Mira Lloyd Dock and the Progressive Era Conservation Movement 9780271061504

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Mira Lloyd Dock and the Progressive Era Conservation Movement

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MIRA LLOYD DOCK and the progressive era conservation movement

 susan rimby

T H E P E N N S Y LVA N I A S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S U N I V E R S I T Y P A R K , P E N N S Y LVA N I A

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Frontispiece: Mira Lloyd Dock. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rimby, Susan. Mira Lloyd Dock and the Progressive Era conservation movement / Susan Rimby. p. cm Summary: “Examines the life of Mira Lloyd Dock, a Pennsylvania conservationist and Progressive Era reformer. Explores a broad range of Dock’s work, including forestry, municipal improvement, public health, and woman suffrage”—Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-271-05624-1 (cloth : acid-free paper) 1. Dock, Mira Lloyd, 1853–1945. 2. Women conservationists—Pennsylvania—Biography. 3. Conservationists—Pennsylvania—Biography. 4. Nature conservation—Pennsylvania—History. 5. Forest conservation—Pennsylvania—History. 6. Progressivism (United States politics). 7. Social reformers—Pennsylvania—Biography. 8. Civic improvement—Pennsylvania—History. 9. Public health—Pennsylvania—History. 10. Women—Suffrage—Pennsylvania—History. I. Title. QH31.D59R56 2012 363.70092—dc23 [B] 2012028869 Copyright © 2012 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48–1992. This book is printed on Nature’s Natural, which contains 30% post-consumer waste.

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To John Katz and John Leighow

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contents

List of Figures / ix Acknowledgments / xi Introduction: Dock, Progressive Era Conservation, and Why It Matters / 1 1 A Reformer Grows in Dauphin County / 11 2 From Harrisburg to Uhlingen / 26 3 The City Beautiful / 41 4 “More for Forests” / 65 5 “Better Housekeeping Out of Doors” / 92 6 “This Has Driven Women into Suffrage” / 118 7 An Active Retirement / 134 Conclusion: Dock’s Legacy and Significance / 149 Epilogue: From Pine Grove Furnace to Wildwood Lake—And Beyond / 159 Notes / 163 Bibliography / 193 Index / 201

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figures

Figures follow page 54

1 Mira Lloyd Dock and friends from school 2 Gilliard Dock, around 1889 3 Harrisburg Civic Club Summer Playground, 1902 4 Sir Dietrich Brandis 5 Dr. Joseph Trimble Rothrock, 1905 6 Practicing forest-fire fighting, 1904 7 Pennsylvania State Forest Academy students 8 Mont Alto Sanatorium, 1906 9 Clear-cut Pennsylvania forestland, 1912 10 Deforested acreage in Cameron County, 1900 11 Map of Pennsylvania forest reserves, 1910 12 Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women 13 Wildwood Lake Park, 2010 14 Wiestling Hall, Penn State/Mont Alto, 2010

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acknowledgments

This manuscript has benefitted from the generosity and help of many people and institutions. One of the pleasures of writing this book is taking the opportunity to thank them. My interest in Mira Lloyd Dock originated in 2001 during my time as a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission Scholar-in-Residence at the Pennsylvania State Archives. The entire Archives staff made this experience stimulating, productive, and pleasurable. Since 2001, Pennsylvania State archivists have continued to support my work. Linda Ries has alerted me to newly acquired manuscript and government record collections, while Mike Sherbon has helped me secure permission to publish historic photographs. Shippensburg University has also been generous in support of this project. The Center for Faculty Excellence in Scholarship and Teaching awarded me two travel grants to pursue research at the Library of Congress and Harvard University, respectively. A University Research and Scholarship Program grant in 2008 gave me precious time to complete a draft of the manuscript. During my research trips throughout the eastern United States, numerous archivists and historical society volunteers shared their time and expertise, as well as their institutions’ material. I would particularly like to thank the staff at the General Federation of Women’s Clubs Archives in Washington, D.C. Morgan Davis, Suzanne Gould, and Nicole Zarcfosskilm assisted me during a 2004 research trip, and Danielle Snyder and Erica Sterling did the same in 2006. Cara Holtry, librarian at the Cumberland County Historical Society in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Connie Smith, an officer in the New Brighton, Pennsylvania Historical Society, have likewise been extremely helpful. My colleagues in both the History and Philosophy Department and Geography Department at Shippensburg University have also been supportive of my work. Faculty emerita Dr. Vera Blinn Reber generously shared her expertise on the history of tuberculosis, as well as leads on relevant archives and secondary literature. Dr. Claire Jantz invited me to present at a Geography Department Brown Bag Luncheon, enabling me to discuss my research with colleagues well versed in environmental issues. Dr. Allen DieterichWard’s advice and counsel have been invaluable. Allen helped me track down environmental history sources and read earlier drafts of the manuscript. He

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was instrumental in securing my invitation to give the inaugural lecture for the South Mountain Partnership. The Partnership has also been helpful in generating interest in Mira Lloyd Dock and the history of conservation in Pennsylvania as it confronts twenty-first century environmental challenges. George Pomeroy, interim executive director of the Institute for Public Service at Shippensburg University, Michael Eschenmann from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation of Natural Resources, and Kim Williams of the Appalachian Trail Commission have spearheaded this valuable initiative. Over the past decade, I have had numerous opportunities to speak about my research at venues throughout Pennsylvania. Preparation for these lectures and dialogue with audience members helped me strengthen my analysis and sharpen my communication skills. Serving as a Pennsylvania Humanities Council Commonwealth Speaker in 2002–3 and 2010–11 was particularly useful. The Cumberland Valley Women’s Consortium, the Pennsylvania Historical Association, the American Society of Environmental History, and a number of local and regional Pennsylvania historical societies and women’s groups have also afforded me opportunities to share my work with the public. Elizabeth Blum and Nancy Unger reviewed an earlier draft of this manuscript. Their insightful comments and suggestions were invaluable as I made revisions. Shippensburg University graduate assistants Patty Hay, Austyn Shaul, Virginia Chastek, Ashton Farrell, and Ashley Abruzzo also read drafts, shared their impressions of the book, and corrected the inevitable stylistic and mechanical errors. Kathryn Yahner, acquisitions editor at Pennsylvania State University Press, made the editorial process flow smoothly with her efficient, friendly, and competent assistance. Most of all I would like to thank my family for their love, support, and encouragement during this process. Even though my father, Francis Rimby, was suffering from a debilitating illness, he took interest and pride in this research project prior to his death in 2007. My mother, Esther Rimby, continues to support this book, as she has supported all of my professional endeavors. I was thrilled that both she and my sister, Kathy Williams, attended my “Housekeeping Out of Doors” lecture in Reading, Pennsylvania, on August 8, 2010. My son, John Leighow, housed me on research trips to western Pennsylvania, and my cousin, Lori Pujol, provided transportation during my visits to archives in the District of Columbia. Both my son and future daughter-in-law, Jennifer Michaels, gave me verbal encouragement and moral support. My partner, John F. Katz, has contributed to this book in a variety of ways—proofreading drafts, photographing relevant sites, and loving me through the ups and downs of preparing a scholarly work. { xii }

