Margaret Bailey Speer

Margaret Bailey Speer (November 20, 1900 – September 21, 1997) was an American educator and teaching missionary. She was dean of the Women's College of Yenching University in Beijing from 1934 to 1941, and headmistress of the Shipley School in Pennsylvania from 1944 to 1965.

Margaret Bailey Speer
A young white woman, standing outdoors, smiling, wearing a light-colored dress and holding a book under one arm; her hair is cropped to earlobe length, with bangs
Margaret Bailey Speer, from a 1925 publication.
BornNovember 20, 1900
Englewood, New Jersey
DiedSeptember 21, 1997
Gladwyne, Pennsylvania
Occupation(s)Educator, missionary, school administrator
Years active1920s-1970s
Known forDean, Women's College of Yenching University (1934-1941) Headmistress, The Shipley School (1944-1965)
PartnerAugusta Bertha Wagner
ParentRobert Elliott Speer
RelativesRobert Milton Speer (grandfather)

Early life

Margaret Bailey Speer was born in Englewood, New Jersey, the daughter of Robert Elliott Speer and Emma Doll Bailey. Her father was a Protestant leader, secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions.[1][2] Her mother was active in YWCA national leadership during World War I.[3] Her grandfather, Robert Milton Speer, was a Congressman.[4]

Speer attended the Dwight-Englewood School, graduating in 1917;[5] she graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1922. At Bryn Mawr, she was president of the Christian Association and active in the YWCA.[6] She later earned a master's degree at Columbia University.[5]

Career

After college, Speer taught at Sweet Briar College, and served as secretary to British suffragist Maude Royden while she toured in the United States. The Presbyterian Mission Board assigned her to teach English at the Women's College of Yenching University in 1925.[7] She became dean of the college in 1934, took a furlough in 1937,[8] and stayed at Yenching until 1941, when her job ended among the increased tensions of World War II. She reached home in 1943, after some time in a Japanese-run internment camp for enemy aliens in China.[6][9]

Back in the United States, she was a popular speaker at church women's events.[10][11][12] She became headmistress of the Shipley School, a nonsectarian girls' boarding school in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania,[13] in 1944. During her tenure, the school began enrolling African-American and Jewish students.[14] She retired in 1965.[15] In 1979 she traveled to Yenching University with a group of American students.[6]

Speer was president of the Headmistresses Association of the East (1950 to 1952), the National Association of Principals for Girls (1959 to 1961), and the Lower Merion Township Human Relations Council (1966 to 1968). She served on the session of the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church.[5]

Personal life

Speer lived, worked, and traveled with fellow American teacher Augusta Bertha Wagner in China and in the United States, from the 1930s into the 1970s.[16][17] Wagner died in 1976; Speer died in 1997, aged 96 years, in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania.[6][18] Her papers are in the Speer Family Papers at Bryn Mawr.[19] Her letters from China were published in 1994 as Like Good Steel: The China Letters of Margaret Bailey Speer, North China, 1925-1943.[20] The Shipley School presents a Margaret Bailey Speer Award to a distinguished alumna.[13][21] Among the recipients of the Margaret Bailey Speer Award is activist Torie Osborn.[22]

References
  1. Princeton University Class of 1889 (1904). Quindecennial Record of the Class of 1889: Princeton University, No. 5, 1899-1904. Princeton Press. pp. 65–66.
  2. "DR. R. E. SPEER DIES; LED PRESBYTERIANS". The New York Times. November 25, 1947. p. 29 – via ProQuest.
  3. "MRS. R. E. SPEER, 88, LEADER IN Y.W.C.A.". The New York Times. April 26, 1961. p. 39 – via ProQuest.
  4. Christina Wagner, Melissa Torquato, Speer Family Papers finding aid, Bryn Mawr College; family history on pages 4-5.
  5. "Notable Alumni Achievements: Margaret Baily Speer". Dwight-Englewood School. Retrieved 2020-11-03.
  6. McGonagill, Evan (2014). "A Purposeful Vision: Margaret Bailey Speer and Yenching University". The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women's Education. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
  7. Reid, Ann T. (September 1925). "Why They Go". Women and Missions: 219.
  8. "Miss M. Speer Visits at Wellesley; Describes Campus Life at Yenching". Wellesley College News. October 28, 1937. p. 1. Retrieved November 3, 2020 – via Internet Archive.
  9. "Former War Internee Says Homes, Schools Must be 'God's World'". The Times-Tribune. 1948-05-08. p. 9. Retrieved 2020-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. "Miss M. B. Speer Will Address Westminster Women at Spring Tea". The Tribune. 1948-05-04. p. 6. Retrieved 2020-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. "Margaret Speer, Speaker at Women's Church Union". Hartford Courant. 1944-04-23. p. 31. Retrieved 2020-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. "Speaks on China". The Record. 1938-01-22. p. 2. Retrieved 2020-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. Klein, Julia M. (1984-01-30). "Shipley School is celebrating its 90th year". The Philadelphia Inquirer. p. 96. Retrieved 2020-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. Williams, Patricia J. (2004). Open House of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons and the Search for a Room of My Own. Macmillan. p. 210. ISBN 978-0-374-11407-7.
  15. Vaux, Trina (2018-08-27). "Margaret Bailey Speer: Headmistress 1944-1965". The Shipley School. Retrieved 2020-11-03.
  16. Speer, Margaret Bailey (1930s). "Margaret Bailey Speer and Augusta Wagner". Speer, Margaret Bailey. "Speer Family Photo Album 3." Speer Family Papers, Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College Library. Retrieved 2020-11-03.
  17. "Shipley Leaders to Attend Parley". The Philadelphia Inquirer. 1955-02-22. p. 18. Retrieved 2020-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. Raftery, Kay (1997-09-25). "Margaret Speer, 96, educator". The Philadelphia Inquirer. p. 32. Retrieved 2020-11-03 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. "Margaret Bailey Speer Collection". The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women's Education. Retrieved 2020-11-03.
  20. Speer, Margaret Bailey, 1900- (1994). Like good steel : the China letters of Margaret Bailey Speer, North China, 1925-1943. Rittenhouse, Caroline Smith, 1931-. Berwyn, Pa.: Round Table Press. ISBN 1-882275-05-5. OCLC 30738923.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  21. "The Shipley School Margaret Bailey Speer Award". The Shipley School. Retrieved 2020-11-03.
  22. "Margaret Bailey Speer Award - Presented to Torie Osborn May 4, 2018". The Shipley School. 2018-05-04. Retrieved 2020-11-03.
  • A photograph of Margaret Bailey Speer in middle age, from the collection of the Lower Merion Historical Society.
  • A photograph of Margaret Bailey Speer in the 1930s, from the International Mission Photography Archive, University of Southern California Digital Library.
  • Marjorie Jane Harris, American missions, Chinese realities: An historical analysis of the cross-cultural influences on the development of North China Union Women's College/Yenching Women's College, 1905-1943 (PhD. dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1994). Dissertation focuses on four women's leadership at Yenching, including Speer's.
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