Ellen Parmelee Cook and Mary Merrow Cook were born in Ripon, Wisconsin. After teaching in a Brooklyn private school for two years, Ellen Cook came to Smith College in 1890, where she served as an assistant in the Chemistry Department while earning her Bachelor's degree (1893). Mary Cook, meanwhile, traveled to Berlin, where she studied music with Felix Dreyschock and acquired remarkable fluency in German. Ellen continued to teach chemistry at Smith after her graduation, reaching the rank of associate professor in 1905 and receiving her Master's degree from Columbia University in 1906. Mary spent several years teaching music and German in the US and in France, which gave her an opportunity to master the French language. The sisters came together again in 1908, when Mary joined the faculty of Smith College as an instructor of German and, later, as an associate professor in the French Department. During her sabbatical leave in 1923-1924, Ellen taught chemistry at Ginling College in Nanking. Mary accompanied her sister to China and taught English at Ginling for a semester in 1925. After retiring from Smith-Ellen in 1931 and Mary in 1936-the Cook sisters lived in a house they built for themselves in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Ellen died in Jaffrey in 1947, followed by her sister in 1951.
- Ellen Cook's article, "Dedication Week and the New Ginling," from the Smith Alumnae Quarterly, February 1924, pp. 133-36
- The Cook sisters at the Great Wall
- The Cook sisters take refreshment in a tower of the Great Wall
- Mary Cook in a sedan chair
For more information, contact the Smith College Archives
Copyright Smith College Archives. Photographs cannot be reproduced for publication without the permission of the Smith College Archives.
biographies
collections | about the project | colleges
| links
home | search
The American
Context of China's Christian Colleges project is based at Wesleyan
University.
For more information, please contact the Project
Director or Website Coordinator.
http://www.library.yale.edu/div/colleges/
Last updated:
design by reedsparrow.com