Papers of Sara Yorke Stevenson

Résumé du livre

Sara Yorke Stevenson, archeologist, Egyptologist, civic leader, newspaper editor and columnist, was one of the principal founders of what is now the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. In 1894 she became the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Penn. Stevenson served as Curator of the Egyptian and Mediterranean Section and member of the Museum's governing board from 1890 to 1905 when she resigned, apparently because of the way the board handled disputes surrounding Hermann Hilprecht, Curator of the Babylonian Section. Stevenson was a founder and first president of the Equal Franchise Society, co-founder and two-term president of the Civic Club (a women's group pushing for reform and civic improvement), chair of the French War Relief Committee of the Emergency Aid of Pennsylvania, and had a leadership role in many other Philadelphia charitable organizations. For more than a decade she was also literary editor and columnist for the Philadelphia Public Ledger, writing under the pen names "Peggy Shippen" and "Sallie Wistar." These papers were removed in 2006 from a home once lived in by Stevenson's friend Frances Anne Wister. They cover the full range of Stevenson's interests. Highlights include her newspaper clippings and comments on the Hilprecht dispute, copies of hundreds of letters to her from her good friend William Pepper, Jr. (physician, provost at Penn and civic leader), and letters to her from many other Philadelphia notables.