Ruth Holden was born on November 27, 1890, in Attleboro, Massachusetts, the daughter of Dr. Charles S. and Mrs. Caroline Sanford Holden. She attended Attleboro High School and Radcliffe College, where she studied paleobotany with Professor E. C. Jeffrey; she graduated magna cum laude in 1911, and earned her M.A. in 1912. In 1913, several fellowships made it possible for her to go to England, where she devoted herself to research at Newnham College, Cambridge.
Shortly after the war broke out in 1914, Ruth Holden took a Red Cross nurses' training course, worked in hospitals in England, and, in January 1916, went to Russia with the first Millicent Fawcett Medical Unit to establish maternity hospitals for Polish refugees. Ruth Holden learned Russian and Polish, and was appointed interpreter and courier for the unit. After some time in Petrograd, she went on to Kazan to help establish a hospital for Polish refugee children. In her spare time she continued some of her work in paleobotany at the university there. She travelled extensively in Russia to distribute supplies to hospitals, and wrote of the hardships involved in letters to her parents and friends. In January 1917 she was stricken with typhoid fever. When nearly recovered, she fell ill with meningitis and died at Kazan in April.
From the guide to the Papers, 1907-1961, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)