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introduction: Dock, Progressive Era Conservation, and why it matters

In Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder (2006), Richard Louv extols the benefits of physical contact with nature for children. According to Louv, children learn creativity and concentration, reduce stress, and become more fit through contact with the natural world. Yet for reasons ranging from the prevalence of electronic entertainment to the accelerating destruction of green spaces, American youngsters increasingly lack outdoor experiences. Decrying this trend, Louv argues, “To take nature and natural play away from children may be tantamount to withholding oxygen.”1 Cindy Ross, a columnist for the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, daily the Patriot-News, wholeheartedly endorsed Louv’s thesis in 2007. Recounting her own experiences hiking the Continental Divide with her husband and two young daughters, Ross urged other parents to hike, camp, and study nature along with their children. The time will be well spent, she assured them: “Time spent in the natural world will equip your child to thrive. It will leave them self-assured, happy and peaceful. Even very small doses of nature reap tremendous benefits.” Ross acknowledged, however, that Harrisburg residents might find it difficult to enjoy such opportunities, since “each year, 53,000 acres of land are developed in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.”2 Progressive Era conservationist Mira Lloyd Dock would have agreed. In 1910, while serving as a Pennsylvania State Forest commissioner, Dock equated outdoor recreation with physical vigor, mental acuity, and emotional health. In her pamphlet Some Arbor Day Reminders and Suggestions, she

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wrote, “We need not only play-grounds and parks, but we need woods,— great, wide, far-reaching woods. . . . The hunter becomes more primal; the strong gain greater strength and clearer purpose; the weary soul achieves serenity.”3 As Louv and Ross have in the present era, Dock also worried about development and the loss of wilderness. One year after publishing her Arbor Day pamphlet, she acknowledged that two weak spots in Pennsylvania forestry remained: “the rapidity with which places of great beauty are being destroyed” and the “destruction of venerable and beautiful trees.”4 The ideas Dock expressed in 1910 and 1911 are emblematic of those central to the Progressive Era’s conservation program. Simply put, the Progressive Era was a response to the problems engendered by late nineteenthcentury industrialization and urbanization. Between 1890 and 1917, middleclass, well-educated, Progressive citizens dedicated themselves to correcting the worst features of turn-of-the-century life. Reformers were determined to save U.S. capitalism by making American institutions efficient, putting scientifically trained experts in charge of both private and public organizations. In the process, Progressives rid cities of political corruption, regulated corporations, and worked for their particular visions of social justice. New legislation limited working hours and mandated factory inspections. These laws, along with voluntary associations like settlement houses, ameliorated the harshness of life for immigrants and working-class citizens.5 The 1890–1917 conservation movement, with its scientific, rational, efficient impulses, was also a significant part of Progressive reform. Historians have traditionally defined conservation as the care, protection, and management of natural resources. Historians situate the origins of the modern conservation movement in the late nineteenth century. After the Civil War, men and women worried about the effects of industry and urban growth on the environment. Using romantic and nationalist paradigms, groups as diverse as the 1870 Washburn Expedition to the Yellowstone region and the New York City Chamber of Commerce resolved to take action. In response to such pressures, both Congress and state governments passed protective laws. The Yellowstone Park Act of 1872 and New York’s 1885 Adirondacks Forest Commission Act, for example, were crafted out of the era’s environmental concerns. In such cases, public officials took action in the name of efficient resource management, whether they sought to preserve scenery or hoped to protect urban watersheds.6 Conservation accelerated after 1890, when the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the frontier had closed. In the future, Americans would have fewer wildernesses to exploit. More importantly, perhaps, the census also { 2 }

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showed that forest reserves and arable land had dwindled rapidly over the previous decades. Both utilitarian conservationists like Theodore Roosevelt and pure preservationists like John Muir moved to set aside wild areas, reclaim worn-out land, and conserve forest, water, and mineral resources. Utilitarians, who favored wise usage, sometimes clashed with preservationists. The latter perceived wilderness areas as sources of beauty and spiritual truth and therefore opposed all development in these regions. Muir and his allies in the California Federation of Women’s Clubs, for example, vehemently objected to the plan to dam Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley in 1914. Both groups of Progressive Era conservationists, however, also collaborated on projects such as the creation of the National Park Service in 1916. By 1917, the national model for conservation was well in place as Progressives turned their attention away from reform and concentrated on winning World War I.7 Mira Lloyd Dock’s life and work provide many insights into the Progressive Era conservation movement. As a lecturer, clubwoman, and public official, she was heavily involved in Progressive Era conservation at the local, state, and federal levels. Her most ardent admirers said she did more for forests than any woman in America.8 Dock served as one of the first members of the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission, in which role she helped formulate policies that served as models for other northeastern industrial states. The first female to serve on any official public conservation board, she also worked closely with laywomen. Through her work with Pennsylvania, national, and international women’s groups, she educated, empowered, and facilitated female conservationists. She corresponded and consulted with women from remote local villages, medium-sized municipalities, and large cities. She closely allied herself with prominent male reformers such as U.S. chief forester Gifford Pinchot, American Civic Association president J. Horace McFarland, and German forester Sir Dietrich Brandis. As a university-educated botanist, she mediated between women amateurs and the professionally trained, scientifically minded men who formulated policies.9 For these reasons, her life and work shed particular light on women’s roles in the conservation movement. Though she is more closely identified with forest conservation than any single other social concern, land reclamation and tree preservation represented only one aspect of Dock’s work. She first attracted public attention in Harrisburg’s turn-of-the-century City Beautiful campaign, and during her years as a forest commissioner she continued to work on municipal improvement projects. As a vice president of the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women and later conservation chair for the General Federation of Women’s { 3 }

