| Creator | Smith, Zilpha Drew, 1851 or 1852-1926 |
| Title | Zilpha Drew Smith papers |
| Dates | 1892-1945 (bulk 1904-1917) |
| Identification | MS 9 |
| Quantity | 1.0 linear feet (2 manuscript containers) |
| Collection Abstract | The Zilpha Drew Smith papers cover and are generally organized according to the period from her last decade with the Associated Charities of Boston, through her tenure as Assistant/Associate Director of the Boston School for Social Workers, to the time of her death. The bulk of these materials cover her years with the Boston School for Social Workers (1904-1918) when the School was under the directorship of Jeffrey Richardson Brackett (1904-1920). The collection consists of both published and unpublished bibliographic materials, correspondence, administrative and course materials, writings and photographs. |
| Historical Abstract | Zilpha Drew Smith was a social worker and pioneer in the organization of charity and social work education. In 1879 she became the head of the registration bureau, or confidential exchange, of the newly formed Associated Charities of Boston, one of the first successful pioneer societies in the organization of charities. In 1903 she resigned from the Associated Charities and established the post of associate director (1904-1918) of the newly opened Boston School for Social Workers, which was maintained cooperatively by Simmons College and Harvard University. |
| Language | Material in English. |
| Location | Collection may be stored offsite. Please contact Archives staff for more information. |
Collection is open.
Requests for permission to publish material from this collection should be discussed with the College Archivist.
Please contact the College Archivist with requests to publish any material from the collection.
[Identification of item: description and date], Zilpha Drew Smith papers, 1892-1945, MS 9, Simmons College Archives, Boston, MA, USA.
Records were originally part of the "Archives" collection of Simmons College School of Social Work Library. They were transferred to the Simmons College Archives in 1978 and 1984. Some materials previously filed incorrectly in Jeffrey Richardson Brackett papers, MS 8.
Accession number: 78.111; 84.017
Processed by Gary E. Yela, May 1985
Updated August 1989
Supervised by Megan Sniffin-Marinoff
This collection guide was encoded as part of the LEADS project by Anne Mansella, February 2013
Zilpha Drew Smith, social worker and pioneer in the organization of charity and social work education, was born in Pembroke, Massachusetts on January 25, 1851 or 1852, the second daughter and third of the six children of Silvanus and Judith Windsor (McLauthlin) Smith.(1) Both parents were descendants of Mayflower settlers, and were strong supporters of social causes, including abolition, education, temperance, religious tolerance, and woman suffrage.(2)
Early in her life the family moved to East Boston. After graduating from Boston's Girls' High and Normal School in 1868, she learned telegraphy and worked for a while in a Boston commercial telegraph office. She supervised the revision of the index of the probate court of Suffolk County and during the Boston fire of 1872 did volunteer relief work.(3)
In 1879 she became the head of the registration bureau, or confidential exchange, of the newly formed Associated Charities of Boston, one of the first successful pioneer societies in the organization of charities. Her function was essentially that of general secretary, and this fact was formally recognized in 1886 when she was officially given the title.(4) Following the examples provided by the societies of London, England and Buffalo, New York, the Associated Charities became noted for its experimentation in the use of volunteers or "friendly visitors" and in the systematic training of staff workers.
Smith was a strong believer in the use of volunteers which she believed would bridge the gap between the rich and the poor and impart middle-class moral values. Smith wrote and presented a number of papers on how to get, train and keep volunteers not only for the Associated Charities but also for the National and the New England Conferences of Charities and Corrections (in both of which she was active throughout her career), and for the Boston School for Social Workers, later the Simmons College School of Social Work (SSW).
Smith began her first pioneering experiments in social work education while at the Associated Charities. In the 1890s she established training classes for district agents and study classes which both paid agents and volunteer staff attended. In 1888, Smith along with Charles W. Birtwell of the Boston Children's Aid Society formed the Monday Evening Club, the first discussion group for social workers in the United States, and an important forerunner of the professional social work association of the twentieth century.(5) Smith was also very active in promoting open spaces for urban environments and helped to establish Boston's first public playground.(6)
In 1903 she resigned from the Associated Charities and the following year established the post of associate director of the newly opened Boston School for Social Workers, which was maintained cooperatively by Simmons College and Harvard University. Along with Jeffrey R. Brackett, the School's director, Smith was to "correlate the work of the School with that of charitable agencies in Boston."(7) This she did by carrying on her methods of social work education begun at the Associated Charities. While at the School, Smith was responsible for the supervision and placement of students in field work, the conduct of study class three times a week, assignment of weekly readings, the teaching of the course, "Philanthropic Problems and Practice" in which case records were used to illustrate specific problems and concepts encountered by the social worker, as well as administrative duties in developing the curriculum.(8)
Students remembered Smith as an exacting, demanding teacher, but also as an empathetic, flexible, and opened-minded person.(9) She gained the respect and friendship of younger students and contemporaries alike, including Sir Charles Loch of the Charity Organization Society of London, and Mary E. Richmond of Baltimore, who became a student of Smith in 1889, and remained a close friend and associate to the end of her life.(10)
Smith retired in 1918 due to ill health, and spent the rest of her years in private activities, pursuing her interests in music, drama, literature, and especially in the flora and fauna of New England. In 1924 she became a member of the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants. She died in Boston of arteriosclerosis on October 12, 1926 and was buried in the Mayflower Cemetery, Duxbury, Massachusetts. A memorial service was held in her honor in December of that year, to recall her work in social work education and her contributions to the field of social work as a whole. In 1930 the Alumni Council of the School of Social Work voted to sponsor the Zilpha D. Smith Memorial Fund, to help provide special lectures not otherwise available in the curriculum.(11)
The Zilpha Drew Smith papers cover and are generally organized according to the period from her last decade with the Associated Charities of Boston, through her tenure as Assistant/Associate Director of the Boston School for Social Workers, to the time of her death, spanning the years from 1893 to 1926. The bulk of these materials cover her years with the School (1904-1918) when it was under the directorship of Jeffrey Richardson Brackett (1904-1920).
