This week’s Project 100+ entry is about Marion G. Clark, a history faculty member who passed away many decades ago.  Clark was the very first historian hired at Glassboro Normal School.  She only stayed for a single year, meaning that she did not make the same impact as did her longer-enduring fellow historians Eda Willard or Harold Wilson (both of whom I profiled in Project 100). Nevertheless, she was the very first, and she did a great deal during her one year, leading me to think that she deserved a brief tribute during this Centennial year.

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Marion Geraldine Clark was born in 1880 in Norwood, New York.  She was the second-born of four daughters. Effie was three years older, while Helen was seven years younger, and Florence was twelve years her junior.  Their father, a store clerk named George Clark, died in 1899.  Marion was just 19 years old at the time.  Their mother, Minnie, died six years later.  Because Effie had gotten married in 1902, Marion became the head of the household and responsible for her two younger sisters, then aged 17 and 12.  Two years later, her sister, Helen, died.

Throughout all of these challenges, Marion persevered.  In 1900, she was able to graduate from the State Normal School in Potsdam, New York.  Later, she earned a Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University. She took a job as a teacher to support her younger sisters, moving to New Jersey eventually.  Unlike Marion, her two surviving sisters both got married.  Continuing in her teaching profession, she moved her way up from grade school teacher and eventually took a position training teachers at Newark Normal School (today Kean University).  In order to pursue a Master’s degree from the Western Reserve University, she moved to Ohio where worked as administrator in the Cleveland Heights public school system while earning her graduate degree.  In 1923, J.J. Savitz convinced the talented Clark to join the faculty of his new start-up, Glassboro Normal School.  Given her experience and her Master’s degree, Savitz clearly saw her as one the leaders of the institution’s eighteen founding faculty members.  Marion became the head of the Social Science Department. 

Among the numerous things that Clark did during the first year was to found the history club.  The club’s secretary, Estelle Gardella, noted Clarke’s “untiring efforts” to make the club central to the history department at Glassboro Normal School.  Gardella noted that the club planned the Thanksgiving Day exercises and took grammar school children to Philadelphia to see the city’s historical sites.  In addition to the history club, she was an advisor for the Young Women’s Christian Association on campus and for Phi Alpha Psi, the literary society on campus.  Her most important extra-curricular role, however, was that of Faculty Advisor to the senior class.  This position was of great importance as the time pressure to have everything properly established at the Normal School in time for these students to graduate and to find employment if needed was intense.

In the Spring of 1924, Marion A. MacFarlane (’24) on behalf of the Glassboro Normal School seniors wrote: “To Miss Clark, our Faculty Advisor, whose good works with us individually and collectively, have exemplified the highest ideals of friendship.”  In the “Class Will,” the seniors wrote that they left to Clark and her fellow class advisor, Charlotte Herckner, “hope that they may be called upon to guide another class over such uncertain paths as ours have travelled.  No words can express our gratitude for their tireless services.” 

In the Fall of 1924, Marion Clark left Glassboro Normal School to become a supervisor for the Montclair School district, overseeing upper elementary grades and the junior high classes. She served in this position for twelve years, during which time she also taught history at the Horace Mann School in Teacher’s College of Columbia University in New York.  Between 1929 and 1934, she authored at least three textbooks for elementary and junior high history students, all published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.  In 2021, one of these books, Westward to the Pacific, was made available by Creative Media Partners as it had entered the public domain. 

In 1936, she retired after becoming ill, probably with some version of cancer.  At her retirement ceremony, administrators and teachers under her charge turned out to honor her. Frank Pickell, superintendent of the Montclair schools, noted that she was one of the system’s “loveliest characters.”  Perhaps in a nod to her challenging early years, he remarked that “she had a breadth of experience which gave her a sympathetic understanding of other people’s points of view.”  Pickell noted that it “was very largely due to her influence that the whole elementary school system was reorganized along modern progressive lines.” 

On October 12, 1936, just three months after her retirement, Clark passed away.  Superintendent Pickell called her passing “a great loss to the community.”  Survived by two sisters, she was buried with her parents in Norwood, New York. 

Note:  Marion’s name was often spelled Marian, even in the United States Census.  However, her obituary and publications use Marion, which seems to have been her preferred spelling. Her last name was also sometimes spelled “Clarke,” but this was a clear error.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100+,” an ongoing collection of memories (and sometimes biographical sketches) by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff that began as part of the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Due to interest in the project, the number of interviewees continues to grow.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 and Project 100+ entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/