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COLLECTION Identifier: 73-143--90-M103

Papers of Emily Hartshorne Mudd, 1873-1990

Overview

Writings, correspondence, etc., of Emily Hartshorne Mudd, marriage counselor, advocate for family planning, researcher, and professor.

Dates

  • Creation: 1873-1990

Language of Materials

Materials in English.

Access Restrictions:

Access. Before using the papers, researchers must sign a form agreeing not to reveal the identity of any clients or potential clients whose names may appear in the collection. For access to #637-641, see the curator of manuscripts. Recommendations by Mudd are closed until fifty years after she wrote them; the dates these items will be open to researchers are noted in the inventory. Access to some family papers to be given in the future may require written permission from Emily Mudd or, after her death, her son John H. Mudd or daughter Emily Mudd Mitchell.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright. Copyright, in so far as she holds it, is retained by Emily Hartshorne Mudd during her lifetime, and by her children, John and Emily, thereafter.

Copying. Unrestricted.

Extent

18.42 linear feet ((18 cartons, 2 half file boxes) plus 3 audiotapes, 10 photograph folders, 4 folio folders, 2 folio+ folders, 3 oversize folders)

This collection consists primarily of papers resulting from activities Mudd pursued after retiring from the Marriage Council; it also includes her writings, some material from her work on the Marriage Council, and correspondence.

The papers document Mudd's career as a marriage counselor, birth control advocate, and educator (particularly post-"retirement"), her achievements and research, the effect she had on her profession, and her ideas about marriage counseling, birth control, and education. The collection provides information about the development of and philosophy behind family planning clinics and marriage counseling in the United States and abroad from the 1930s until the late 1970s. It also documents the interests and activities of a number of birth control and professional organizations, groups concerned with world population, and other organizations from the late 1960s through the early 1980s.

Mudd's folder headings and file divisions have been retained. When headings seemed mystifying or it was important to maintain Mudd's wording, folder titles appear in quotation marks. Many thick folders were divided. Because the papers arrived as numerous accessions at different times, the original filing order may not be perfectly reflected by the series divisions in the collection. Because this is a preliminary finding aid, the contents of most folders have not been arranged in strict chronological order.

Series I, Biographical, personal, and family (#1at-37), begins with interviews with Mudd (one audiotape, one transcript), articles about her, honors and awards she received (including a videotape), school papers and diplomas. It also includes some family material, such as an account book kept by Mudd's mother, travel diaries, and correspondence about the Seeley G. Mudd Foundation and with the Seeley G. Mudd family. This series provides an overall view of Mudd's work and achievements. For additional papers of her mother, a Pennsylvania suffragist, see Schlesinger Library collection A/H33 (also available on University Publications of America microfilm, Suffrage series, M-133, reel B1).

Series II, Speeches and writings (#38-175), includes lectures, notes for speeches, and an audiotape of a speech; drafts, typescript papers, reprints, and articles by Mudd (some written with others); as well as correspondence about her speeches and publications. Many speeches were later published; these appear in the latter half of the series. For lists of Mudd's speeches and of her writings, see #38 and 119 respectively. In addition to documenting Mudd's writing, her changing interests and ideas, and the results of a number of her studies (most under the auspices of the Marriage Council), this series provides information about marriage counseling, attitudes toward and advice given about birth control in the United States and abroad, and the Marriage Council of Philadelphia.

Some speeches and writings also appear in Series III and IV, specifically those that pertain to her travels and organizations, respectively. See, for example, #22, 185-186, 191, 203, 205, 248, 261, 268, 310, 419-420, 477, 601, 632, 662, 750-751, 817. Correspondence about Mudd's speeches and publications also appears in Series V. Background material Mudd used for her writings appears in Series VI and is cross-referenced to the relevant folders in this series.

Series III, Travels (#176-276), consists of correspondence, material Mudd collected in other countries, itineraries, a few papers presented by Emily and Stuart Mudd, reports and articles about her trips, and photographs. It is arranged chronologically by the date of each trip. A summary of trips Mudd took from 1965 through 1979 is in #247. Some folders include material that belonged to Stuart Mudd, but few appear to have been maintained by him. This series documents not only Mudd's travels and the presentations she gave about them afterwards but also marriage counseling, family planning, and health care in most of the countries she visited. The countries best represented are Japan, Israel, Australia, and New Zealand. Also of note is the material Mudd collected in the Soviet Union just after World War II. A folder marked "Yugoslavia" was found empty.

Correspondence with and material Mudd collected from the Jamaica Family Planning Project appears in Series IV. Further documentation of Mudd's international interests may be found in Series IV under such organizations as Experiment in International Living and Temple of Understanding.

Series IV, Organizations (#277-706), includes programs, minutes, agendas, published and unpublished reports, flyers, brochures, and correspondence resulting from Mudd's involvement in and service on the boards of a number of professional and other organizations. The series begins with a few folders that contain material from a variety of organizations; the remainder is arranged alphabetically. Material found loose was added to organizations' folders as appropriate; other loose material appears at the end of Series VI. The processor has noted Mudd's speeches and writings where they appear in this series; for more speeches and writings and for a complete list, see Series II. Folders that Mudd marked "minutes" or "meetings" usually contain both minutes and material distributed before or during meetings.