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Clubs (GFWC), her interests ranged from town beautification to public health to forestry to national parks. She served as the GFWC’s chairman of forestry well into the 1920s and continued to advise both clubwomen and Pennsylvania foresters during her retirement. Her life and work thus show the multifaceted nature of early twentieth-century conservation and the continuity between Progressive Era and post–World War I reform movements. My work on Mira Lloyd Dock joins a large body of recent scholarship in both environmental and women’s history. Scholars have both confirmed the earlier histories and branched out in new directions. Some, for example, have discovered new motives and proponents for Progressive Era conservation. Richard Judd, Caroline Merchant, William Cronon, and Louis Warren have argued that groups as different as East Coast farmers and the U.S. Navy supported game-animal regulation, bird protection, and forestry. Warren, John Reiger, and Andrea J. Smalley have described how wealthy white sportsmen and women advocated wildlife and wilderness protection as both a means of preserving their pleasure grounds and establishing class-based, correct rules of recreational hunting. In the case of Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, Kimberly Jarvis has argued that conservation converged with patriotism, nostalgia, and regionalism to preserve a much-beloved natural feature, the Old Man of the Mountain. These motives for conservation persisted well into the twentieth century, as detailed in Jack E. Davis’s work on the creation of Everglades National Park and Peter Boag’s analysis of Mount Rushmore.10 Four decades of study have expanded conservation history in other ways. Numerous scholars have analyzed the ways that Progressive Era conservation engendered racial and class conflict. Federal policies displaced Native Americans from national parks and catered to elite tourists. Federal Home Demonstration agents and southern colleges labored to teach African-Americans the one correct means of farming. New Jersey and New York removed mixedrace populations and the rural poor from the Ramapo and Catskill Mountains, where wealthy citizens owned vacation homes and preserves.11 Conservation also embodied nativist sentiments. State governments charged high fees for aliens’ hunting licenses and in some cases banned noncitizens from both hunting and owning firearms. Proponents framed these laws as the only means of preventing the “slaughter of song-birds by Italians.” Immigrants, however, were not passive during what Adam Rome describes as an environmental “culture war.” In both New York and Pennsylvania, for example, mountaineers bitterly opposed state commissions that limited their rights to hunt and cut timber on forest reservations. Local residents poached game, set fires, and threatened the foresters who had been { 4 }

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sent to civilize them. Immigrant and working-class citizens lacking hunting license fees and, needing to supplement meager wages, ignored their state’s game laws in order to feed their families.12 Historians have also analyzed what Caroline Merchant describes as a “gendered dialectic” in the Progressive conservation movement. This culturally constructed discourse sometimes fomented conflict among allies. While the clash between male utilitarians and female preservationists over the damming of the Hetch Hetchy watershed is well known in the annals of environmental history, women and men fought other gendered battles as well. Journalistconservationists like George Bird Grinnell and Charles Halleck blamed turnof-the-century female millinery for the decimation of bird populations. Male reformers, fearful of being labeled effeminate, excluded or marginalized women in organizations such as the American Forestry Association.13 While studying contested areas, scholars have also investigated the meaning of nature for American citizens. Jennifer Price, Finis Dunaway, Susan Schrepfer, and Emily Greenwald—drawing upon bird protection, nature photography, and mountain climbing—explored how views of the environment were shaped by the dominant, middle-class culture. Later scholars such as Merchant, Smalley, Rome, and Gregg Mitman have examined how recreational hunting and health tourism both reflected dominant societal values and expressed fears about the consequences of “over civilization” on American males. As Amy Green’s work on author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer Gene Stratton Porter shows, naturalist photography also provided women with the opportunity to challenge gender roles.14 Paul Boyer, Joel Tarr, Kimberly Smith, and Elizabeth Blum have studied urban cleanup and beautification movements, concluding that visions of “positive environmentalism” inspired both white and black middle-class reformers during the Progressive Era. These same values, according to Kevin Armitage, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, and Leslie Paris, shaped the agendas of nature-study educators and the directors of children’s summer camps. Sanitarians, teachers, city planners, and recreationists all sought to uplift city dwellers and improve their health, behavior, and character by creating a wholesome and pleasing physical environment away from unwholesome urban influences. At the same time, they hoped to teach immigrant children an “American” appreciation of nature.15 Other scholars broadened the scope of conservation history and in the process discovered forgotten activists. As early as 1973, Robert Clarke saw parallels between the wilderness protection movement and a contemporary urban sanitation campaign. Martin Melosi, Robert Gottlieb, Suellen Hoy, Maureen Flanagan, Elizabeth Blum, and Adam Rome have also situated this { 5 }

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municipal improvement crusade firmly within the realm of Progressive conservation. Gottlieb has argued as well that reformers like Dr. Alice Hamilton, who investigated industrial hazards, were environmental reformers.16 Gottlieb’s new definitions of conservation history and Caroline Merchant’s call, in 1990, for “a gender perspective” in conservation history led to interest in women’s roles within the movement. These studies have revealed the contributions of female reformers and women’s voluntary associations, elaborated upon gendered environmental work and belief systems, and uncovered gendered fault lines within the conservation movement. Historians have also analyzed the ways in which women used the movement to create new roles for themselves and push against societal boundaries.17 Two twenty-first-century works, Dorcetta Taylor’s 2002 report Race, Class, Gender, and American Environmentalism and Jenny Price’s “Remaking American Environmentalism: On the Banks of the L.A. River” (2008), offer new paradigms for conservation history. Taylor ties together various strands of environmental reform, synthesizing the work of earlier scholars. She identifies four major pathways of environmental reform—a wilderness, wildlife, and recreation approach; an urban environmental agenda; a working-class environmental agenda; and an environmental justice agenda. The origins of the first three pathways can be traced to the Progressive movement. According to Taylor, race, class, and gender, along with education, determined who worked in each of these areas. Taylor also acknowledges that Progressive reformers had social control as well as conservation and humanitarian motives. Price, responding to critics of the modern environmental movement, argues for a “fourth wave” of activism. In this new environmental model, Americans would focus on sustainable and equitable living in ways that merge the agendas of Taylor’s groups.18 While other historians have debated aspects of Taylor’s argument both before and after her essay’s publication, her thesis remains an important paradigm in the study of conservation. Price’s work, in the meantime, encourages us to reexamine past environmental movements, particularly their “iconic moments.”19 As is often the case, the important work of earlier scholars raises new questions about Progressive Era conservation. These questions inform my own work on Mira Lloyd Dock. For one thing, was the Progressive Era division of labor among conservationists really so neat? U.S. citizens, for example, recognized the connection between loss of Adirondack forests and dwindling water levels in the Hudson River and Erie Canal. By the 1890s, conservationists, educators, and social reformers, particularly in the urban Northeast, increasingly saw wild areas as essential for the physical and mental health of { 6 }

