When it came time to chose a college, May Hurlburt (Smith), an easterner, chose to attend Stanford University. Today, one can get from New York City to California in several hours. In September of 1898, she must have been on trains for the better part of a week going across the country.
May Hurlburt was a charter member of the Kappa Chapter of Alpha Phi which was installed at Stanford in 1899.
She was a sponsor of the Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi at UC Berkeley. It was chartered in 1901.
An economics major, she graduated in 1902 and returned east to teach at the New York Institute of Applied Music. She had worked there before heading to Stanford. She taught piano, harmony, and music history. At least one song she wrote appeared in The Songs of Alpha Phi songbook.
From August of 1903 until sometime in 1908, she worked at the Armstrong Association of New York. In early 1908, the Association had a meeting about the Tuskegee Institute. It was held at Carnegie Hall and the Southern Workman reported that 2,000 people had to be turned away for lack of space. She was named in an article as having played a prominent role in that event. This 1906 article gives some information about the Association.
During some of the time she was working for the Armstrong Association, she was serving as Alpha Phi’s National Secretary. A chapter had been chartered at Barnard College in 1903 and she worked with the chapter and was a member of the NYC Alpha Phi Alumnae Chapter. When her chapter celebrated its sixth birthday in 1905, she sent a letter which was read. The chapter enjoyed her sentiments and it “made her in her far away New York home seem less distant to us.” The chapter toasted her as was their custom of “drinking a toast to each and every one of our absent sisters.”
At this point, in the period of time before her marriage to Everett W. Smith, things get murky. They met at Stanford. He graduated in 1899 and she in 1902. He spent time as a reporter in San Francisco and New York City. In 1906, he became Director of the Editorial Department of the U.S. Forest Service in Washington, D.C.
In December 1907, this article with the title “Will be assistant secretary to Dr. Jordan” appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. The article stated she would come to Stanford “next January.” Did that mean 1908 or 1909?
She was still with the Armstrong Association in early 1908. Although she was appointed to this post at Stanford, I am not sure if she ever served. In the May 3, 1908 San Francisco Examiner, there is an announcement that she would wed Everett W. Smith in July and move to D.C. where he was working.
In 1910, Stanford hired Smith’s husband to teach journalism, which was a new field of study at the time. He spent his career at his Alma Mater. Their home on Alvarado Drive was “an open house for all Stanford journalists, from students to returning alumni,” according to May Hurlburt Smith’s obituary.
In 1913, an article written by Smith appeared in the Alpha Phi Quarterly. She reported on Mary Lockey’s Castilleja School. Lockey was also a charter member of Kappa Chapter. She opened it with:
When I returned to Stanford and Kappa chapter three years ago, after having been away from California since 1902, about the keenest pleasure I had, of course, was meeting the old girls who live in the vicinity. After I had seen perhaps half a dozen of them, it struck me that every single girl had asked me the same question: ‘Have you seen Mary’s new school?’ Although I knew that Mary Lockey (Kappa, ’02) had been at the head.of Castilleja School, at Palo Alto, for two or three years, and that she was beginning the fall term in new quarters just finished, I had not seen it; but knowing Mary’s unfailing good judgment I felt sure that it must be a very pleasant little place.
The Smith’s had a son and two daughters, one a Kappa Kappa Gamma who will be profiled for #WHM2019, too. She was active in the campus, community and with her Alpha Phi chapter. She served as President of the Stanford Alumni Council and as Editor of the Illustrated Review alumni magazine. When Stanford ordered the NPC groups to leave campus in the early 1940s, the former Alpha Phi house became Hurlburt House in her honor.
She likely kept herself busy in her later years. This 1953 clipping from a Santa Maria, California, newspaper mentions that she was Secretary of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s Palo Alto branch. She was 81 at the time.
May Hurlburt Smith died on December 30, 1963 at the age of 91. She had been a widow for 30 years. Both she and her husband spent most of their adult lives on the Stanford campus.
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