president during the Prog ...

. The following year,

hired Salmon to establish its history department and serve as Associate Professor of History. She was appointed a full professor at the end of her second year, in 1889.

Professional service

Salmon joined the fledgling

(AHA) in 1885. In 1897 the Executive Committee of the AHA asked Salmon to serve on the Association’s Committee of Seven, which largely defined the way history would be taught at the high school level. Salmon was the only woman to serve on the committee. As part of her work on the Committee, Salmon traveled to Germany to study the way history was taught in the secondary schools there. Salmon delivered her findings to the AHA in an address in December 1897, and they were also published as an appendix to the Committee's report ''The Study of History in Schools''. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Salmon was one of the few women historians to speak regularly at the annual meetings of the AHA. In 1915 the Association’s members elected Salmon to serve on the Executive Council; she was the first woman to serve on the committee.

Career

Salmon expanded the scope of history by encouraging her colleagues to move beyond the history of great men, places, and events by studying the history of everyday life. In 1932, Carl Becker popularized Salmon's ideas by connecting them with those of applied history in an address to the

, which has been cited as a foundational text in the field of

. Salmon was a member of the " new social history" of her time, believing that political history had been overemphasized at the expense of other topics. Salmon considered domestic documents, such as

family cookbooks Family cookbooks are books which contain a variety of recipes collected by specific families. Whilst these cookbooks are sometimes later published, the concept is of a commonplace book Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compil ...

, as historical sources. Not only did Salmon work with these sources herself, but she encouraged the undergraduate students she taught at

to consult primary sources themselves and to look at their home communities as historical subjects. Rather than only teaching historical facts, Salmon taught her students how to do the work of a historian. In order to conduct seminars, despite having been denied permission by the College, Salmon invited students to her rooms twice a week for informal discussions. In 1912, Salmon received an honorary Doctor of Human Letters from

Colgate University Colgate University is a Private university, private college in Hamilton, New York, United States. The Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college was founded in 1819 as the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York ...

, and an honorary Doctor of Letters from the

in 1926. In February 1926, a group of

alumnae and friends of Salmon established the Lucy Maynard Salmon Fund, which enabled her to continue her research. The Fund continues to endow Vassar faculty research. Adelaide Underhill, a Vassar graduate who returned in 1892 as head librarian for the college, worked closely with Salmon to improve the library. The two women were "lifelong companions", exchanging frequent letters when apart and sharing a house in Poughkeepsie from 1901 until Salmon's death from a stroke in 1927.

Works

*''History of the Appointing Power of the President'' (1886) *“The Teaching of History in Academies and Colleges,” in ''Woman and Higher Education'' (1893) *
Domestic Service
' (1897) *
Progress in the Household
' (1906). Also at
Project Gutenberg
' *
The Newspaper and Historian
' (1923) *
The Newspaper and Authority
' (1923) *''Why Is History Rewritten?'' (1929) *''Historical Material'' (posthumous), Adelaide Underhill, ed. (1933) *''History and the texture of modern life,'' Nicholas Adams and Bonnie G. Smith, eds. (2001)

References

External links