March 15 is the date upon which Delta Gamma celebrates Founders’ Day. The organization was founded by Anna Boyd Ellington, Eva Webb Dodd and Mary Comfort Leonard, students at the Lewis School for Girls. Due to inclement weather and difficult travel conditions, they were unable to return to their homes for the Christmas holiday in 1873. In forging a bond together, they left a legacy for the 230,000 women who have worn the anchor.
Among those women are a pair of sisters, both initiates of the Kappa Chapter at the University of Nebraska. Edith and Grace Abbott were born two years apart, with Edith being the eldest.
A downturn in family fortunes prohibited Edith from entering college, so at 16 she worked as a teacher. She later enrolled at Nebraska. The sisters went on to earn post-graduate degrees, they worked at Jane Addam’s Hull House in Chicago, and they were both influential social workers on the ground floor of the profession.
Edith earned a Ph.D. and her dissertation was published in the Journal of Political Economy. With the assistance of two fellowships, she did postdoctoral work at the London School of Economics. She became the first woman to serve as dean of an American graduate school, the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration; it was also the country’s first school of social work.
For more than a decade Grace was the highest ranking woman in the United States government. From 1921-34, she served as head of the United States Children’s Bureau.
1924 Anchora
1924 Anchora
Edith (left) and Grace (right)
Grace died in 1939 at age 60 from multiple myeloma. In her memory, for a number of years, Delta Gamma awarded a Grace Abbott fellowship in Public Welfare. Edith was a member of the committee which chose the recipient.
January 1948 Anchora
After Edith retired from her position as dean at the University of Chicago, she taught and edited Social Service Review, an academic journal. She retired to her family home in Grand Island, Nebraska, and there, in 1957, she died.
