PBA Galleries

Two Autograph Letters Signed, including:

• Cowles, M.F. 4 pp. To her mother: “…I see by the paper that they are having exciting times over politics in C-. Last Saturday, there was a vote taken in College among two hundred and eighteen scholars who were present and voted; one hundred and ninety were for Grant and twenty-eight for Seymour. Pretty good vote was it not? I expect we will have some more ice cream about Thursday or Friday when we get the news of Grant’s election and the Country presents presents her compliments and congratulations to Mr. Colfax. All the girls in one parlor are republicans but one and she does not have much to say. I have quite a good deal of fun with Kate [Huntington?], she would just suit you, she is so strong on the Womans rights question. I read a long sermon yesterday by Rev. Robert Colyer which he preached in Fanueil Hall, Boston last August. I wish you could see it, it was in the Anti-Slavery standard. He has come to the conclusion that women were not made to serve men but to be their companions, etc. “ Vassar student Almira Foote Cowles was born into a Cleveland family which took politics very seriously. Her uncle was part owner of the powerful Chicago Tribune, while her father, publisher of the Cleveland Leader, largest newspaper in Ohio, had been a “radical” opponent of slavery, a founding father of the Republican Party, a friend and close advisor to Republican Presidents Grant, Hayes and Garfield.
• Acer, K.A. 8 pp. With original mailing envelope. To F.R. Crumbie, Nyack on the Hudson, N.Y.: “…It had always been a wonder to me what young ladies with no particular object in life could do with their time but the last three months has fully answered the query in my mind…My afternoons are spent in playing tennis and my evenings in playing chess and it is difficult to tell which I find the more enjoyable…It is very delightful to think election is over and some other subject than politics will be found interesting. We are very happy in this household over the result and quite sympathize with sister in her account of the manner in which the news was received at the college. It was supposed then for a number of days that Blaine was elected so the republicans arrayed in red, white and blue had a procession and an oyster supper, at which the democrats dressed in deep mourning waited upon them. Sister said she never could forget the events of election week at Vassar, and although the excitement was very great among the business men of Medina, yet it could not compare with the description Lottie sent me of the deep feeling among the girls….” While a bit bored with politics Sarah Antoinette Acer (1861-1913), nicknamed “Kittie”, who graduated from Vassar the year she wrote this letter, had other interests. She became one of the first women Professors of Mathematics in America, teaching for ten years at Wells College in Aurora, New York before she married a colleague, a Harvard-educated Professor of English.