From an email:

Subject: Re: Research questions
Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 10:42 AM
From: Karen Jania
To: Jeff Shear
Cc:
Conversation: Research questions

Dear Mr. Shear:
According to the necrology file on Ms. Wells, (a file of information collected by the Office of Alumni Records on deceased University alumni), her father was H.H.Wells, a Banker and Merchant in Morris, Minnesota. She was born in Morris, MN on August 5, 1899, graduated from the University of Michigan in 1903 and was a graduate student at Columbia.Wells married George Cyrus Thorpe, an officer in the Marine Corps, on April 8, 1908.

According to a biography that appeared in the April 1935 Michigan Alumnus, “…she published her book on Hawaii, entitled In the Path of the Tradewinds. During the World War her talents as a speaker and organizer came to the fore and made her services valuable to the Red Cross. Since then they have found frequent opportunity in civic and political expression. She was a member, in 1932, of the Republican National Committee and Chairman of Speakers for the League of Republican Women of the District of Columbia in 1933. Her three children, she declares are the best of her ‘accomplishments.’ One, Betty Thorpe Pack, who is married to a diplomat in the British Embassy, was a literary prodigy at twelve. Another daughter is studying voice in Paris and her young son is a collegian at Yale.”

Women were first admitted to the university for the 1870/1871 academic school year, 37 women registered that year, out of a total of 422 registered students. The following year 64 women registered and in 1878/79 there were 134 registered women . In 1903 when Wells graduated, there were 714 women registered out of a total or 3,659.

The University of Michigan is a state college.

Sincerely,

Karen L. Jania
Reference Archivist