Hatch, Olivia Stokes

Olivia Stokes Hatch (née Olivia Egleston Phelps Stokes) was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1908, and attended Bryn Mawr College from 1925 to 1930. Active in the Christian Association, she served a term as president of the Self-Government Association. Her family, an illustrious group, include: her father, Anson Phelps Stokes, a respected theologian and author of Church and State in the United States; her brother, Anson Phelps Stokes, Jr., the Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts.; her brother, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes II, a philanthropist, and her mother, Caroline Mitchell Phelps Stokes, whose sister was Anna V.S. Mitchell, a relief worker during World War I. In 1939, Olivia Phelps Stokes married John Davis Hatch, Jr. an art collector, consultant and museum director who worked at the Art Institute of Seattle from 1928 to1931, the Isabella Stewart Museum in Boston from 1932 to 1935, the Albany Institute of Art and History from 1940 to 1948, and the Norfolk Museum of Art and Sciences in Virginia, also known as the Walter Chrysler Museum, from 1950 to 1959. They had four children: John Davis Hatch III, Daniel Lindley Hatch, James Stokes Hatch, and Sarah Stokes Hatch.

Before her marriage, Mrs. Hatch was very active with the American Red Cross and American Conferences of Social Work. During the 1940s, she worked with the League of Women Voters, City Club (Albany), Race Relations group, and the Red Cross Speakers Bureau. In the 1950s, she worked with the Norfolk League of Women Voters, and was active in church groups and the Parent-Teacher Association. In Lenox, Massachusetts, in the 1960s, she volunteered as a reader for Recording for the Blind, and helped to entertain young artists in conjunction with the Berkshire Music Center. She also traveled throughout the United States, Central and South America, and in the Far East. She is a co-author, with Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, of Olivia’s African Diary: Cape Town to Cairo, 1932, which describes their trip throughout Africa and was published in 1980.

She died on October 10, 1983. John Davis Hatch, Jr. died in 1996.

Anna V.S. Mitchell, sister of Caroline Mitchell Phelps Stokes, spent most of her life engaged in relief work. She was heavily involved with domestic fundraising efforts on behalf of Russian refugees in Constantinople and relief aid throughout World War I. Her career began in 1915 in Serbia and ended in 1936 in Constantinople.

From the guide to the Olivia Stokes Hatch papers, 1859-1993, (Bryn Mawr College)