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all city residents, not just wealthy sportsmen.20 Under these circumstances, would Progressives have limited themselves to one particular area of conservation? Or would they have fought, simultaneously, for an array of related reforms? Second, how did gender and education influence work within the conservation movement? Did women and men always perform different conservation tasks? Did males in the conservation movement perceive professional women in the same way they viewed amateurs? During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women’s educational and professional opportunities expanded greatly. Between 1870 and 1920, female college enrollments grew by 26 percent and the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded to women doubled. Women earned no doctorates at U.S. universities in 1870 but received almost 10 percent of those awarded in 1910.21 After earning their degrees, some women carved out lifelong careers. Within the sciences, women trained and worked as physicians, chemists, botanists, and naturalists. Industrial chemist Ellen Swallow Richards, the first woman to graduate from MIT, collaborated in Boston with male students, businessmen, and public health workers. While a member of the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases and an employee for the U.S. Bureau of Labor, Dr. Alice Hamilton likewise worked closely with men.22 Even clubwomen, long considered amateurs, increasingly came to conservation work with college educations.23 Given these trends, the links between men and women, amateurs and professionals, need further exploration. Conservation work in local U.S. communities has been documented in many excellent case studies. Much of this work, however, deals with the Midwest and West, or with larger cities such as New York, Chicago, or even Pittsburgh.24 Yet communities and rural areas throughout the United States suffered from environmental degradation. When faced with industrial pollution, diminishing resources, and haphazard urbanization, their residents also developed conservation impulses. In 1997, Richard Judd argued that further local and regional studies were needed in order to more fully comprehend Progressive Era conservation history.25 While works such as Amy Green’s on the Indiana Limberlost region and Jack Davis’s on the Everglades add much to the environmental narrative, more needs to be done. Furthermore, did conservation work end with U.S. entry into World War I, as historians such as William O’Neill, William Chafe, and J. Stanley Lemons have contended was true of other social reform movements? Or did work on behalf of the environment continue? Many studies argue convincingly that national park creation and wildlife preservation continued, and in fact thrived, during the { 7 }

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conservative postwar era. For example, Elaine Weiss states that the Progressive reform agenda—expanding career opportunities for women, female suffrage, and conservation—was well woven into the Woman’s Land Army of 1917– 19.26 Such studies mesh well with more recent women’s history research, which has found continuity between female reform activities during the Progressive Era and in the 1920s.27 Similarly, this scholarship supports the work of historians who have traced the origins of New Deal conservation and the post–World War II environmental movement to Progressive conservation.28 Historians of women as well as conservation historians have added much to this narrative. As Kathryn Kish Sklar has pointed out, thousands of ordinary American women were heavily involved in reform movements during the first two decades of the twentieth century. These women used maternalist rhetoric to justify their involvement in public affairs and focused their efforts on reforms that benefited women and children. Although most women did not yet have the vote, maternalist claims enabled Progressive activists to achieve many of their political objectives.29 Reform work also created new opportunities and needs among women. According to Robyn Muncy, female professionals used maternalist rhetoric to justify their entry into social work, public health, nursing, home economics, and some medical specialties.30 Anne Firor Scott found that Progressive reformers, frustrated with their lack of political clout, were also ardent suffragists.31 Female reformers functioned much like chemist Ellen Swallows Richards, who mobilized housewives against industrial pollution as a “self-defense” measure, and General Federation of Women’s Clubs president Mary Belle King Sherman, who championed national parks as a means of educating and protecting the heritage of future generations. Women who worked to save birds, clean up slums, teach nature study, and preserve their regional wildlands used similar maternalist rhetoric.32 Many of these women, as Jack Davis and Elaine Weiss have shown, also involved themselves in the suffrage movement. More study of the links between Progressive Era conservation and women’s rights needs to be done. James Longhurst’s work on the 1965–75 Pittsburgh anti–air pollution group GASP provides an excellent model for this work.33 This biography of Mira Lloyd Dock adds to conservation history in several ways. First, an understanding of Dock’s life and work illuminates the actions of local and state governments that protected wildlands and reclaimed despoiled acreage, leading us to consider how and why such accomplishments were achieved. Both governments and voluntary organizations cleaned, beautified, and improved the quality of life in eastern municipalities, { 8 }

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but how and why did improvement movements develop in smaller American villages, towns, and cities? Second, a study of Dock’s life and work sheds light on the principle figures involved in East Coast wilderness conservation. Who were these activists? Who were their allies and constituencies? How did middle-class women figure into a movement often dominated by elite white males? Did males and females work on the same projects, or did each develop niches? Did females and males in the East ever clash, as Californians did over the battle to preserve Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy headwaters?34 Did a gendered fault line characterize conservation work? Did a gendered dialectic emerge among Dock and her colleagues and allies? If so, how did this dialectic influence their work? Third, Dock’s example shows how the contributions of professional women affected the Progressive Era conservation movement. How did scientifically trained professional males and laywomen alike react to the advice and work of professional women? Did an educational chasm exist in the movement between experts and amateurs? Moreover, did conservation create opportunities for women in the way that other Progressive movements did? Fourth, the present study considers whether women within the Progressive conservationist movement resorted to the same types of maternalist rhetoric used by women’s clubs, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and the Settlement House Movement. That is, did they argue that conservation was a logical extension of traditional, female domesticity? And if so, was this necessary to justify women’s involvement to male colleagues and collaborators? Was it the only way to convince a dubious public of the appropriateness of women’s conservation work? Finally, a review of Dock’s life and work illustrates the linkage of conservation and women’s rights, inviting consideration of how lack of voting rights affected the efficacy of female conservationists and how political impotence propelled women into suffrage and feminism. In any historical study, definitions and sources must be addressed and questions outlined. Although conservation history is a part of the larger field of environmental history, the two terms should not be used interchangeably. Just as the subject of the modern environmental movement is broader than that of Progressive Era conservation, environmental history encompasses more than studying the ways in which past generations cared for, protected, and managed natural resources. According to Donald Worster, environmental history includes three distinct areas: ecology, or the structure and distribution of past natural environments; production, or the interaction of technology with the environment; and cognition, or human perceptions, { 9 }

