Beyond White Gloves

Katharine Gibbs & Her School Beyond White Gloves An NEHGS member asked me, “Wasn’t Katie Gibbs a finishing school?” when I was researching the history of the world’s most famous secretarial school. My experience and research taught me otherwise. Finishing schools prepared women for a life of leisure, while Gibbs prepared graduates for lives of financial and emotional independence. My challenges were learning where Katharine Ryan Gibbs (1863–1934) fit in the history of business education, separating the myths from the truth and presenting a history of the institution’s hundred years, 1911 to 2011. Rose A. Doherty is a former faculty member and academic dean of Katharine Gibbs School in Boston and former chair of the board of trustees of From the 1945 Carbon, the yearbook of the Boston Katharine Gibbs School, p. 48. Gibbs College–Boston. Winter 2015 American Ancestors 29 AmericanAncestors.org/american-ancestors-magazine & Do not reproduce without permission of NEHGS. The Academy of the Sacred Heart, class of 1882. Katharine Ryan is in the middle row on the right. Image courtesy of the Manhattanville College Library Special Collections. 1880 she was Katie. On her high school records she was Kate, and her 1882 graduation picture from Academy of the Sacred Heart in New York City was marked Katharine, the name she used for the rest of her life.5 After graduation Katharine Ryan visited her two brothers in Helena, Montana, and was recorded as Kittie Ryan in the Helena directory for 1889. William Gibbs, a jeweler from Medford, Massachusetts, lived in the same building as the Ryan brothers.6 Katharine Ryan, a Midwestern Irish- Catholic, and William Gibbs, a New England Protestant whose American ancestry can be traced to the early My history with Gibbs began when the organization’s early success, ended eighteenth century, married in New I was in the sixth grade. I distributed with Katharine Gibbs’s death in 1934. York City in 1896, when he was 41 and bridge cards and matchbooks at an Subsequently, the school and the legend alumnae bridge night in Providence, of Katharine Gibbs grew under the Rhode Island. I had never met profes- leadership of Gordon and Blanche sional women before; their elegance, Gibbs, her son and daughter-in-law, poise, and confidence were amazing to until the family sold the school in 1968. me. I grew up to be a faculty member, In the final era, the schools had several academic dean, and later chair of the corporate owners. The single curriculum board of trustees at Gibbs in Boston. governed by the central office gave way When I began teaching at Gibbs in to a new Gibbs that offered degrees, was Boston in the late 1970s, everyone still coed, and had multiple programs, each referred to Mrs. Gibbs as if she would responsive to local market demands. be back in a moment, although she had Each era is an important part of a story died decades earlier. After realizing in that lasted 100 years—and required my this century that the story of Gibbs was use of specific research skills. being lost, I resolved to write about this School founder Katharine Mary remarkable woman and her institution. (Ryan) Gibbs was the granddaughter of My book, Katharine Gibbs: Beyond Irish Catholic immigrants James M. White Gloves (2014), shows that the and Margaret Ryan, who settled in institution went beyond its dress code Galena, Illinois, with their family in image to prepare women and men to 1846.1 The 1847 Galena Directory succeed. The taglines “Stand above the lists James Ryan, Sr., and his unmar- crowd” and “Excellence in all you do” ried sons William and James, Jr.2 The were more than marketing slogans. latter, Katharine Gibbs’s father, mar- Those philosophies encapsulated the ried Catherine McNulta of St. Louis in high standards set by Katharine Gibbs October 1854.3 and her institution. The couple’s second daughter, born The history of the Katharine Gibbs in Galena on January 10, 1863, was Schools falls into three eras. The found- baptized Catherine Mary.4 In the 1870 ing era, which began in 1911 and saw federal census she was Catherine, and by An ad from the May 1941 Rotarian, p. 62. 