Rafferty, Ruth S. (Ruth Sherburne)

Ruth Sherburne Rafferty was born in San Francisco, California on September 5, 1892 to Thomas E. Rafferty, an interior decorator, and Florence A. Rafferty. Her family moved to Methuen, Massachusetts in 1896 and she graduated from Methuen High School. She attended Mount Holyoke College from 1911-1915 and received her B.A. in 1915, graduating with a major in English. In the summer of 1915 she worked as a camp counselor in Maine and in the fall of 1915 she became an English teacher at Hudson (New York) High School. She was a student of journalism at Columbia University between 1917-1918. In 1918 she became secretary and editor of the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly . She taught English at the Thurston Preparatory School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the Buckingham School in Cambridge, Massachusetts between 1921-1925. She died in Methuen on July 9, 1926 at the age of thirty-three.

From the guide to the Ruth S. Rafferty Papers MS 0824., circa 1905-1926, (Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections)