Florence Bascom was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1862. She received both her B.S. (1882) and A.M. (1887) from the University of Wisconsin, where her father, John Bascom, was president. In 1893 she became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in geology. She taught at Rockford College and Ohio State University before teaching her first geology course at Bryn Mawr in 1895 as a reader in geology, and was a Professor of Geology from 1906 to 1928. Bascom introduced the undergraduate major in geology at Bryn Mawr, and eventually made it a graduate program of national reputation. Bascom was the first woman elected to the U.S. Geological Survey, for the mid-Atlantic Piedmont area. She was associate editor of American Geologist from 1896 to 1905 and was also the first woman elected as a Fellow of the Geological Society of America in 1894, and in 1930, she was named vice-president. Florence Bascom died in 1945.

For a more detailed biography, see Notable American Women, 1607-1950; a biographical dictionary. Edited by Edward T. James and Janet Wilson James (Cambridge, Mass., Belknap Press, 1971).

The papers include biographical information, photographs, scrapbooks, sketchbooks, writings, memorabilia, financial records, and extensive personal and professional correspondence. Correspondents include Elaine Goodale Eastman, Annie Peck, Gifford Pinchot, Isabel Fothergill Smith, M. Carey Thomas, and Charles R. Van Hise. Correspondence from the Goldschmidt family is in German with English translation. Her writings include published and unpublished geology articles re: Pennsylvania, Maine, and Massachusetts. The papers also contain speeches, U.S. Geological Survey reports, verse, and photographs, which include pictures taken on geological expeditions to western and southwestern U.S. and Mexico.

This collection is organized into seven series:

• I: BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS AND GENEALOGY
• II: PHOTOGRAPHS AND MEMORABILIA
• III: BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL MATERIALS
• IV: CORRESPONDENCE
• V: WRITINGS
• VI: ORGANIZATIONS, HONORS, AND AWARDS
• VII: INDIVIDUALS AND SUBJECTS
• OVERSIZED MATERIALS

Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:

Florence Bascom Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

The Florence Bascom Papers were donated to the Sophia Smith Collection in 1976 by Isabel Fothergill Smith, who was a student of Florence Bascom and inherited her house along with its contents. She donated additional biographical materials in 1981, after publishing The Stone Lady: A Memoir of Florence Bascom.

Finding aid revised by Jennifer Smar, 2005.