Social worker and lieutenant in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), Katharine Wolcott Toll was on born May 6, 1913, and grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Charles Hansen Toll, Jr., a professor of philosophy and psychology at Amherst College, and Mayes Martin Toll, a 1911 graduate of Wellesley College. She had three younger brothers: Charles Hansen Toll, III, Henry Caldwell Toll, and Caldwell Martin Toll. After graduating from Wellesley in 1935, Toll worked as parish secretary at Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst before being assigned as winter sportswriter for the Boston Post , the first woman appointed to the position. Recruited to the WAVES where she served from 1942 to 1946, Toll returned to the Boston Post after the war as staff reporter (1946-1954).
As executive secretary for the Refugee Resettlement Program of the Department of Social Service for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts (1954-1956), Toll organized the Massachusetts Association of Agencies Sponsoring Refugees and was the state representative to the American Conference on Immigration and Naturalization. In 1958 she earned a master's in social work from Boston University; she worked as executive director for the Mystic Valley Mental Health Association (1958-1961) and the Boston Social Service Exchange (1961-1968), and as information officer for the Tri-State Regional Medical Program.
Toll died on September 30, 2007, in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
From the guide to the Papers of Katharine Wolcott Toll, (inclusive), (bulk), 1809-2004, 1890-1985, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)
