Ellen Pendleton, a tall, brown haired girl, the youngest of the nine children, came to Wellesley College from Westerly, Rhode Island, in 1882. The College at that time had been open only seven years.

Asked about her college days in the 1930s she said, "We all had the thrill of being pioneers in blazing new trails and in showing what a college for women could do. … we lived a restricted - a cloistered - life. But we had a lot of fun …. There was more enthusiasm in those days, a greater thirst for knowledge on the part of the student body as a whole, because education for women was such a novelty, and such a challenge. … We were earnest and determined about it. It was almost like a crusade."

We know very little about her life as a Wellesley student beyond the fact that she was a member of the Shakespeare Society, and gave the freshman speech at Tree Day. And she was a member of the crew of the Prydwen, characterized by a classmate as "the best looking and worst rowing crew on the lake." One of her professors described her as "alert and eager, modest and appreciative, laying well the foundations of her education in the good old studies of Latin and Greek and Mathematics and Bible, not neglecting History and Science and Philosophy."

Pendleton received her BA in 1886. Seventy-two degrees were awarded that year: 43 in the regular program, the rest going to students who had completed the five year courses in music or art.

Pendleton had received a number offers of teaching positions, but her mother hoped she would stay at home for at least a year to recover from the rigors of college study. But that summer President Alice Freeman wrote, asking her to return to the college and assist in the Mathematics Department. An unusually large freshman class was expected in the fall of 1886, and they needed her help. Ellen Pendleton expected to be needed only for a few weeks - instead she would, with few exceptions, remain at Wellesley for the next fifty years.

One of the exceptions was the year that Pendleton spent studying Mathematics at Newnham College, in Cambridge, England- one of the earliest American women to do so. Although leaves were normally reserved for senior faculty, Pendleton was one of three women granted leave to pursue graduate study in Europe during the 1889-90 academic year. Her work in Cambridge lead to a master's degree from Wellesley in 1891.

Although she had returned to the Mathematics Department at Wellesley, she was increasingly called upon to carry out administrative duties. In 1895 Pendleton became the Schedule Officer, and two years later was named Secretary of the College. In that role she was the College's main contact with preparatory schools. In 1901 she was named Dean of the College.

Caroline Hazard, who had become Wellesley's fifth president in 1899 relied heavily on Pendleton to handle routine administrative duties. This freed Hazard to engage in much needed fund raising for the College. In a memorial tribute Hazard said, "Miss Pendleton had a reserve of manner in those days which was sometimes misunderstood for indifference, or severity. She was the officer who had to enforce discipline, to whom delinquent students were sent, and it was natural that students should be somewhat in awe of her. It was really shyness that made her appear so awe-inspiring; and those who knew her could see the warm heart that was beneath the cool exterior." … "When I first knew her," Hazard continued, " she [was] a younger member of the faculty, retiring, and shy of expressing an opinion, though she always had one, and could state it vigorously."

In 1910 Hazard announced her intention to retire. Pendleton served as acting president for a year while the trustees decided what to do. The faculty wanted Pendleton to succeed Hazard, but the trustees first wrestled with the question of whether a college with problems should be run by a man instead of a woman. After all, running a college in many ways was like running a small town. Finally the trustees decided that to be true to its mission and past, Wellesley should continue to be led by a woman. They then spelled out their requirements. They wanted someone familiar with educational problems; a strong administrator; someone with personal courage, dignity, impartiality and pose, sympathy, tact, and unselfishness; and a woman of Christian purpose " - in short, someone like Pendleton.

During her twenty-five years as president of the College, Pendleton faced a number of challenges. Perhaps the greatest of these came early in her term. During the night of March 17, 1914, College Hall was destroyed by fire. In a matter of hours the college had lost residential space for 216 faculty and students; the offices and labs of the departments of geology, psychology, physics and zoology; and offices for twenty other departments [all that is except art, astronomy, chemistry, hygiene and music]; and administrative offices. By dawn the ruin of the massive building loomed above the campus. When the College gathered as usual for morning chapel, Pendleton gave thanks that no lives had been lost. She announced that all who could, should go home, and that the college would reconvene on April 7, the already scheduled date for the beginning of the spring term, three weeks hence. As a special issue of the News reported, "Instead of yielding to discouragement and despair, she made her hearers feel that there was work to do, and that the first duty of all was to rally undaunted to support our academic life, allowing no obstacle to stand in the way of completing the College year."

