Finding
Sophia Smith's Will
Sophia Smith |
What began last year as a simple research project for the
Class of 1958 Reunion Book soon became a mystery of statewide
proportions.
Suzanne St. Pierre ’58,
a retired producer for 60
Minutes, and classmate Rosalie Horne Franks sought
to obtain a copy of Sophia Smith’s original last
will and testament to include images of the document in
their class’s Reunion Book (a commemorative volume
with essays and anecdotes by class members), which they
compiled and edited together.
“We wanted to include Sophia Smith’s will in
the book, not only for its own merits, but also as part of
our theme ‘Celebrating Our Journeys,’” explained
St. Pierre.
Sophia Smith’s handwritten
will (her fifth and final will, signed in March 1870),
is an historic record in which she designates a bequest
of $300,000 to the Board of Trustees of Smith College,
among other stipulations. ( from the College Archives Web site.)
“Sophia Smith’s will is an important historic
document, but in many other ways it is important, especially
for those of us who were students at Smith,” said St.
Pierre. “It is part of our heritage. It inspires us
and ignites our imagination. It is very moving to read the
passages in the will in which Sophia Smith establishes the
college and to realize the depth of gratitude we owe her.”
St. Pierre was dismayed, she said, when she first learned
that the original will was missing from local records, and
that only a printed transcript was available in College Archives.
Sample pages from Sophia Smith's handwritten last will
and testament. |
“No one knew what had happened to it,” said
St. Pierre during her remarks describing the incident on
Ivy Day. “It was not in Smith’s file in the Hampshire
County Probate Court where it should have been nor was there
a facsimile of it there or in the Smith Archives.”
Nanci Young, college archivist,
had never seen an original of Smith’s will. “I was told by previous employees
and researchers that the original may have been destroyed
in a fire in Town Hall many years ago,” she said.
After some persistent
sleuthing and with the assistance of Hampshire County Registrar
David Sullivan, St. Pierre found Sophia’s original will in Boston, at the Supreme
Judicial Court Archives of Massachusetts. The document had
long ago been sent there, along with the papers of Emily
Dickinson, for safekeeping in the facility’s climate-controlled
vaults, reported St. Pierre.
After tracking down the
document, St. Pierre and Franks produced the 1958 Reunion
Book as intended, with images and excerpts from the will.
The co-editors write to their classmates in the book: “A half-century ago we left Smith and
began our journeys, but their genesis was in the 19th Century
in a few brief passages in Sophia Smith’s will. With
generosity and wisdom, she provided for ‘the establishment
and maintenance of an Institution for higher education of
young women…(which) shall be called The Smith College.’”
St. Pierre and her classmates then produced a bound, printed
copy of the Last Will and Testament of Miss Sophia Smith
as a gift to the college, and presented it to President Christ
during Ivy Day on May 17. The gift is now part of College
Archives.
“There is a certain thrill in tracking down information
that has been difficult to find,” said St. Pierre—a
similar thrill, she recalled, that she frequently felt when
chasing down information for stories on 60 Minutes. “But
there is great satisfaction in knowing, in this case, that
Sophia Smith’s will had been found.”
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