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ideologies, and values concerning the environment. Environmental history, which dates from the 1970s, explores how the environment over time has affected humans and how they have affected it in return. This focus on the role and places of nature in human life is far more complex than those of earlier conservation histories.35 The goals, strategies, and projects of a Gifford Pinchot or a Mira Lloyd Dock, therefore, were clearly different from those of latter-day environmental activists. The sources used to study Dock’s life and work encompass a wide variety of archival materials. These include Dock’s personal papers, Pennsylvania’s state documents, materials from national voluntary groups, and the records of local women’s clubs housed in county historical societies. The latter source can be particularly problematic. As Anne Firor Scott acknowledges, a wide gap sometimes exists between the policies of national organizations and the activities of their local affiliates. Laudatory anniversary histories and official club minutes documented worthy goals but might also mask ineffectiveness and failures. It was, and is, often the case with voluntary organizations that a few members do the difficult work while the majority of members show up for social events.36 As a correspondent complained to Dock in a 1908 letter about Pittsburgh-area club activities, “The interest displayed by most clubs in legislative matters is somewhat discouraging, and I sometimes doubt if it is worth the effort made to arouse it.”37 Nevertheless, these local club documents give valuable insights into women’s conservation work on the grassroots level. In his 1910 classic, The Fight for Conservation, Pinchot recognized the pivotal role women’s organizations played in preserving forest, water, and human resources.38 He no doubt considered his colleague and friend Mira Lloyd Dock one of the undisputed leaders in this work. A close look at her life and work—so rich in accomplishment for trees, communities, and people— does much to illuminate this complex and multifaceted subject.

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1 a reformer grows in dauphin county

From early childhood onward, Mira Lloyd Dock knew the rivers and woods of south-central and southeastern Pennsylvania. The oldest child in a large and loving family, Mira accompanied her father on business trips to rural coal mines when he hungered for company but “didn’t wish to take the little ones.” She likely reveled in the carriage rides along tree-lined roads, happy to have her father’s complete attention for a few hours. Similarly, Mira made extended visits to her aunt Kate’s home in Lancaster, one of Pennsylvania’s most productive agricultural counties. In the process, the child experienced the bounty and beauty that came from the Susquehanna River’s watershed.1 Harrisburg, Dock’s hometown, lies along the Susquehanna River, 107 miles west of Philadelphia and 142 miles north of Washington, D.C. Originally known as Harris’ Ferry, European-American occupation of the location dates from the 1720s, when John Harris built a store and began trading with local Indians. White citizens laid out a town in 1785 and incorporated as a borough in 1791. They also changed the community’s name from Harris’ Ferry to Harrisburg. In 1790, the borough boasted four streets and 127 distilleries. Other local industries included iron furnaces and forges, a variety of mills, and businesses associated with the lumber trade. As population increased and travel to the county seat in Lancaster became burdensome, demand for a separate political unit grew. In response, the Pennsylvania General Assembly divided Lancaster County, forming Dauphin County and naming Harrisburg the new county seat in 1785. The 1790 census shows that the new county contained 17,965 free inhabitants and 212 slaves. In 1787, after much political maneuvering, the General Assembly voted to

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move the state capital from Philadelphia to Harrisburg. Passage of an 1819 supplementary act enabled work on the new capitol to begin. For its first thirty years, Harrisburg remained a backwater of sorts, but political and economic events of the 1820s changed this. In 1822, state government finally moved to the new capital. One year later, the General Assembly passed the first law authorizing improvement of the Susquehanna, enabling Harrisburg to profit from the steamship traffic that had developed on the river. The Pennsylvania Canal, which opened in 1834, and the completion of the Cumberland Valley Railroad in 1838 made Harrisburg a major transportation center. Such improvements allowed celebrities such as General Gilbert du Motier (the Marquis de Lafayette) and Charles Dickens to visit the town in 1825 and 1843, respectively. By the 1850s, Harrisburg was a thriving municipality. According to the 1850 census, 7,834 inhabitants lived in the borough. In addition to being the seat of state government, Harrisburg had become a major manufacturing center as well. Factories churned out iron products, cotton textiles, bricks, and cement. Infrastructure and services grew to meet the needs of business owners, workers, and state politicians. The first waterworks opened in 1841. Citizens chartered two banks in 1853. By 1857, teachers in twenty-four public schools educated 976 pupils.2 As Harrisburg grew and prospered, so did one of its earliest and most prominent families, the Docks. William Dock, the son of a Lancaster County Revolutionary War officer, managed the Harrisburg Ferry in 1814 and became the toll collector on the Harrisburg Bridge in 1816. With his wife, Margaret Gilliard Dock of Middletown, he raised four sons. Dock entered the chandlery business in 1822 and became involved in civic affairs. He was appointed an associate county judge in 1842 and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1849. Dock served as a Lutheran Church lay leader and a trustee of academic institutions including the Harrisburg Academy. Two of William Dock’s sons also became prominent, one well beyond the borders of Harrisburg. George Dock, William and Margaret’s second child, was born in 1823 and studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania between 1840 and 1844. Because of chronic bad health, the particulars of which are not known, George spent much of his early adult life in Europe. By 1856, however, he had returned to the United States, taught surgery at his alma mater, and served on the Pennsylvania Board of Medical Examiners.3 Gilliard, William and Margaret’s third son, was born on 1 August 1827 and was educated in both borough public schools and the Harrisburg Academy. { 12 }