Pendleton is justly lauded as "the builder." Within days of the fire she issued a clarion call. "We are facing a great crisis in the history of the College. The future of our Alma Mater is in our hands. Crippled by this loss, Wellesley cannot continue to hold in the future its place in the front rank of the colleges, unless the response is generous and immediate. To sum up. Alma Mater needs three million dollars, two million of which must be raised immediately."

For the next two decades Pendleton shepherded the creation of a master plan for the development of the campus, raised the funds necessary to implement its ideas, and oversaw the construction of buildings needed to replace the facilities lost in the College Hall Fire. These included Tower Court; Claflin; Founders; the link between Pomeroy and Cazenove; Hallowell, Horton, and Shepard as faculty housing; Alumnae Hall; Sage; Severance; Stone-Davis; Green; Munger; and last, but not least, Pendleton Hall. The temporary administration building, a wood frame building called the Hen Coop, erected on the Chapel lawn after the fire provided administrative space until 1931 when Green Hall opened. Picture, if you will, the joy this stately, white haired woman in her mid 60s must have felt, blowing a trumpet and waving a hammer, leading the swarm of faculty and students who circled the Hen Coop, then proceeded to demolish it.

In addition to the improvements in campus facilities, other achievements under Pendleton's leadership include instituting a system in 1912 by which students were given letter grades, not merely told whether they were to receive credit for courses taken; inaugurating a freshman week in 1914 - one of the first in the country; revising the governance of academic departments in 1916, so that chairs were less autocratic; establishing a pension system for faculty in 1927; and promoting as a unifying capstone, a general exam on what students learned in the courses taken in their major, a requirement for graduation instituted in 1928.

Pendleton had a great and abiding interest in international affairs. It was her idea in 1906, following a visit to Wellesley College by a Chinese Educational Commission, to establish three Wellesley scholarships for Chinese students. In 1919 she traveled to Japan and China with a group sponsored by the Federation of Woman's Mission Boards to study their schools and colleges. In 1930, the State Department named her a delegate to the Inter-American Congress of Rectors, Deans and Educators in Havana.

Pendleton clearly was a master of seeing both the details and the larger picture. Faculty recalled "times we have spent with her on committees or in office interviews, when we have perhaps set forth some plan that we felt might work as a panacea, and have heard the President's masterly sketching in of considerations we had not foreseen." She once said to a trustee that " Intelligent complaints are most instructive."

She also was a strong advocate of academic freedom -- " the college faculty must have the opportunity of discussing and dissecting our political and social institutions in whatever way may be necessary. Academic freedom is a fundamental of college education. Having gathered together a faculty in whose judgment one trusts, we should give them the opportunity to teach in their own way untrammeled by restrictions." She was a prominent opponent of the 1935 Massachusetts law which mandated loyalty oaths by all teachers.

Although Pendleton consistently praised the quality of the student body, some of her statements on student culture seem a bit quaint today. In 1925, for example, as part of her effort to prevent the liberalization the College's rules against smoking, she commented, "that when a girl publicly uses rouge, lipstick, and powder, the President saw no reason to trust in her good taste."

Ellen Pendleton announced to the trustees that she intended to retire as of June 1936. Nearing her 72nd birthday, Pendleton expected to travel, and then retire to a house near campus. But within a month of leaving office, she had a heart attack, and died.

Her good friend, Edith Tufts, said that Ellen Pendleton liked being called "Wellesley's Pendleton " She was sensible of the forthright tribute involved," Tufts continued. "We have admired her courage, her utter fairness, her good sense and sound judgment. … We have joyed in her ready wit, her zest for living. We have found for ourselves a standard in her forgetfulness of self, her open-mindedness, her kindly humanity."

It seems appropriate that this portrait of Ellen Pendleton will quietly watch over this place named in her honor so long ago in the academic heart of the institution that she served so admirably.