Ella (Lyman) Cabot, 1866-1934

Ella Lyman Cabot, educator, author and lecturer, was born into a prominent Boston family in 1866, the fourth of the seven children of Ella (Lowell) Lyman (1837-1894) and Arthur Theodore Lyman (1832-1915). The Lymans, a close-knit family, lived at 39 Beacon St. in Boston and at the Lyman estate in Waltham, and as Unitarians attended King's Chapel. Ella Lyman was educated in Boston private schools, attended Radcliffe College as a special student (1889-1891), and took graduate courses at Harvard (1897-1903). In 1894, after almost six years of courtship, she married Dr. Richard Clarke Cabot (1868-1939), physician and professor of medicine and social ethics at Harvard. The Cabots made their home first on Marlborough St. in Boston and then on Brattle St. in Cambridge. They also spent time in Cohasset, Mass., and at the Cabot family house in North East Harbor, Maine, and camped on Spruce Island, Saranac, NY, during many summers. They chose not to have children.

ELC began her career as an educator in 1897. Over the next four decades she taught ethics and applied psychology at Boston private schools and at Pine Manor Junior College in Wellesley; she also directed the Sunday school at King's Chapel. She served on the governing boards of Radcliffe College, 1902-1934, and on the Massachusetts Board of Education, 1905-1934. Among the numerous other organizations in which ELC held office were the Women's Education Association of Massachusetts, the Unitarian Sunday School Association, the Unitarian Temperance Society, and the N National Religious Education Association.

ELC published seven books on ethics and childhood education between 1906 and 1929, a privately-printed 3-volume biography of her parents, and many articles and pamphlets, She died in 1934.

From the guide to the Papers, 1873-1934, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)