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He attended Gettysburg College from 1843 to 1845 and later took course work in machinery and mechanical engineering in both Reading and Philadelphia. Widely read and insatiably curious, Gilliard considered himself an expert in literature and the sciences. In his 1895 obituary, he is described as having been “very genial and companionable” and having “had a large circle of warmhearted friends who esteemed him very highly and dearly.” During the 1850s, ’60s, and ’70s, Gilliard held a variety of jobs. These included working as a machinist in a foundry, serving as superintendent of both local collieries and the Harrisburg Gas Company, and managing his own grocery stores. In 1868, Gilliard received a patent for an improved railroad car wheel for mining purposes that provided constant axle lubrication while preventing loss of oil, thus saving money for coal companies. Occupational changes occurred in response to fluctuations in the economy. Dock went into the coal business, for example, when the Fourth Street and Strawberry Alley foundry closed in January 1855. He took some comfort in the fact that “my neighbors’ [business] has been as dull as myself [sic].”4 On 28 October 1852, Gilliard Dock married Lavinia Lloyd Bombaugh at Reformed Salem Church in Harrisburg. The bride’s family background was as distinguished as Gilliard’s. Lavinia was the second child of Aaron and Mira Lloyd Bombaugh, of Harrisburg. Aaron Bombaugh, born in 1803, had worked as a hatter and was a member of the fledgling Association of Journeymen Hatters. After the dyes used in the trade impaired his health, Bombaugh managed his father’s limestone quarry, saved his money, and bought several Dauphin County farms. He served several terms on the Harrisburg Borough Council, and was the borough treasurer from 1838 to 1844. With local citizens and Massachusetts reformer Dorothea Dix, Bombaugh founded the Harrisburg Lunatic Asylum and served as one of the institution’s trustees. Bombaugh identified as an abolitionist, a Unitarian, and an anti-Mason.5 By all accounts Gilliard and Lavinia’s marriage was a happy one. While traveling in Idaho on 14 August 1873, Gilliard sent “kisses for all our babies, a caress for Piper [the family dog], and lots of love for the good wife, believe me your affectionate husband.” The couple’s second child, Lavinia Lloyd (or “Vinnie,” to avoid confusion with her mother), considered them well matched temperamentally, if not politically. As she recalled, “Father had some whimsical masculine prejudices, but Mother was broad on all subjects and very tolerant and charitable towards persons.” Gilliard, however, harbored some Progressive ideas of his own. In his 1866 report to the directors of the Short Mountain Coal Company, Gilliard advocated abolishing the company store. { 13 }

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As he explained to his employers, “Many of the men come into the office on pay-day and find the store-bill absorbing all of their wages. The effect of this is to discourage them.”6 Despite minor political differences, Gilliard and his wife shared an appreciation of nature. In an 1869 letter to her sister, Kate, Lavinia reveled in the spring landscapes of Dauphin County’s rural Wiconisco, where the family presently lived. “We find everything growing and the children and I take great comfort watching the process. . . . I go once or twice a day, to see the changes; and the flowers nearer the house have a great deal of watching.” During his 1873 western trip, Gilliard enthused, “I am sure no European trip could begin to equal this for magnificent scenery.” An avid fisherman and hunter, he also appreciated the wild areas in both Dauphin County and the northern tier area of Pennsylvania.7 The Docks’ first child, a daughter they named Mira Lloyd for Lavinia’s mother, was born on Christmas Day 1853. Lavinia (“Vinnie”) Lloyd Dock was born on 26 February 1858. In March 1860, the couple’s only son, George, named for Gilliard’s brother, was born. Three more daughters—Margaret, Laura, and Emily—were born in 1862, 1864, and 1869, respectively.8 Not surprisingly, given the family’s records of achievements, the Dock children would have distinguished careers. George, like his uncle, would become a physician and teach medicine, in this case at the University of Michigan Medical College. Besides Mira, the botanist, four of the other daughters would also be professionals. The younger Lavinia was one of the most distinguished registered nurses in the United States during the Progressive Era as well as a settlement house worker and an activist for women’s suffrage. Laura, an artist who was also deaf, exhibited at the Columbian Exposition in 1893. Emily, a violinist, once performed for Kaiser Wilhelm II. Margaret, whom her sisters called their “housekeeper,” managed the family’s real estate holdings after Gilliard’s death.9 Mira Dock spent her early childhood in upper Dauphin County, where her father was “deep into the coal business.” While the family lived in a rural area, they were not completely isolated from their extended family. Gilliard Dock arranged frequent hunting trips with his brothers and took his wife and family to Harrisburg for holidays. The children received gifts and visits from their doting relatives. As the elder Lavinia related to her sister in 1860, “George is on the settee kicking and cooing; he weighs fifteen pounds, is fat and smiling; his Uncle thought him a very nice baby; and Grandpa, who was here last week thought as usual that he was a very fine child.”10 { 14 }

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Living in rural Dauphin County enabled the Dock children to enjoy and experience the outdoors. In summer months they feasted on fresh produce from their mother’s garden and spent countless hours playing on the family property. They learned the names of trees and flowers around their home and developed favorites. Vinnie, in particular, mourned when a “pet” tree had to be cut down in 1860. The children were familiar with local wildlife such as pheasants, turkeys, and raccoons. No major mishaps occurred during their outdoor adventures, even though Uncle George Dock once stated, “Of all the damned rattlesnake countries that I ever saw, that [Gilliard’s property] beats them hollow.”11 Mira received her earliest formal education at home from her mother. She proved to be an eager, quick learner. By the time she was seven years old, her mother was able to report, “Mira has learned to read quite well, . . . she sits in her sanctum, the closet of her room, reading the little books she gets at Sunday School. Vinnie knows very well, that she dare not enter there. . . . Mira takes daily spelling lessons.” As Mira grew older, she attended Miss Dixon’s School in Harrisburg and St. James Academy in Lancaster.12 By the time Harrisburg incorporated as a city in 1860, it had the sixthlargest population in Pennsylvania and ranked third in manufacturing, behind Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. New railroad lines and the relocation of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s machine shops brought new jobs and increased trade. The construction industry thrived as Dauphin County erected a new courthouse and Harrisburg residents built homes, businesses, and churches. As George Dock wrote to a friend in 1860, “The spade and trowel are busy this summer in all parts of our City.”13 The Civil War brought continued throngs to Harrisburg. According to George Dock, soldiers from throughout the North traveled through the area on their way to duty stations. By mid-October 1861, between five and six thousand soldiers were bivouacked at Harrisburg’s Camp Curtin. When Confederate troops invaded Pennsylvania in 1863, Chambersburg refugees streamed into Dauphin County. Lavinia Dock felt particular sympathy for the African-Americans who fled potential slave-catchers. In the same June 1863 letter in which she announced that her son Georgie has learned to walk, she related being struck that “many Negroes just run to escape going South.”14 The Dock men participated in the hostilities. George worked as the chief surgeon in the 16th Pennsylvania Regiment and served on the Surgeon General’s Board of Medical Examiners. This board of three physicians examined the credentials of army surgeon candidates. Gilliard served as a corporal with { 15 }

