Mary Ritter Beard

By Annabelle Sebastian

Image from the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C., LC-USZ62-68955

Mary Ritter Beard (1876-1958) was a historian, archivist, and suffragette who helped found the World Center for Women’s Archives in 1935. 

Mary Ritter Beard earned her bachelor’s in philosophy from DePauw University in 1897. In 1902, after having returned from living and working as a teacher in England, she enrolled as a graduate student in sociology at Columbia University. However, in 1904, she dropped out of the program.

Beard continued to work and publish as a historian, even without a graduate degree, even if this brought her a lot of criticism from other historians. Beard co-authored many books with her husband, Charles A. Beard, a fellow historian. She wrote extensively about American history, as well as the roles women have played in history in the United States and abroad.

In 1935, Beard was among the founding members of the World Center for Women’s Archives in New York City, the first organization that sought to gather an archive of historical and modern documents about women throughout history, regardless of race or ethnicity. The organization also aspired to create an educational program that would teach the public about the roles women played historically, though this never came to fruition. During its operation, several branch locations were opened throughout the United States, including New Jersey, with the goal of opening a branch in all fifty states. The World Center for Women’s Archives was ultimately in operation for five years, when, shortly after Beard stepped down as director in 1940, it shut down due to leadership issues and lack of funding. The materials within the archive were split up and donated to several institutions, including the New Jersey Historical Society and Radcliffe College. 

The World Center for Women’s Archives, despite its short run, succeeded in bringing the belief in the importance of women’s history to the forefront of public consciousness, influencing other organizations and educational institutions in their efforts to begin similar archives.

In addition to her work as an archivist and historian, Beard was an active member of the suffrage movement and labor organizations. 

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References:

Beard, Mary Ritter, and Nancy F. Cott. Woman Making History: Mary Ritter Beard Through Her Letters. Yale U.P., 1992. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/221121737.

Cott, Nancy E. A Woman Making History: Mary Ritter Beard Through Her Letters. New 

Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1991.

Crocco, Margaret S. “Shaping Inclusive Education: Mary Ritter Beard and Marion Thompson Wright.” In Bending the Future to Their Will: Civic Women, Social Education, and Democracy, edited by Margaret S. Crocco and O.L. Davis Jr., 93-124. Boulder, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999.

Cott, Nancy F. “Two Beards: Coauthorship and the Concept of Civilization.” American Quarterly 42, no. 2 (1990): 274-300.

Crocco, Margaret S. “Forceful Yet Forgotten: Mary Ritter Beard and the Writing of History.” The History Teacher 31, no. 1 (1997): 9-31.

Lebsock, Suzanne. “In Retrospect: Reading Mary Beard.” Reviews in American History 17, no. 2 (1989): 324-339.

Smith, Bonnie G. “Seeing Mary Beard.” Feminist Studies 10, no. 3 (1984): 399-416.

Trigg, Mary Kathleen. 1989. Four American feminists, 1910-1940: Inez Haynes Irwin, Mary Ritter Beard, Doris Stevens, and Lorine Pruette. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/25137809. 

Trigg, Mary. “’To Work Together for Ends Larger than Self’: The Feminist Struggles of Mary Beard and Doris Stevens in the 1930s.” Journal of Women’s History 7, no. 2 (1995): 52-85.

Turoff, Barbara K. Mary Beard as Force in History. Dayton, Ohio: Wright State University, 1979.

Voss-Hubbard, Anke. “’No Documents – No History’: Mary Ritter Beard and the Early History of Women’s Archives.” The American Archivist 58, no.1 (1995): 16-30.

Suggested Citation:

Sebastian, Annabelle. “Mary Ritter Beard.” New Jersey Women’s History, Rowan University Libraries, 2024. https://njwomenshistory.org/biographies/mary-ritter-beard/.