Palmer, Alice Freeman, 1855–1902, American educator, b. Broome co., N.Y., grad. Univ. of Michigan, 1876. She was one of the leading early proponents of higher education for women in the United States. In 1879 she became head of the history department at Wellesley College, later serving as president (1881–87) and as trustee (from 1888). In 1887 she married George Herbert Palmer. A member of the Massachusetts state board of education after 1889, she was also dean of women at the Univ. of Chicago (1892–95), a director of the World's Columbian Exposition, and twice president of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae (American Association of University Women).
See An Academic Courtship: Letters of Alice Freeman Palmer and George Herbert Palmer, 1886–1887 (1940); biography by her husband G. H. Palmer (1908).
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