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Company E of the 1st Pennsylvania Militia. He never saw combat but was deployed in both Chambersburg and Hagerstown during the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, before being discharged shortly thereafter. Much to his wife’s dismay, Gilliard considered enlisting again in 1863, but Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg in July stopped the immediate threat to Dauphin County.15 The 1863 invasion of Pennsylvania must have made an impression on nine-year-old Mira. When Lee crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, she was visiting her aunt Kate’s family in Lancaster, about twenty-five miles from the Pennsylvania-Maryland border. Since the Confederate objective was to capture Harrisburg and cut U.S. railroad lines, she must have feared for her immediate family’s safety. At the time, Gilliard was away on business, so decisions about evacuation fell to Lavinia. Late in June, she wrote to Kate, “I packed all mine and children’s winter clothing, blankets, best sheeting, and a few things to fill up in two boxes and felt they were ready.” Of waiting to evacuate, she wrote, “I believe it makes me more nervous than anything else, but I have been sewing a good deal and then I feel quiet and wait.” On 29 June, Lavinia took the children to the home of a relative in Reading. Her calm, take-charge demeanor served perhaps as a model for Mira, who would survive her share of family crises later in life.16 Life quieted down for the Docks after the Civil War. In 1869, the family moved to a home on Sixth Street in Harrisburg, so that the younger children could attend school. In the fall of 1868, fourteen-year-old Mira left home to attend Brook Hall School in Media, Pennsylvania, run by Miss M. L. Eastman, a woman with “Episcopalian references.” Mira’s first school year was interrupted by illness. Uncle George Dock and a Dr. Smith diagnosed catarrh, an inflammation of the mucous membranes of the nose and air passages. Gilliard and Lavinia now wanted to keep their oldest daughter home, but Mira had other ideas. As her mother explained in an 1869 letter, “Gilliard hardly feels satisfied yet about Mira going back to Media. She is fretting her eyes out, and her own comfort and mine, because she cannot persuade me to be willing for her to stay there [Brook Hall] or anywhere to Graduate.” Mira, however, did return to Brook Hall School, and would graduate. In a letter to an unidentified aunt, she wrote enthusiastically about riding parties, tableaux, and taffy-pulling frolics. She remained lifelong friends with many classmates and attended the school’s alumni dinners whenever possible.17 In 1867, Lavinia began to complain of abdominal pain and fatigue. Her health deteriorated, and she died in 1876 at age forty-four. Twenty-three-yearold Mira, assisted by Vinnie, became the household manager and surrogate mother to four younger siblings ranging in age from seven to sixteen. Mira { 16 }

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felt overwhelmed, tasked as she was with “the care of a large family with very inadequate knowledge.” Taking cooking classes from a Mrs. Rorer in Harrisburg during her first two winters at home gave Mira some needed expertise in homemaking. Mrs. Rorer became a friend as well as a teacher, providing Mira with much-welcomed mentoring. Complicating the family’s situation further, however, were Gilliard’s post–Panic of 1873 business difficulties. Dock’s City Grocery experienced sluggish sales in the weakened economy. Three years into the depression, Gilliard complained that his Harrisburg Gas Company and Shamokin bank stock were virtually worthless. In a 1949 interview, Vinnie recalled that, at the time, Mira and she had expected “financial ruin.”18 This was likewise a period of great stress and change for Harrisburg. Urbanization, fueled by immigration and industrialization, proceeded so rapidly after the Civil War that while only one in five Americans had lived in a municipality of twenty-five hundred or more people in 1860, by 1920 one in two did so.19 Pennsylvania’s population tripled between 1850 and 1900. With 8 percent of the nation’s population, Pennsylvania produced 14 percent of U.S. industrial goods. The growth of Harrisburg was a key part of this trend, as between1860 and 1890 its population rose from 13,405 citizens to 40,000.20 Moreover, the city’s population grew more diverse. Among the 30,762 inhabitants counted in Harrisburg’s 1880 census were 3,780 “colored” and four Chinese residents; 14 percent of the population was foreign-born; and enough Jewish residents lived in Harrisburg to establish a community center in 1871.21 Harrisburg as well as the state of Pennsylvania and the nation as a whole had fully embarked on what Caroline Merchant has referred to as a “capitalist ecological revolution.” Captains of industry and market farmers sought to control nature in ways that maximized profit margins.22 Manufacturing grew and developed, as Pennsylvania became the national leader in coal, coke, and steel production. Heavy industry became particularly important in the state’s economy. In 1850, more than 21,000 manufacturing firms produced manufactured goods worth $155 million. Fifty years later, 52,000 companies manufactured items worth $1.8 billion. Important Dauphin County firms in the late nineteenth century included the Harrisburg Car Manufacturing Works, the Harrisburg Foundry and Machine-Works, the Central Iron Works, and the Chesapeake Nail Works. As New Englanders depleted their forests, lumbering also boomed in north-central Pennsylvania, and regional sawmills thrived. Timber companies floated their logs south via the Susquehanna River, where Harrisburg and Middletown companies milled lumber that later sold in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Harrisburg also continued to function as a transportation hub. By 1871, forty-nine passenger trains left the city daily. { 17 }

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A horse-drawn streetcar provided public transit, and a rear-wheel paddle boat traversed the river between Reilly Street and the community of West Fairview.23 City services, however, increased only minimally in the midst of this economic and human activity. Harrisburg expanded its primary schools during the 1860s, and the city included a hospital by 1873. Yet no public high school existed in the 1870s. Financially comfortable families sent their children to the Seiler School or the Harrisburg Academy. Other children entered the workforce after completing the eighth grade. This was not unusual; more than a quarter of Pennsylvania families had young sons and daughters in the workplace, according to an 1872 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey. The lack of adequate flood-control and drainage systems left urban properties vulnerable to flooding, particularly after spring thaws and heavy summer rains. In 1878, when the members of Grace Methodist Episcopal Church laid their new building’s cornerstone, the two-ton block promptly sank into the mud. As late as 1894, Gilliard Dock described devastating and costly floods in his diary.24 The financial uncertainties of the post–Civil War era, along with the problems associated with urban and industrial life, contributed to rising social tension in many U.S. communities. During the periodic recessions of the 1870s, ’80s, and ’90s, unemployment in the anthracite coal region alone ranged between 30 and 40 percent. Unemployment, along with low wages, long hours, and unsafe working conditions, contributed to labor strife. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, 4,000 strikes or lockouts in Pennsylvania affected 25,000 firms and almost 2 million workers. Harrisburg was no exception to such unrest. City residents rioted and looted during the Railroad Strike of 1877. Public officials restored order only after declaring martial law and organizing a committee of respectable citizens to assist the sheriff.25 Gilliard Dock blamed the instability, particularly during the 1880s and ’90s, on the growing power of corporations and trusts. In an 1889 diary entry, he worried, “Individual enterprise and energy go to the wall in this competition with giants. Truly, the rich grow richer, the poor, poorer. So independent business men forced out of business become employees. Labor, even organized and drilled, is no match for Capital.—It may struggle bravely and suffer nobly, but it will sink deeper into the quicksand.” In 1893, as the nation plunged into another panic, Dock complained about “unwise financial laws enacted by the Republican Party, unwise taxation, and tariff inequity.” Nine months later, he expressed sympathy with soft coal miners striking against what he saw as “starvation wages.” At the close of 1894, Dock still fretted that { 18 }

