Margaret Sprague Carhart, Ph.D., was born into an academic family. Her father Henry Smith Carhart, a physicist, taught at Northwestern University from 1872-86 and at the University of Michigan after that. On August 30, 1876, he married Ellen M. Soulé Carhart. She taught French and succeeded Frances Willard (an Alpha Phi) as Dean of Women at Northwestern serving from 1874-77. The couple’s eldest child, Margaret Sprague Carhart, was born on June 28, 1877.
In 1886, the family moved to Ann Arbor when the University of Michigan offered Henry Smith Carhart a job. Mrs. Henry S. Carhart became an Honorary member of Delta Gamma’s Xi Chapter, a chapter which her daughters Margaret and Rose would later join.
A poem by Margaret Sprague Carhart’s mother which appeared in the January 1894 Anchora
Margaret Sprague Carhart earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s at the University of Michigan where she was a member of Delta Gamma. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and she was a member of Chi Delta Phi, an English honorary.
A passport application
She went to the University of Colorado to do graduate work and later served as an instructor at the university. Her chapter of initiation noted that at Boulder she had “the delightful comradeship of the Delta Gamma chapter there.”
1906 Anchora
Carhart served as Secretary for Delta Gamma’s 1907 Convention. Delta Gamma publications identify her as a member of Xi (University of Michigan) and Phi (University of Colorado) chapters. In 1911, she gave the Xi Chapter a “beautiful Delta Gamma banner,” according to a chapter report.
In the early 1910s, she headed to California where she taught at Pasadena High School and then at Union High School in Palo Alto. She also served as Educational Director and Assistant Superintendent at the State School for Girls in Ventura.
The Southern Branch of the University of California was established in 1919. Carhart joined the faculty in 1920 when it was open to freshmen and sophomores only. She remained at the University of California at Los Angeles, as it became known, for the rest of her academic career.
In 1921, she earned a Ph.D. in English from Yale University. Her dissertation on the life of Joanna Baillie was published in 1923. She was an authority on modern poetry and contemporary drama.
Carhart was a charter member and later president of the UCLA chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. She was an active member of Delta Gamma, aiding in the establishment of the Alpha Sigma chapter at UCLA in 1925.
Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, November 1, 1934
Late in her life she was working on a book on the life of Oscar Wilde. She was pursuing funding to travel abroad for research purposes. She died on December 19, 1953 at the age of 76.
A tribute by her colleagues ended with these words:
She had lived a vigorous, full, and useful life, within the University and without, up to the very end. She gave unstintingly of herself to others. She made an indelible impression on her many students and friends, who will regard her passing with a deep sense of both personal and professional loss.
