Merrill, Katharine, 1895-1983

Katharine Merrill was born on August 3, 1895, in Quincy, Massachusetts. Her father, John Flint Merrill, was in the real estate business. She attended Woodward Institute in Quincy, from 1909-1913 then went to Mount Holyoke College from 1913-1917. She majored in German, zoology, and physiology and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1917. She graduated from Harvard University Summer School of Physical Education in 1922 and received her Masters in Education from Harvard Graduate School in 1928. She worked as a high school teacher of German, biology, physical education, geography, typewriting, and girls' basketball in New York and Massachusetts from 1917-1924. She also was an actuarial clerk for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company from 1919-1921. Merrill was a missionary teacher at the Matsuyama Girls' School in Japan from 1924-1941. She taught physical education, English, and folk dancing and earned a certificate from the Tokyo School of Japanese Language and Culture in 1933. In 1927-1928 Merrill returned to the United States and worked as a clerk at the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Boston while finishing her Master of Education degree from Harvard University. From 1942 until about 1954 she worked in Washington D.C. as a research analyst and Japanese translator for the Military Intelligence Service, in addition to serving as a high school German teacher and a translator for the Index Catalogue Division of the Armed Forces Medical Library. She married Knut Ahlbers in 1954 and in 1964 moved to his homeland, Sweden, where Ahlbers died. In 1968 she married Karl August Skog in Vasteras, Sweden. She died in Vasteras on November 27, 1983, at the age of eighty-eight.

From the guide to the Merrill papers MS 0571., ca. 1913-1983., (Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections)

Teacher, missionary, translator.

From the description of Papers, 1917-1984. (Lewis & Clark Library). WorldCat record id: 13566532