Ruth Huntington Sessions
Born
Ruth Gregson Huntington

November 3, 1859
Cambridge, Massachusetts
DiedDecember 2, 1946
Syracuse, New York
OccupationWriter
ChildrenRoger Sessions
ParentFrederic Dan Huntington
RelativesElizabeth Porter Phelps (great-grandmother)

Ruth Gregson Huntington Sessions (November 3, 1859 – December 2, 1946) was an American writer, known for her 1936 memoir, Sixty Odd: A Personal History.

Early life

Ruth Gregson Huntington was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the daughter of Frederic Dan Huntington and Hannah Dane Sargent Huntington.[1][2][3] Her father was an Episcopal clergyman at the Emmanuel Church in Boston.[4] When she was nine years old, her father became a bishop,[5] and she moved to Syracuse, New York.[6]

At age 16, Huntington attended the Third Congress of the Association for the Advancement of Women, which was held in Syracuse, New York. She met Louisa May Alcott, Maria Mitchell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Catherine Beecher, Julia Ward Howe, and Mary A. Livermore at the event.[7] As a young woman she studied piano in Germany with Clara Schumann.[6]

Her great-grandmother was diarist Elizabeth Porter Phelps.[4]

Career

Sessions was one of the founding members of the Consumers' League, and president of the Consumers' League of Brooklyn, lecturing and organizing for improved labor conditions and against child labor.[8][9] She was founder of the Children's Home Association in Northampton, Massachusetts. She wrote poems,[10][11] short stories,[12] and essays.[13] She was active in the Girls' Friendly Society of America,[14][15] and literary editor of the Girls' Friendly Magazine. She supervised student housing at Smith College, where her home is now a campus building known as Sessions House.[16] In 1936, she published her memoir, Sixty Odd: A Personal History.[17][18]

Personal life

Ruth Huntington married her second cousin, lawyer Archibald Lowery Sessions, in 1887.[6] They had four children, including composer Roger Sessions.[19] One daughter died in infancy in 1891.[20] Ruth Huntington Sessions died in 1946, aged 87 years, at her daughter's home in Syracuse.[21] Her papers and other effects are in the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and at the Porter–Phelps–Huntington House.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 "Ruth Huntington Sessions". The Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum. June 1, 2016. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  2. ↑ "Obituary for HANNAH D. HUNTINGTON". New-York Tribune. 1910-02-23. p. 7. Retrieved 2020-09-22 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ↑ Huntington Family Association (1915). The Huntington Family in America: A Genealogical Memoir of the Known Descendants of Simon Huntington from 1633 to 1915, Including Those who Have Retained the Family Name, and Many Bearing Other Surnames. Huntington family association. p. 737. ISBN 9780608319186.
  4. 1 2 "Frederic Dan Huntington, Emmanuel Church's First Rector", pamphlet published by Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston.
  5. ↑ Noon, Rozanne Miller (1971). Frederic Dan Huntington, First Bishop of Central New York, His Role in Religion and Reform in the Nineteenth Century. University of California.
  6. 1 2 3 "Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers, 1698-1968 (bulk 1800-1950) Finding Aid". Amherst College Archives and Special Collections. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  7. ↑ Stowe-Alekman, Lily (July 20, 2019). "Ruth Huntington Sessions' Reflections on the Third Women's Congress". The Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  8. ↑ "Consumers' League Plans". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 1901-03-06. p. 15. Retrieved 2020-09-22 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. ↑ "Employers of Children". The Standard Union. 1899-12-04. p. 12. Retrieved 2020-09-23 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ↑ Sessions, Ruth Huntington (1898-08-18). "Loyalty (poem)". Missouri Valley Farmer. p. 2. Retrieved 2020-09-23 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ↑ Sessions, Ruth Huntington (1892-12-10). "Sunset After a Workday". Garden City Sentinel. p. 2. Retrieved 2020-09-23 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ↑ Sessions, Ruth Huntington (1908-10-25). "The Unlucky Parrot". The Washington Post. p. 7. Retrieved 2020-09-23 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ Sessions, Ruth Huntington (October 1899). "A Lady's Reading Eighty Years Ago". The New England Magazine. 21: 145–153.
  14. ↑ Girls Friendly Society of America (May 1914). The Record. p. 70.
  15. ↑ "National Officers of 'Friendly' Here". The North Adams Transcript. 1907-07-17. p. 2. Retrieved 2020-09-23 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ↑ "Student Life - Res Life - Smith Houses - Center Campus - Sessions Complex". Smith College. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  17. ↑ Sessions, Ruth Huntington (1936). Sixty-odd: A Personal History. Stephen Daye Press.
  18. ↑ "Ruth Huntington Sessions Writes Absorbing Record of Her Rich Cultural Life". Hartford Courant. 1936-11-15. p. 58. Retrieved 2020-09-22 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. ↑ Prausnitz, Frederik (2002-08-22). Roger Sessions: How a "Difficult" Composer Got That Way. Oxford University Press. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-19-535520-8.
  20. ↑ "Sessions". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 1891-12-28. p. 3. Retrieved 2020-09-22 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. ↑ "Mrs. Sessions, Smith Campus Figure, Dies". The Berkshire Eagle. 1946-12-03. p. 10. Retrieved 2020-09-23 – via Newspapers.com.
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