Death of M. Carey Thomas

M. Carey Thomas died on December 18, 1935, at her home, the Deanery, on the campus of Bryn Mawr College, the institution she had spent nearly five decades building into a premier center of women's higher education. She was 78 years old.

By the time of her death, Thomas had retired from the presidency of Bryn Mawr in 1922, but her influence on the college and on American higher education for women remained profound. She had transformed Bryn Mawr from a fledgling college into an institution recognized for its academic rigor, comparable to the finest men's colleges of the era, and had been an outspoken advocate for women's suffrage and equal access to graduate and professional education throughout her life.

Her death was widely noted in academic and reform circles, as she was regarded as one of the most formidable and influential figures in the history of American women's education. Thomas's legacy endured through the continued excellence of Bryn Mawr College, through generations of women scholars she had inspired and mentored, and through her broader impact on the fight to open doors of higher education to women nationwide. She was buried on the Bryn Mawr campus she had devoted her life to building, a fitting final resting place for a woman whose entire career was bound up with the institution's fortunes.