The Zilpha Drew Smith papers constitute 1.0 linear foot, which contains biographical notes, memorial material, bibliographies, professional writings (both published and unpublished), statistics, correspondence, administrative records, a report of the student committee, course materials, classroom lectures, notes on class meetings, clippings, and photographs. A scrapbook belonging to Smith was originally a part of the collection, but because of severe conservation problems, and the non-personal nature of the contents, the scrapbook was dismantled and merged with the rest of the collection. The scrapbook itself was discarded.
Much of this collection was "artificially" compiled, i.e. many of the records were gathered from diverse sources which the School librarians then made a part of the collection. This may account for any apparent gaps or incompleteness in the collection, and explains why the collection could not be easily arranged chronologically, by subject, or by some other readily apparent plan. Throughout the collection materials there are notations (dates, corrections, annotations, etc.) made by School of Social Work librarians. Also, the handwriting as well as the name of Jeffrey R. Brackett may be found on many of the documents.
The records in this collection document some of the activities conducted by the Associated Charities of Boston, and the primary role Smith played in the development of the curriculum at the Boston School for Social Workers (later the Simmons College School of Social Work), and in pioneering social work education in general in the United States.
Boston has had a long history of attempts to build a city-wide network for organizing charity. Throughout the late 19th century, several groups were formed, meeting with various degrees of success: Joseph Tuckerman's Association of Benevolent Societies (1834); the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism (1835); the Boston Provident Society (1851); the Boston Bureau of Charities (1874); and the Cooperative Society of Visitors(1875).(1) In 1879, the Associated Charities was formed under the enthusiastic direction of Annie Adams Fields, former vice-president of the Cooperative Society of Visitors.(2) The organization's main goals were cooperation, establishment of a confidential exchange, formation of district conferences, and the encouragement of self- development through "friendly visiting".(3)
As head registrar and General Secretary from 1879-1903, Smith served as one of the Associated Charities' chief executives. Under the leadership of administrators like Smith, the Associated Charities developed into a model of the successful charity organization. The records in this collection reflect not only the goals of the Associated Charities, but also its active and prolific activities, and the professional and "scientific" approach which Smith brought to the organization of charity.
In 1904 she accepted the post as assistant director (a title later changed to associate director in 1907) of the new Boston School for Social Workers. The records in the papers reflect the curriculum and the nature of educational opportunities at the School of Social Work, as well as Smith's personal philosophies on social work and social work education.
Of particular note in this collection are the special papers and statistics written by Smith and compiled for an exhibit sent to the Paris Exposition of 1900, and the papers and lectures delivered both at the School and at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections.
Also of interest are the numerous reflections on the life of Smith after her death in 1926, correspondence from Smith to colleagues and to the Class of 1917, a letter from social worker Annie Haven Thwing concerning a ring belonging to Dorothea Dix, a report of the Student Committee on improving conditions and curriculum, and lecture announcements for Samuel J. Barrows, Dr. Walter W. Fernald, Dr. E. Flood, R. R. Reeder, Mary E. Richmond, Dr. Elmer E. Southard, Dr. Edward W. Taylor, and Lillian D. Wald.
These and related materials may be found under the following headings in online catalogs.
Collection is arranged into 4 series:
Other materials relating to the life and activities of Zilpha Drew Smith are held by the Simmons College Archives, and the researcher may wish to consult the Jeffrey Richardson Brackett Papers (MS 8) and the papers of the Massachusetts Conference of Charities. Many letters from Smith are part of the Mary Richmond papers at the New York School of Social Work.
Original photos moved to photograph collection.
Boston School for Social Workers librarians' biographical notes first, followed by chronological arrangement.
