ELOISE ELLERY
1874 - 1958
At the time of her retirement in 1939, Professor
Eloise Ellery had served Vassar College for thirty-
nine years and had been associated with it for
over fifty. Soon after her graduation from Vassar
in the class of 1897 she had been recruited as an
assistant in the Department of History by Professor
Lucy Maynard Salmon, and on the completion of her
graduate studies she returned to Vassar as instructor,
rising by successive promotions to the rank of profes-
sor in 1916. Her colleagues recognized her fairness
and good judgment by electing her to major comittees.
From 1910 to 1923 she acted as Faculty Secretary, and
from 1923 to 1932 she was Chairman of the Department
of History. She filled these posts conscientiously and
effectively but the consuming interest in her life was
the study and teaching of history, and it was as a
teacher that she made a lasting impression upon Vassar
College.
The factual record of her life is slight. Born in
Rochester, N. Y., in l874, Eloise Ellery was the only
child of Frank M. and Mary Alida Alling Ellery. Her
paternal grandfather came to America from Yorkshire,
England. Her father, a rising member of the business
community of Rochester, was to become secretary and
later trustee of the Security Trust Company of that
city. Miss Ellery attended the Rochester Free Academy
and entered Vassar College as a freshman in 1893. Her
life-long interest in history was touched off by the
teaching of Professor Salmon. On receiving her A. B.
degree in 1897, Miss Ellery entered the graduate School
of Cornell University. Under the direction of Profes-
sor H. Morse Stephens, an authority on the history of
the French Revolution, she concentrated on the period of
the Convention and chose as her thesis subject the study
of a leader of the Gironde, Brissot de Warville. Fellow-
ships fran Vassar, from Cornell, and from the Associa-
tion of Collegiate Alumnae enabled her to complete work
for the doctorate including a year of research in French
archives and in the Bibliothdque Nationals. She received
the degree of doctor of philosophy from Cornell in 1902.
Her only diversion, travel, was closely related to her
interest in history. She was a frequent, often solitary,
and intrepid traveler in western_Europe. In 1923-24
she joined her father in a trip around the world. This
ELOISE ELLERY (Continued)
began formidably with a close-up of the Japanese
earthquake, though not in the area of greatest
danger. In Shanghai, through the cooperation of
Sophie Chen Zen, Vassar 1919, Miss Ellery met and
talked with prominent leaders of Young China about
the liberal reforms their party then hoped to set
on foot. When the Saar Valley was the warmest
political spot in Europe Miss Ellery went there to
obtain first-hand information on that explosive
issue. In 1936 she embarked on the Odyssey cruise,
visiting historic cities on the Adriatic coast, the
Aegean islands, and Asia Minor. She was planning a
trip through South America when the second world war
intervened.
She was fortunate in spending the years of her retire
ment near the campus in the homes of devoted friends
and colleagues, first with Dean C. Mildred Thompson
and later with Dr. Jane N. Baldwin. Her erect figure
continued to be a familiar sight to the college com-
munity until within a few months of her death.
The testimony of alumnae who had the good fortune to
study European history under her direction is in
striking agreement as to the foundation of her suc-
cess as a teacher. Said one who graduated in l9Oh:
"Her genuineness was obvious. She was true in her
own scholarship and true in her interest in her
students--sparing no time or thought to understand
their needs and be helpful . . . ." Later, when
this same student was Miss Ellery's colleague in the
Department of History: "I was struck by E.E.'s abilit
to stimulate each student to her best, at whatever
grade of ability the student happened to be." Another
alumna of the class of l9l2 recalls that there was
special life in Miss Ellery's classes. "E.E. had a
kind of completeness of range and view of a culture
that was fundamental to all the rest of her thinking
. . . In discussion there was always freshness, point
and light. . . It was especially through the long
paper that E.E. drew out and expected to be expressed
with thoroughness and polish the whole capacity of
every student." Out of this effort came the student‘s
realization of "toughness and delight of intellectual
adventure." Her quiet assumption that every student
would do her best is what most impressed a member of
ELOISE ELLERY (Continued)
the class of 1919. To an alumna from the class of '23,
she was an inspiring teacher, "not personally or through
charm or magnetism, but because she embodied the world
of the intellect, "the eager search for and love of
knowledge and the utter impartiality and integrity of
the true scholar." To a member of the class of 1939,
the last year that Miss Ellery taught, the intellectual
excitement of her classes is still vividly remembered.
Each meeting was a drama that involved every member
of the group to the limits of her intellectual ability.
