Hendricks, Cecilia Hennel, 1883-1969

Cecilia Hennel was born in Evansville, Indiana on March 2, 1883 to Joseph H. and Anna Marie Thuman Hennel. The Hennel's moved from Evansville to Bloomington in 1905 so that their daughters - Cora, Cecilia, and Edith - could attend Indiana University. Cora was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in Mathematics at IU. Cora would remain at IU teaching Mathematics at IU for the next 40 years and co-authored a math textbook. Cecilia obtained her A.B. in 1907 and her A.M. in 1908, both in English, from IU. While a student at IU, Cecilia edited The Arbutus and contributed articles to numerous professional journals. Cecilia taught the first correspondence course at IU and taught in the English Department at IU for over 25 years, from 1907-1913, and from 1931-1953, when she retired. Edith received both the A.B. and the A.M. in Botany, and taught botany at IU for two years before she left in 1914 to become a probation officer in Gary, Indiana for the Lake County Juvenile Court. She married Edward Ellis in Chicago in 1917.

Cecilia joined the faculty as an Instructor of English from 1908-1913, and served as Dean of Women at IU during the summers of 1912-1913. In 1913, she moved to Powell, Wyoming to marry John Hendricks who was a member of the Shoshone Federal Irrigation Project team assigned to cultivate a bee farm. While in Wyoming, Cecilia and John had three children - Cecilia Barbara (Mrs. Henry Ethan Wahl), Jules Ord, and Anne Carolyn (Mrs. John DeCamp). At President Bryan's request, Hendricks returned to the IU English faculty, where she remained from 1930-1953. In 1940, she founded the Indiana University Writers' Conference as a way of fostering the study of creative literacy tradition in the Midwest.

...