This series consists of biographical notes presumably compiled by Boston School for Social Workers librarians, materials from the memorial service held in her honor in 1926, and other materials in memorial of Zilpha Drew Smith. Among those writing about Smith are John F. Moors, Hannah T. Carret, Joseph Lee, Eva Whiting White, Jeffrey R. Brackett, Lucy Wright, and Margaret E. Rich.
Box 1
Arranged in rough chronological order.
This series consists of bibliographical materials, writings and lectures by Zilpha Drew Smith. Records include both published and unpublished materials. The first two folders contain bibliographies. The bibliography in Folder 3 was a gift to the Boston School for Social Workers from historian Muriel Pumphrey, copied from the original at the New York School of Social Work.
Folders 4-8 are sections of a manuscript by Smith dealing with various aspects of social work and social welfare, including case histories, education of social workers, statistical analyses, and statistical tables. This manuscript, along with other papers, charts, photographs and reports of the Associated Charities of Boston , was sent as part of an exhibit to the Paris Exposition of 1900. The exhibit, honored by the award of a gold medal (Twenty-first Annual Report of the Associated Charities of Boston, November 1900, p. 14, as cited in Folder 5), was part of a national effort organized by the Charities Review, a journal published by the charity organization of New York. The exhibit later became the property of the Review (see Jeffrey R. Brackett, Supervision and Education in Charity, New York: Macmillan, 1903, pp. 106 and 136). Each folder contains a chapter from the manuscript. A table of contents is included in Folder 5. Two sections from the table of contents -- "Statistics as to number of families receiving relief in Boston," and "Statistics as to amount of relief given in Boston" -- were not maintained with the collection and were apparently missing from the whole by 1905.
A Study of Charity Statistics, in the Massachusetts Labor Bulletin of October 1899 is directly related to the Paris Exposition manuscript. The study, "prepared and edited by the Bureau of Statistics of Labor," was based on materials submitted to the Bureau by Smith, then General Secretary of the Associated Charities of Boston. Smith made use of the Bureau's tabulation to write her own "A Study of 2636 Families with Statistics Regarding Causes of Distress and Certain Types of Families" in her Paris Exposition manuscript, and to compile the three tables of statistics in Folder 9.
The manuscript in Folder 10 is a paper delivered by Smith on education for social work, concerning the field work activities of the Boston School for Social Workers, at the 1915 National Conference of Charities and Correction (NCCC) in Baltimore.
Also included here are miscellaneous writings published in various journals.
Box 1
Arranged into broad subject categories.
This series represents Zilpha Drew Smith in her capacity as administrator and educator at the Boston School for Social Workers. Records include correspondence, administrative materials, course materials, lectures presented at the School, syllabi, notes, and announcements for guest lecturers.
The correspondence consists of copies of rough drafts or letters from Smith to: Francis H. McLean, Richard M. Bradley, Florence F. Besse, Elizabeth L. Holbrook, James F. Jackson, and the Class of 1917. One notable exception is a letter to ZDS from Annie Haven Thwing, detailing the history of "the Dorothea Dix ring" which Thwing owned and passed on to Smith with the hope that when Smith retired she too would pass the ring on to an active social worker, thereby perpetuating the tradition from generation to generation. Two later entries in different handwritings (probably those of Lucy Wright and Marjorie Warren) attest to the fact that the tradition was kept at least until 1947.
Those items included here as lectures (Box 1, Folders 21-22; Box 2, Folders 1-2) have been identified as such from the language of each lecture and from the chronological list of papers by ZDS in Box 1, Folder 3.
Announcements for guest lecturers include those for Samuel J. Barrows, Dr. Walter E. Fernald, Dr. E. Flood, R. R. Reader, Mary E. Richmond, Dr. Elmer E. Southard, Dr. Edward W. Taylor, and Lillian D. Wald.
"After using the Confidential Exchange -- what next?" is actually a rough transcript of two class section meetings dealing with students' experience in using the "confidential exchange" in their field work. The confidential exchange is a central bank of information, holding case histories and vital statistics of clients sent in by participating charity organizations and accessible to social workers in a confidential exchange of information. Smith states that this kind of exchange had functioned in Boston since 1875 and that later the Associated Charities became the center for the exchange (see "The Organization of Charity," pp. 58-61, Box 1, Folder 22). Copies of "After using the Confidential Exchange -- what next?" were sent to Mary E. Richmond and "Miss Woodberry."
Also included in this series are clippings of School advertisements and Student Committee recommendations for improving course work.
Box 1
Box 2
Box 2
Arranged by subject.
Contains photographs of the family of Amos Griswald Warner (1861- 1900), sociologist, professor of economics and social sciences at Johns Hopkins and Stanford Universities, and author of American Charities. The prints are photographs of Amos Warner, his wife, Cora F. Warner, and their children Esther Warner and Kenneth Warner and a half-length photograph of Zilpha Drew Smith with glasses, pendant and lace (see also over-sized photograph OP021).
Box 2
