Outline Biography of Virginia C. Gildersleeve
| 1877 | October 3 | Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve born in NYC; third child and only daughter of Henry and Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve; both families traced their American beginnings to the mid- 17th century; Henry a state judge active in veterans affairs; had attended Columbia Law School; family financially secure. VCG: “We weren’t ‘in society’ exactly; we were professional people.” Democrats in politics; Episcopalians in religion. Family listed in 1901 New York Social Register. Resided in a 4-story brownstone on West 48th Street, just off 5th Avenue, across the street from Andrew Carnegie’s future wife. |
| 1891 | VCG’s brother Harry dies of typhoid fever after completing Columbia Law School | |
| 1891 | 14-year-old VCG enrolls in The Brearley School; NYC’s most academically demanding school for girls from the City’s leading families considering going on to college. | |
| 1895 | VCG graduates from Brearley ; although earlier wishing to go to Bryn Mawr, but her mother insists she enroll at Barnard College (“a perfectly good college here in New York City”), then located three blocks from home on Madison Avenue between 44th and 45th Sts. 21 students in her entering class. VCG, as with all her schoolmates, commuted. | |
| 1896 | VCG becomes a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma, then Barnard’s only fraternity. Membership likely limited to Christians and students of means. | |
| 1897 | Barnard moves to Morningside and its linked buildings, Milbank and Brinckerhoff Halls; Fiske opened a year later. | |
| 1897 | KKG declined to admit Stella Stern, presumably because she was Jewish; prompts Stern and friends to create a second fraternity, Alpha Omnicron Pi, which did not proscribe Jewish members. | |
| 1899 | VCG graduates with top academic honors for thr 21-member graduating class of 1899; close friends included the older and more wordly Alice Duer (Miller) [“my first romance”], later poet and screenwriter, and Marjorie Jacobi (McAnemy), daughter of the Doctors Jacobi and future Barnard trustee. Of her classmates: “All were more or less on the same social level.” | |
| 1899-1900 | VCG uses Fiske Graduate Fellowship for a year’s study at Columbia; earns an MA in medieval history under the guidance of James Harvey Robinson | |
| 1900 | Accepts an assistantship at Barnard, while continuing graduate studies in English | |
| 1903 | Promoted to instructor teaching section of Sophomore English at Barnard | |
| 1905 | Spring | VCG asked to be responsible for all Sophomore English, which meant stopping her graduate studies. Resigns her instructorship. |
| 1905 | Fall | Secures a fellowship from Columbia for PhD studies in English literature. |
| 1907 | Spring | Dean Laura Gill terminates VCG’s teaching contract at Barnard; offered an associate professorship at the University of Wisconsin by her departing PhD director but “I could not leave New York.” |
| 1907-08 | Not teaching; completes PhD in spring 1908 with publication of Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Theatre | |
| 1908 | Fall | Barnard Acting Dean William T. Brewster [Gill had resigned mid-1907] appoints VCG to a lectureship at Barnard; teaching Shakespeare at Barnard as part of BC-CU faculty exchange |
| 1908-10 | Member of the Columbia English Department; teaching both at Barnard and in the Columbia graduate program | |
| 1910 | July | Appointed Assistant Professor in the Columbia English Department |
| December 10 | VCG offered deanship of Barnard by President Nicholas Murray Butler as way of ending standoff between him and the Barnard board over the position vacnt since 1907. | |
| 1911 | February | The 35-year-old VCG installed as Barnard’s 3rd dean and 4th administrative head |
| 1914 | VCG secured access to Columbia Journalism School for Barnard graduates on her recommendation | |
| 1914 | VCG chairs faculty/student/trustee committee that recommends end to fraternities at Barnard; had been discriminatory and socially exclusive; VCG’s view somewhat more favorably disposed toward them. | |
| 1917 | Spring | Although VCG less an interventionist in World War One than NMButler and less insistent upon support for the war once US entered into it, war marked her first engagement in international affairs . |
| 1917 | VCG secures admission of the first Barnard graduate to Columbia’s medical school | |
| 1917 | NY State grants women the vote. VCG a supporter of women’s suffrage but not one of the state’s – or Barnard’s – most outspoken advocates | |
| 1918 | The 43-year-ol VCG meets the 49-year-old English scholar and academic (Bedford College, University of London) Caroline Spurgeon and commences an intimate relationship that continues until CS’s death in 1942. They spent summers together in England and several falls in NYC where CS sometimes taught at Barnard . Together they founded the International Federation of University Women | |
| 1920s | Gildersleeve became involved with several American Protestant educational efforts in the Middle East; in the process she became an anti-Zionist; some Barnard observers also believed she was anti-Semitic in personal belief and administrative practice. | |
| VCG secured limited access to the Columbia Law school for women; first Barnard graduate admitted in 192x | ||
| 1923 | Death of her parents; ends xx years of living at home. | |
| VCG prime mover in organizing Seven Sisters Conference, linking Barnard to the older and wealthier Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Radcliffe, Bryn Mawr and Mount Holyoke for purposes of promoting women’s colleges. | ||
| 1925 | VCG does not object to trustee Annie Nathan Meyer providing financial support for Zora Neale Hurston as the first black woman to attend Barnard; but neither does she actively support the recruitment of African Americans. Suspected of limiting their enrollment at Barnard to a maximum of two in any class. | |
| 1927 | VCG moves into Deanery in the newly opened Hewitt Hall. | |
| 1927 | VCG secures admission of Barnard women to the Columbia law school upon the dean’s recommendation | |
| 1928 | Campaigned for NY Governor Al Smith during the 1928 election campaign. | |
| 1930s | Politically active in NY as a Democrat and supporter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. | |
| 1940 | Unlike her position on WWI, VCG actively supported US intervention into WW II following the German aerial assault on Britain. | |
| 1941 | CG approaching 65, considers retirement but plans blocked by NMB insisting she remain dean through the war (and his presidency). | |
| 1942 | Helped organize the formation of the WAVES [Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Services] | |
| 1943 | VCG helps secure access to Columbia engineering school for women; first Barnard student accepted in 1944. | |
| 1945 | February | VCG appointed by President Roosevelt to help draft the Charter for the United Nations. |
| December | VCG attends and speaks at the San Francisco Conference that brought into being the United Nations | |
| 1946 | VCG opposed US recognition of Israel during the national debate. | |
| 1946 | VCG retires as dean after 36 years; moves to Bedford, NY, with summers on Cape Cod, with Elizabeth Reynard, earlier a member of the Barnard English Department and WW II officer in the WAVES. VCG had tried to secure the deanship for Reynard. | |
| 1954 | VCG published her autobiography, Many a Good Crusade | |
| 1962 | Upon Reynard’s death at age 64, the 85-year-old VCG moved into a retirement home on Cape Cod. | |
| 1962 | VCG published a collection of articles, A Hoard for Winter | |
| 1965 | July 7 | VCG died, age 89, in Centerville, Mass. |
Last updated: January 24, 2015
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