The discussion was carefully but unobtrusively guided,
within a framework of rigorous standards and respect
for the contribution of each student. In the hands of
Miss Ellery teaching was truly a creative art. Perhaps
the best description of her impact on those she taught
is that of a Chinese student: "her special gift is to
open people's intellectual box, so to speak, and let
its contents flow out in a beautiful abundance."
She was an exacting critic, impossible to deceive with
simulated learning or irrelevant flights of rhetoric,
but endlessly patient with conscientious students,
tolerant, witty, and kind. There is no better example
of these qualities than her exhortation to a careless
student: Miss Blank, "When you hoist, hoist!" The
class of 1913 dedicated their Vassarion to her as one
“who during our college life, Eas kept before us a
high ideal of constructive scholarship."
This ideal was pusued not only in the classroom and
at the conference table but in a wide variety of
activities. Through Miss Ellery's suggestions the great
collections of sources available in print for the study
of European history were acquired or augmented by the
Vassar Library in order that students might have the
illuminating experience of observing history as it
had unfolded before contemporary eyes. Occasionally
a class would stage, after intensive study of the
sources, some notable historic incident, as the class
in the French Revolution reenacted the Flight to
Varennes, using Main Building as the Tuileries, which
had in fact served Matthew Vassar's architect as a
model. Or a stirring debate in the Estates General or
the Convention would be presented with fire and fury
in an arena in Rockefeller Hall. As faculty adviser
to the Political Association Miss Ellery assisted
student officers in organizing a model session of the
League of Nations which was attended by some 200
delegates from 29 colleges and universities.
ELOISE ELLERY (Continued)
Miss Ellery's students continued to be her students
after graduation. When they returned to Vassar for
reunions, or to enter daughters or even granddaughters
they would seek her out to tell her what her teaching
had meant to them, the rich record it had made on
their thinking and living. Nor had Miss Ellery for-
gotten them. To those who were especially in need of
counsel and encouragement she wrote long letters
mindful of their interests and of the little or big
things they would like to hear about. She labored
long over her letters to two alumnae living in
Communist countries. She knew how eager they must be
for news from the free world, but knew also that it
must be communicated in a way that would not excite
suspicion.
She had many friends, yet those who knew her best
knew little of the years before she came to Vassar or
of her inner life. She had an unassailable dignity
and reserve. She appeared duly at parties and meetings
and listened with amused tolerance to the small talk
of campus intercourse, but she never chattered or
gossiped. Her time was carefully hoarded for the
long labor of conferences, for reading papers, and
for keeping abreast of the literature bearing on her
courses. Sunday mornings were devoted to periodical-
reading in the Library. Lest this absorption in the
art and labor of teaching give the impression that
she was stiff, aloof, unsocial, it should be added
that she was gracious and cordial in manner. She had
in reserve a hoard of witty stories which mellowed
with age. Her thoughtfulness in calling on new members
of the faculty with assurance of welcome was gratefully
appreciated by the newcomers. Her courtesy was
unfailing. One of the waitresses at Alumnae House,
and one of the nurses at the nursing home where her
last days were spent, had exactly the same tribute for
her: "She was a lady."
Beyond the gates of the college Professor Ellery's
standing as a scholar was widely recognized. She
expanded her doctoral dissertation into a full-length
biography during her early years of teaching.
Brissot de Warville a Study in the Histor pof the
Hrench Revolution, based on eitensive'§tud§ in French
archives, was puhlished in 1915 in a series comemorating
the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the college.
It is still recognized as authoritative for an under-
standing of the role of the Girondin party in the
ELOISE ELLERY (Continued)
Convention. But Miss Ellery's heart was in teaching,
not in research and writing except as it bore on
teaching. During several sumers she attended the
Institute of Politics at Williams College. She
addressed various organizations on contemporary
educational and political issues, and contributed
articles and reviews to learned periodicals. From
1925 to 1931 she served as associate on the staff
of Current History, her assignment being to provide
brief monthly reviews of political developments in
Italy, Spain and Portugal. She was a member of the
American Historical Association and in 1915 served
on the important General Comittee of that organiza-
tion. She was a member of the Vassar chapter of Phi
Beta Kappa.
In reply to a questionnaire circulated among Vassar
alumnae in 1950, Miss Ellery replied to the question
whether she would (or would not) choose Vassar if
she were entering college then: "Knowing a good deal
about Vassar and little of any other college (by per-
sonal connection) I am hardly qualified to make any
comparative estimate. But after having had an almost
unbroken connection with Vassar for over fifty years,
I can say that I have always found here an atmosphere
of democracy and freedom of speech."
This statement may well stand as Miss Ellery's leave-
taking.
Respectfully submitted,
Violet Barbour
Ruth Miller Elson
James Bruce Ross
XIV — 447-450