McKelvey, Susan Delano, 1883-1964.

Susan Delano McKelvey was born in 1883 in Philadelphia, PA; a socialite, a cousin of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A 1906 graduate of Bryn Mawr, she married a young attorney named Charles Wylie McKelvey in 1907. She later left New York and her husband to start a new life in Boston. The couple, who officially divorced in 1930, had two sons. In 1919, McKelvey contacted Charles Sprague Sargent the director of the Arboretum, and as a volunteer was first assigned to washing clay pots. Sargent sent Ms. McKelvey on botanical expeditions to Glacier National Park and the White Mountains of New Hampshire with Professor John G. Jack as her mentor. With Sargent's encouragement, McKelvey began to study Arboretum plants under the tutelage of Willaim H. Judd, the Arboretum's plant propagator. Turning her attention to lilacs, McKelvey studied intently and for the next seven years conducted lilac research in the United States, Canada, England and France. In 1928, her book The Lilac: A Monograph was published and she became an authority on the genus Syringa. With the death of Charles Sprague Sargent in 1927, McKelvey was appointed to Harvard's Committee to Visit the Arnold Arboretum and in 1931 was appointed research associate, positions she held for the rest of her Arboretum career. As a Visiting Committee member dedicated to the Arboretum, McKelvey actively opposed the implementation of the Bailey Plan (1945), which diverted Arboretum funds and sought the transfer of Arboretum resources to other Harvard departments. It became known as the Arnold Arboretum Controversy and played itself out in a divisive court battle during the 1950s and 1960s. A successful botanist, author, and authority on lilacs and yuccas, Susan Delano McKelvey died in 1964.