Organizations represented in this series include the Masters & Johnson Institute, the Marriage Council of Philadelphia (filed under the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine's Division of Family Study), professional associations, organizations advocating family planning, and a variety of other organizations such as the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (a "society of scholars") and the Virginia Gildersleeve International Fund for University Women.

Mudd did her work for divorce and other legislation in Pennsylvania separately from any particular organization; records of this work appear in Series VI (#809-812).

Series V, Correspondence (#707-802). Most of the correspondence is professional. The series also contains some articles, clippings, papers not by Mudd, and printed material. Letters of recommendation are closed until fifty years after they were written.

Series VI, Reference materials (#803-841), is arranged alphabetically by topic; it consists mainly of printed pamphlets, newsletters, reports, clippings, and reprints, with some correspondence. Mudd marked almost all these folders "reference" and in some cases noted that folders were used as background for particular articles; these have been cross-referenced with folders in Series II. Material found loose throughout the collection that came from organizations not represented in Series IV appears in #840-841.

BIOGRAPHY

Emily Borie (Hartshorne) Mudd, marriage counselor, advocate of family planning, researcher, and educator, was born in Merion, Pennsylvania, on September 6, 1898, the daughter of Edward Yarnall and suffragist Clementina (Rhodes) Hartshorne. After entering Vassar College in 1917, she worked in the Woman's Land Army and enlisted in the nursing corps of the United States Army rather than return to college. A bout of typhoid interfered with her plans to become a nurse or to attend any college that required mostly indoor activity. She transferred to the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture (Groton, Massachusetts), where she earned an L.A. degree in 1922. That same year she married Stuart Mudd, whom she had met while he was a fellow in biophysics at Harvard Medical School. They had four children: Emily Borie, Stuart Harvey, Margaret Clark, and John Hodgen.

The Mudds lived briefly in New York City, where they met Margaret Sanger and Dr. Abraham Stone. They moved to the Philadelphia area in the early 1920s, eventually settling in Haverford. There they lived next door to Mudd's sister, Clementine Hartshorne Jenney. Mudd and Jenny mutually raised the Mudd and Jenney children, making it easier for each of them to do other work. Mudd served as microbiologist and Stuart Mudd's unpaid laboratory assistant until the early 1930s. Their research included work on the immunology of spermatozoa, which they hoped might result in a new method of birth control; together they published fourteen articles about their work.

In the late 1920s, the Mudds were among those who founded the Maternal Health Center, a birth control clinic in Delaware County, just outside Philadelphia. As in most states, Pennsylvania laws restricted the availability of birth control devices and information. The Maternal Health Center was unable to find a nurse willing to give out information about birth control; Mudd did this as a volunteer. Many of the women she saw were physically, emotionally, or economically burdened by the number of children they had. Mudd became convinced that young women should be able to learn about contraception before becoming overwhelmed with more children than they wanted, and that potential marital problems deriving from disagreements over such issues as contraception and mutual expectations should be worked out early in a marriage. Believing that "prevention" is better than a later "cure," she joined a committee that was considering forming an agency to address these concerns. The Marriage Council of Philadelphia (until 1947, Marriage Counsel of Philadelphia) was founded in 1932 or 1933, with Mudd as its counselor.

The Marriage Council of Philadelphia was only the third such agency in the United States. Mudd served as director part-time while working toward a Master in Social Work degree at the University of Pennsylvania. When she earned her degree in 1936, she became executive director of the Marriage Council of Philadelphia, a post she held until her retirement in 1967. In 1950 she earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1952, the Marriage Council of Philadelphia affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The council became the core of the newly founded Division of Family Study in the Department of Psychiatry. Mudd was director of the division and became a full professor in 1956, the first woman to reach that level in the medical school.

In addition to providing marriage counseling to men and women, the Marriage Council of Philadelphia conducted research on clients and other families, and on the results of its services. It became a center for training counselors from the United States and abroad. Mudd participated in all aspects of the council's work. She counseled clients, taught counselors, and introduced medical students, pastors, and others to marriage counseling techniques. She conducted and oversaw studies, lectured and offered courses in Philadelphia and elsewhere, and wrote or edited six books and well over a hundred articles about the Marriage Council of Philadelphia, research results, and other topics, most related to marriage counseling. For a fairly comprehensive list of Mudd's publications, see #119. In the 1940s and early 1950s, at the request of the publisher, Mudd worked with Alfred Kinsey as one of five consulting editors for the Institute for Sex Research's book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).

Mudd was also concerned with marriage counseling, family planning, and population control overseas. She enjoyed learning about practices in other countries as well as sharing her own expertise. She and Stuart Mudd traveled around the world giving lectures in their respective fields. Among the countries they visited were the Soviet Union (1946), South America (1950), Japan (1955, 1974), Sweden (1958), Israel (1961), Australia and New Zealand (1964, 1968), Poland (1966), Korea and the Philippines (1967), and India (1968). The Mudds were both active with the Pathfinder Fund, which has founded family planning services around the world (many in developing countries) and supports research on contraceptives.

