ANNIE WARE (WINSOR) ALLEN, 1865-1955

Annie Ware (Winsor) Allen, educator and founder of the Roger Ascham School in White Plains, New York, was born in Winchester, Massachusetts, on May 26, 1865. She was the fourth of seven children born to Frederick Winsor (1829-1889) and Ann Bent (Ware) Winsor (1830-1907). For further information on the Winsor children, see family tree, 719o.

AWWA's mother, Ann Bent (Ware) Winsor, was the second oldest daughter of Henry Ware, Jr. and his second wife, Mary Lovell (Pickard) Ware. Of her three brothers and three sisters (two other children died in infancy), she remained particularly close to two sisters: Harriet Ware (1834-1920) and Emma Forbes Ware (1838-1898). One brother, William R. Ware (1832-1915), was an architect; his papers are at the Institute Archives, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1857 Ann Bent (Ware) married Frederick Winsor, a physician; they settled in Winchester, MA. Three of the Winsor children, including AWWA, founded private secondary schools. Frederick Winsor, Jr. (1872-1940) founded and was headmaster (1901-1938) of the Middlesex School in Concord, MA, and Mary Pickard Winsor (1860-1950) founded and was principal (1886-1922) of the Winsor School for Girls in Brookline, MA. Another daughter, Elizabeth Ware (Winsor) Pearson, co-founded the Nursery Training School in Boston (later the Eliot-Pearson School at Tufts University) with Abigail Eliot, whose papers are also at the Schlesinger Library. The daughters of the family corresponded regularly for most of their lives, the sons less frequently.

AWWA was graduated from Winchester High School in 1881 and taught in Winchester until 1883. Later that year she entered Radcliffe College (then the Harvard Annex) and remained for two years until lack of funds necessitated her return to teaching. From 1886 to 1889 she again attended Radcliffe. She was active in College clubs and between 1887 and 1889 also taught College classes. Though her academic record was later reviewed several times at her request, she never received a degree from Radcliffe because she had not met the official entrance and/or graduation requirements.

From 1889 to 1900 she taught at the Brearley School, a private girls' school in New York City. During this time she became active in several social reform organizations, notably the People's Choral Union of New York, which sponsored People's Singing Classes and concerts and of which she was a member at least between 1897 and 1905; and the Social Reform Club of New York. The latter was organized to advocate "such practical measures for the improvement of the industrial and social condition in the city of New York as can be undertaken in the immediate future with fair hope of success." It sponsored strike benefits, labor legislation, and regular lectures and discussions. AWWA served as its secretary for eight years, and through the Club became a tutor for Leonora O'Reilly, an early organizer of the New York Women's Trade Union League. O'Reilly addressed AWWA as "Honor" in their correspondence, a name or title she also used in her diary entries (see Leonora O'Reilly papers, A-39).

During this period, AWWA lived in a boardinghouse with her uncle, William R. Ware. In 1897 they rented a house and invited AWWA's distant cousin, Joseph Allen (1870-1946) to live with them, one of eight children of Eugenia Sophia (Teulon) Allen (1836-?) and Edward Augustus Holyoke Allen (1828-1898). For further information on the Allen Family, see the family tree in #342. JA had earned both his A.B. and A.M. in mathematics from Harvard in 1892 and continued with his graduate work until 1894, when he left Harvard to take a teaching position at Cornell University. From 1897 to 1940 he taught mathematics at the City College of New York. JA also joined the Social Reform Club.

AWWA was 34 years old and JA 29 when they announced their engagement in 1899. Prior to her marriage, AWWA had written intense and often romantic letters to various friends. It is not clear whether any of these letters were actually sent; those to "Roy," probably an imaginary suitor, almost surely were not. She attempted to publish some of these letters as well as diary entries and poetry under the pseudonym Marion Sprague.

AWWA and JA were married in June of 1900; they continued to live in New York City, and by 1905 had three children: Dorothea Teulon later Treadway, (1901- ), Annie (Nancy) Winsor (1902- ), and Joseph ("Jay"), Jr. (1905-1975). A fourth child, David, died after one week in 1906. Between 1901 and 1955 the Allen family, later including the grandchildren, spent nearly every summer at Grayrock, their summer home in Seal Harbor, Maine. There they became friendly with a neighbor, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and his family. Winsor and Allen family and friends were often asked to spend a part of the summer at Grayrock.

Although AWWA did not work outside the home for the first several years of her marriage, she maintained her interest in education and for fifteen years served as a manager and member of the board of the State Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York. For seven of those years she was also its president.

In 1906 the Allens moved to White Plains, New York. AWWA, dissatisfied with the local school, began teaching her children at home, and soon neighboring children as well. In 1907 she founded the Roger Ascham School, a progressive, coeducational institution that eventually included all the grades from first through high school, and from which the three Allen children were graduated. The school moved to Scarsdale, then returned to White Plains; a branch was also opened for a time in New York City. AWWA served as headmistress until the school closed in 1933, and for many years JA was a trustee. During this period AWWA helped found the Head Mistresses' Association of the East.

AWWA drew upon her teaching experience in writing articles about education and adolescent behavior for the Ladies Home Journal and other magazines; she also wrote a column of advice to parents for the LHJ and several articles under the pseudonym Marion Sprague. She further expounded on schooling and child-raising in two books: Home, School and Vacation (1907) and Psyche's Primer (1935). Her lifelong interest in philosophy, religion, and psychology was reflected in two later books, All of Us (1942) and Without and Within (1952). During and after her years at RAS AWWA was often in demand as a speaker on children and education for various women's and church groups.

In 1945 JA and AWWA retired to Des Moines, Iowa, where they lived with their daughter Dorothea, her husband, Clay Treadway, and their four children, Allen, Ann, Ray and Roy. JA died in 1946 and for the next seven years AWWA divided her time between the Treadways and her younger daughter, Annie Winsor Allen, who was then principal of the Girls' Latin School in Chicago. In 1954, when AWA moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to become Dean of Women at Fisk University, AWWA moved with her and remained in Nashville until her death in December 1955.

From the guide to the Papers, 1818-1979, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)