Elizabeth Powell Bond

Elizabeth Powell was born in 1841 in Clinton, New York, to a Quaker couple, Catherine Macy Powell and Townsend Powell.[1] Her father was a farmer, and when she was four, the family moved to a farm in Ghent.[2][3] By the age of 15, she was serving as an assistant teacher at a Friends’ School in the county.[2][3] She graduated at the age of seventeen from the State Normal School in Albany.[1][2]

Like many Quakers, she held strong views against slavery and was a suffragist, peace activist, and temperance reformer.[3] At the age of 16, she was speaking out at local meetings of anti-slavery campaigners.[3] She spent some time in the household of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison before her marriage.[1]

In 1872, she married Henry Herrick Bond, a lawyer from Northampton, Massachusetts. They had two sons, Edwin (born 1874), and Herrick, (born 1878, died in infancy). Henry Herrick Bond died in 1881.[1]

Bond began her career by teaching for two years in New York public schools.[2] In the early 1860s, she ran a boarding school for three years out of her parents’ house, with the student body including both African-American and Catholic children.[2][3]

In 1865, after training with the physical culture advocate Diocletian Lewis, Bond became the first instructor in gymnastics at Vassar College.[1][2] In the early 1870s, she briefly headed up the Free Congregational Sunday school in Florence, Massachusetts,[3] returning in 1885 to become the resident minister for a year. She also worked for a time as editor (with her husband) of the Northampton Journal.[2]

In 1886, Swarthmore College appointed Elizabeth Powell Bond to the post of Matron of the College.[3] In 1890, she was named Dean, a position she kept until her retirement in 1906, when she was named Dean Emeritus.[1] She was succeeded by Henrietta Meeteer as Dean.[4] She played an important role in the development of coeducation at the college.[1]

Bond died in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1926.

An avid gardener, Bond was honored by Swarthmore with a rose garden created in her honor. A room at the college also bears her name.[1]

Her papers, including correspondence, diaries, business papers, pictures, and memorabilia, are held by Swarthmore College. Her correspondents included Louisa May Alcott, Hannah Clothier Hull, William Lloyd Garrison, and many others.[1]

• Johnson, Emily C. Dean Bond of Swarthmore: A Quaker Humanist. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1926.