After Mudd's retirement in 1967, she continued to be active in the medical school's Departments of Psychiatry and Obstetrics and Gynecology as well as in the Marriage Council. She was senior advisor of the Teen Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, which serves teenage girls, their mothers, and their boyfriends. Always involved in professional and other organizations, in the 1970s and early 1980s she increased her volunteer work and served on a number of boards: e.g., the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, Experiment in International Living, College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and the World Academy of Art and Science (as treasurer for eight years, then chair of the Awards Committee). In the early 1970s Governor Milton Shapp appointed her co-chair of the Pennsylvania Abortion Law Commission, and she was co-director of continuing education for the Masters & Johnson Institute (earlier the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation) in St. Louis from 1970 through 1981.

Stuart Mudd died on May 6, 1975. In 1980 Mudd married Frederick Gloeckner, chair of the Board of Directors of the Winchell Company, Printers and Publishers. They live in Haverford, Pennsylvania.

For additional biographical information, see published articles in #10-18, particularly those from Current Biography (1956), Health Affairs (1973), Who's Who of American Women (1977-1978), and Who's Who in America (1990-1991), and papers about Mudd in #3-9. Mudd was interviewed by James W. Reed for the Schlesinger Library's Family Planning Oral History Project; the transcript is available at the library: OH-1/ Mudd. Reed's interview with Stuart Mudd and biographical material about Stuart Mudd are in #17 of the Family Planning Oral History Project collection, MC 223; papers about Mudd there duplicate material in this collection.

ARRANGEMENT

The papers have been divided into six series:

  1. I. Biographical, personal, and family
  2. II. Speeches and writings
  3. III. Travels
  4. IV. Organizations
  5. V. Correspondence
  6. VI. Reference materials

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Accession numbers: 73-143, 73-180, 74-60, 74-204, 75-279, 76-389, 77-M40, 77-M129, 77-M179, 79-M84, 80-M41, 80-M103, 82-M55, 82-M136, 82-M238, 83-M112, 85-M160, 86-M255, 87-M114, 88-M81, 89-M49, 90-M103

The papers of Emily Hartshorne Mudd were given to the Schlesinger Library by Emily Hartshorne Mudd from 1973 through 1990.

Related Material:

Mudd was interviewed by James W. Reed for the Schlesinger Library's Family Planning Oral History Project; the transcript is available at the library: OH-1/ Mudd. Reed's interview with Stuart Mudd and biographical material about Stuart Mudd are in #17 of the Family Planning Oral History Project collection, MC 223.

SEPARATION RECORD

The following items have been removed from the collection and deposited in the following libraries at Harvard: Map Collection, Theatre Collection, German Section (HCL), Harvard-Yenching, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Center for International Affairs, Russian Research Center, Fairbank Center, Countway Library, Center for Population Studies

  1. Various pamphlets, maps, postcards, etc., 22 April, 1982

The following items have been removed from the collection and deposited in the University of Pennsylvania Archives, June 1996:

  1. Minutes, etc., of Department of Psychiatry and senior tenured staff meetings, University of Pennsylvania, Medical School, 1973-1984

CONTAINER LIST

  1. Carton 1: 2-13, 15-18, 20-22, 24-25, 27-28, 32-36, 38-64
  2. Carton 2: 65-83, 86-115
  3. Carton 3: 116-165
  4. Carton 4: 166-174, 176-179, 181-192, 194-226
  5. Carton 5: 227-256, 258-264, 266-270, 272-273, 275-276
  6. Carton 6: 277-315
  7. Carton 7: 316-354
  8. Carton 8: 355-394
  9. Carton 9: 396-438
  10. Carton 10: 439-478
  11. Carton 11: 479-523
  12. Carton 12: 524-557
  13. Carton 13: 558-600
  14. Carton 14: 601-621, 623-640, 642-646
  15. Carton 15: 647-666, 668-687
  16. Carton 16: 688-705, 707-756
  17. Carton 17: 757-801, 803-808
  18. Carton 18: 809-836
  19. Box 19: 837-841, 265m
  20. Box 20: 641, items removed from #717-718, 726, 755, 761, 768-769, 771. CLOSED.

Processing Information

Preliminary inventory: May 1993

By: Kim Brookes

Genre / Form

Geographic

Topical

Title
Mudd, Emily Hartshorne. Papers of Emily Hartshorne Mudd, 1873-1990: A Finding Aid
Author
Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
Language of description
eng
Sponsor
The collection was processed in part with funds given by Emily Hartshorne Mudd.
EAD ID
sch00751

Repository Details

Part of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Repository

The preeminent research library on the history of women in the United States, the Schlesinger Library documents women's lives from the past and present for the future. In addition to its traditional strengths in the history of feminisms, women’s health, and women’s activism, the Schlesinger collections document the intersectional workings of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class in American history.

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