Barbara Spofford Morgan (July 15, 1887 – April 1, 1971) was an American educator, essayist on religion and a specialist in mental testing.[1]
Early life and education
Barbara Spofford was born on July 15, 1887, in New York City,[1] the daughter of Charles Ainsworth Spofford, a director of the Northern Pacific Railway, and Ellen Boardman. They moved to Norfolk, Connecticut, to give their daughter a better environment, and in 1898, built The Alders (now known as the Manor House), a Victorian Tudor-style mansion, designed by E.K. Rossiter.[2] Later Barbara and Shepard Morgan lived on Mountain Road, Norfolk.[1] Spofford was the granddaughter of Ainsworth Rand Spofford,[3] Librarian of the United States Congress from 1864 to 1897.[4]
On February 20, 1912,[9] she married Shepard Ashman Morgan (1884-1968),[10] president of the Chase National Bank and author of The History of Parliamentary Taxation in England and Reminiscences of Shepard Ashman Morgan (1950).[1][11][12] The Morgans were members of the Jekyll Island Club, a Southern haven for America's millionaires.[13]
In 1926, while her husband was economic advisor and later finance director of the Office for Reparation Payments in Berlin, Germany, she enrolled at the Friedrich Wilhelm University,[14] where she received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1928, the first American woman to achieve such a distinction. Her doctoral thesis was The Individual in American Education.[15]
Morgan was the author of The Backward Child, a Study of the Psychology and Treatment of Backwardness; A Practical Manual for Teachers and Students (1914),[16]Friendly Shepherdess (1933),[17]Individuality in a collective world (1935),[18]Skeptic's search for God (1947) (reissued in 1949 as Man's restless search).[1] She also contributed articles to The Atlantic,[19] the North American Review,[20] and The Baltimore Sun.[21]
Headstone at Norfolk Center Cemetery
From 1910 to 1911, she directed the psychological clinic of the Neurological Institute of New York. In 1911, she was featured in a full-page article in The New York Times: "Teaching Backward Children Their A-B-C's by Dancing, Where ordinary methods fails, Miss Barbara Spofford resorts to a novel plan of her own to instill the alphabet into youthful minds".[22] From 1916 to 1918 she lectured on mental testing at the New York University[23] and from 1914 to 1920 she had a private practice in mental testing in New York City.[1]
Morgan was governor of the Women's Municipal League, a field worker for the North American Civil League for Immigrants and an activist for the benefit of the Randalls Island Hospital for Mental Defectives. She was a trustee of the Public Education Association and a governor of the Cosmopolitan Club.[1]
Later years
In 1970, she donated The Papers of Ainsworth Rand Spofford to the Library of Congress.[24][25] Morgan died on April 1, 1971, in Canaan, Connecticut.[1]
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