| Creator | Pear, William Hesseltine, 1865-1954 |
| Title | William Hesseltine Pear papers |
| Dates | 1893-1956 (bulk 1944-1955 ) |
| Identification | MS 52 |
| Quantity | 0.5 linear feet (1 manuscript container) |
| Collection Abstract | The collection contains biographical material, published works by Pear regarding various social work topics, professional correspondence, and a few pages of personal reflections. |
| Historical Abstract | William Hesseltine Pear was a social worker chiefly associated with two charitable organizations in Boston during his working life. These were the Boston Children's Aid Society (for which he worked from 1888 to 1907) and the Boston Provident Association (for which he worked from 1908 to 1944). He helped founded other relief agencies and served as an administrator and trustee at others. He was a lecturer at Simmons College and Harvard. |
| Language | Material in English. |
| Location | Collection may be stored offsite. Please contact Archives staff for more information. |
Collection is open.
Copyright for materials resides with the creators of the items in question, unless otherwise designated.
Please contact the College Archivist with requests to publish any material from the collection.
[Identification of item: description and date], William Hesseltine Pear papers, MS 52, Simmons College Archives, Boston, MA, USA.
Papers were originally part of the "Archives" collection of the Simmons College School of Social Work Library. They were transferred to the Simmons College Archives in 1984.
Accession number: 84.019
Processed by Elizabeth L. Balcom, April 1985
Supervised by Megan Sniffin-Marinoff, April 1985
This collection guide was encoded as part of the LEADS project by Erin M. Doyle, June 2013
William Hesseltine Pear was born October 10, 1865 and died on August 4, 1954 at the age of eighty-eight.(1) During his long career, he was chiefly involved with two agencies: the Boston Children's Aid Society (for which he worked from 1888 to 1907) and the Boston Provident Association (for which he worked from 1908 to 1944).(2) In addition, Pear was active in various capacities in many other organizations: he was a founding member of the Monday Lunch Club, an informal group of social work executives in the Boston area who met to discuss issues affecting their work; he was a managing trustee and then president of the F.E. Weber Charities; he helped organize, and then served, the Boston Metropolitan Chapter of the American Red Cross; and he helped found, and then served as chairman of, the Paine Fund in the First Parish Church, Cambridge. (3) Pear was also active in the Greater Boston Community Fund and "an active trustee or director of the Legal Aid Society, Community Workshops, Industrial Aid Society, Cambridge Home for Aged People, Mt. Auburn Hospital, Prospect Union, Cambridge Savings Bank, and the Annisquam Yacht Club."(4) On December 19, 1940, William Pear received an award for his service from the Greater Boston Community Fund; he was referred to as the "Dean of Social Workers in New England."(5) From 1913 to 1949 he was, off and on, a guest lecturer at the Simmons College School of Social Work and was also on the Advisory Committee for the School for much of that time.(6) He also lectured occasionally at Harvard.(7)
Pear graduated from Harvard College in 1889 and then attended Harvard Law School.(8) However, he was drawn to social work, as were many others, through a course in social ethics given by Professor Francis G. Peabody at Harvard. "They were, according to Professor Peabody, a group 'which found in this new vocation a professional opportunity, ranking, as they believed, with the established professions of Law, Medicine or Divinity and they gave themselves to these studies with the same motives which, a generation earlier, would have prompted them to study for the Christian Ministry.' "(9)
This collection contains many of the writings of a major figure on the Boston social work scene over an extended period of time. Some of these writings report events as, or soon after, they occurred; others are thoughtful reflections on the past. Since Pear was involved in many social work activities in Boston, and some nationally, the written record he left covers many important events. These include work with the unemployed, with relief procedures, with writing the Massachusetts Mother's Aid Law of 1913, with the Homemaker Service, the Monday Lunch Club, the American Red Cross, problems of desertion and non-support, and his major employers, the Boston Children’s' Aid Society and the Boston Provident Association. The limitation of the collection is that it does not include day-to-day records created by William Pear, either personal or of the organizations of which he was a part. It includes virtually no personal autobiographical information, with the exception of a few pages of "Autobiographical Reflections." However, the information included provides a good reference point for further research. Although the actual dates of the publications would indicate that the time period covered by the collection is sparse, this is not entirely the case, since many of the writings, particularly the unpublished ones, cover long periods of time, in some cases his whole career. There is more information on his work with the Boston Provident Association than there is on his work with the Boston Children’s' Aid Society, for whom he worked when he was younger.
These and related materials may be found under the following headings in online catalogs.
Collection is arranged into 2 series:
Public information about the life of William Hesseltine Pear
Box 1
Box 1