30 Need help? Call 1-888-296-3447. AmericanAncestors.org/american-ancestors-magazine & Do not reproduce without permission of NEHGS. she was 33.7 They moved to Providence, with people who were not well brought McLean, Virginia. She was the first Rhode Island, where sons William up, establishing the idea that her school in her family to graduate from Gibbs Howard and James Gordon were born in catered to a better class of student. but not the last—her grandniece was 1897 and 1900.8 The family later moved In order to support her family, a Gibbs student in Piscataway, New to Cranston, Rhode Island, and there Katharine Gibbs needed students who Jersey, in the 1980s. Family connec- William Gibbs fell from the mast of his could pay tuition. She advertised in tions could be found among a number yawl at the Edgewood Yacht Club and publications read by the prosperous and of Gibbs students and alumnae. For died intestate April 20, 1909.9 the aspiring, such as Dau’s Blue Book and instance, four sisters attended Gibbs in Katharine Gibbs was suddenly a Harper’s Bazar.14 She offered correspon- the 1920s, and in the 1980s one of them 46-year-old widow with two sons to dence courses in Providence, which pro- gave tuition there to her granddaughter support, a high school education, and duced income but incurred no expense as a college graduation present. no income. She even had to apply to be- for class time or space. After the United In the 1920s the school was income the guardian of her sons. The first States entered the First World War and corporated, the alumnae association evidence of her employment is the list- men were no longer available as stu- began, and the first alumnae magazine ing for Katharine M. Gibbs in the 1911 dents, she confidently changed her focus was published. In each issue of The Providence city directory as manager at to women. She was so successful that the Gibbsonian, Mrs. Gibbs wrote about her a business school.10 The funding for the public later assumed she had begun with vision of the world and what her former enterprise may have come from Brown only women’s education. pupils could accomplish. Graduates University friends or the undocu- Katharine Gibbs invaded Boston in of the 1920s include Katharine Towle, mented selling of her jewelry. The Gibbs 1917 and New York in 1918. She was Mary Sutton Ramsdell, and Mary Carr. century had begun. CEO of three schools two years before Katharine Towle was the first director of When Katharine Gibbs founded women could vote. To attract paying women Marines. In 1930 Mary Ramsdell her school in 1911, she accepted both students, she now carefully chose to was one of two women appointed to the men and women. At that time, only advertise in the Barnard Bulletin, Smith Massachusetts State Police force, making men were secretaries, and most work- Alumnae Quarterly, Radcliffe News, and them the first state policewomen in the ing women were domestics or factory The Woman’s Journal, published by the nation. Mary Carr was the secretary workers. If women were hired in offices, League of Women Voters. She knew that of Alfred E. Smith—the former New they were called “typewriters” after the college-educated women who could not York governor, America’s first Catholic machines they used. Katharine Gibbs find jobs were her perfect audience. Mrs. presidential candidate, and head of the was an entrepreneur in an era when Gibbs promoted the school by publish- construction program for the Empire that term was not applied to women, ing names of colleges and private prepa- State Building, from the late 1920s until and she educated women for business ratory schools that sent young women his death in 1944. when they were not welcome. The times to Gibbs. Listing the Seven Sisters (elite According to the 1930 federal census, were hostile enough for women that a women’s colleges with parallels to the Katharine Gibbs lived on Park Avenue in Harvard Medical School doctor could Ivy League), the Sorbonne, Miss Porter’s New York City with her sister, two sons, claim that higher education could cause School, and Milton Academy added and three live-in servants, and enjoyed the uterus to atrophy!11 prestige. Although Katharine Gibbs never took Almost a course in marketing, a Providence immediately, Journal writer noted that her “sense Gibbs gradu- of sell” was infallible.12 Katharine first ates thrived. used the Gibbs name in a newspaper Allegra advertisement on September 7, 1914, Maynard, a and the text, for the Gibbs Private 1919 gradu- School for Secretaries, set the tone for ate of the the enterprise. Gibbs was “especially Providence adapted to meet the needs of those to Gibbs School, whom attendance at a large commer- became the cial school would be distasteful.”13 She second head- implied that students at the large com- mistress of mercial schools, her most formidable the Madeira competition, might have to attend class School in Gibbs graduate Mary Carr taking dictation from Alfred E. Smith. Image from the author’s collection. Winter 2015 American Ancestors 31 AmericanAncestors.org/american-ancestors-magazine & Do not reproduce without permission of NEHGS. an income of what would be over $1.1 Back Bay. Gordon Gibbs made sure that million today.15 The school weathered every time the school was described, a devastating loss of enrollment in the adjectives “swanky,” “elegant,” and the Depression and adopted a plan to “genteel” were used.

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