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“there is not general prosperity,” which he blamed in part on “dishonesty in banking” and “immensely rich individuals, trusts, corporations, and syndicates fast getting control of every profitable business.”26 While Gilliard Dock worried about his business interests and the general state of the economy, his eldest daughter managed the household and her siblings. But when the stress of these responsibilities proved too much for Mira, she developed health problems of her own. On 13 August 1878, Gilliard sent Mira on a trip to the Rocky Mountains. He clearly hoped this excursion would help to restore her health. About ten days after Mira’s departure, Gilliard wrote, “I hope it [the trip] will bring the flush of health to your cheeks and brace up your nerves . . . get fat and hearty.” Gilliard’s letters during this trip also reflected his reverence for western scenery. Recalling his own visit to the Rockies in the 1850s, he acknowledged, “You will feel as if you stood in the very temple of God.”27 Gilliard Dock’s reverence for the western United States was typical for men of his race and class in the mid- and late nineteenth century. As industrialization and urbanization transformed their own communities, eastern businessmen became enamored of what they saw as a pristine, unspoiled West in need of preservation. Popular 1860s painters, photographers, and writers also promoted this image. Moreover, easterners increasingly perceived dramatic and unspoiled western natural landscapes as a key component of an authentic American culture, equal in importance to the human-made cultural wonders of Europe. In 1864, U.S. senators, debating a Yosemite Valley preservation bill, framed wilderness protection as a patriotic duty. Congress passed this bill, which President Lincoln promptly signed. After the Civil War, when the transcontinental railroad and Indian subjection made western travel feasible, vacation trips assumed the air of cultural pilgrimages.28 Much of the rhetoric pertaining to this wilderness was gendered. According to Annette Kolodny, women and men expressed different perceptions of the wilderness as early as the seventeenth century. While male Europeans dreamed of conquering the wilderness and subduing a virgin continent, their female counterparts wanted to transplant familiar homes and gardens in strange and foreign landscapes. Euro-American women, however, also found new physical environments beautiful. Popular antebellum female novelists like Caroline Soule favorably compared midwestern prairies to eastern gardens. Women who migrated to California and Oregon wrote letters and diary entries describing the West as a Pacific Eden. After the Civil War, as women engaged in mountain climbing, they too found western peaks to be spiritual places where nature was “warm, intimate, free and comfortable.”29 { 19 }

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Mira’s perceptions and emotions on this first western trip can only be surmised. Her letters have not survived, although Gilliard Dock acknowledged her correspondence in his own letters. Mira did spend extensive time in Colorado, where she visited Durango, Denver, Colorado Springs, and Cheyenne and Williams Canyons. At the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, she collected pebbles, perhaps to remind her of the magnificent rock formations after she returned east. Unlike other female western travelers, Mira did not comment on the midwestern prairies, although she did send her family postcards from Kansas.30 Mira, however, must have enjoyed her 1878 adventure, for she took a second western trip during the spring of 1882. Her records of this trip survive. She returned to Colorado, and also visited Santa Fe, the Yosemite Valley, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City. During this trip, Mira collected grass, seed, and wildflower samples and studied unfamiliar botanical species. Her letters reveal a deep appreciation of nature and the ability to write descriptively about the landscapes she encountered. In a letter to her father dated 2 May, she described the trip to Durango. “Each mile was better than the other, first the lovely, fertile valley with beautifully turbaned foot-hills, then the hills rising till at last they were mountains, and then closing in on us we crept slowly through Arizona Canon [sic].” Like many other tourists from the East, Mira also found the native population fascinating and somewhat exotic. She mentioned visiting an Apache reservation, for example, where a “buck” stuck a flower in her hair. Mira seemed amused by the attention.31 The natural beauty of Yosemite particularly enthralled Mira. Two weeks after visiting Durango, Mira described her journey to Yosemite Valley via stagecoach. “This place is so grand and the scenery coming here is so beautiful. . . . El Capitan is the crowning point.” Yosemite was as lovely by nightfall as during the day, according to Mira. On moonlit nights, “the effect of the snow covered trees was fairylike.” Although she was able to collect grass blades and flowers from the base of the waterfalls and saw her first crimson snow plant, Mira complained to Emily that she did not have enough time to gather specimens.32 Despite her appreciation of a variety of natural environments, Mira seemed unable to see beauty in the western deserts. In Utah, for example, Mira complimented only the irrigation systems that “turn these dreadful plains into beautiful gardens and farms.” She hated the alkali dust and wrote to Emily, “Sister you have to come out to these deserts to learn what trees are, and that water is the loveliest thing in the world.”33 These western trips were respites for Mira. While her health was restored, she often seemed bored and unfulfilled as she managed the family’s Walnut { 20 }

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Street home and raised her younger brother and sisters. She studied botany and photography but was unable to pursue either on a systematic basis. In 1882, with Vinnie, Mira founded the Wednesday Club, a group of women who met to study music. Study clubs, popular during the 1870s and ’80s, provided middle-class American women with opportunities for self-improvement and companionship. As was true of many study clubs of the era, the Wednesday Club turned from acquiring culture to studying civic affairs. While preparing to lead a discussion on nurses’ training, Vinnie read an article in the Century Magazine on Bellevue Hospital’s program and decided to enroll. Later in life, she recalled, “I was in my early 20’s and I abruptly came to the realization that my life was empty. I didn’t know anything. I had no special talent.” Mira now lost the companionship of her closest siblings, as Vinnie moved to New York City and George, a newly graduated physician, began his medical career.34 Mira cared alone for the three youngest children and her father, who by the early 1890s was ailing. She struggled for intellectual fulfillment by studying family genealogy, and she developed a correspondence with writer and distant cousin William Dean Howells. Mira tried to write professionally and sought her cousin’s advice. He was not particularly encouraging. Howells advised her not to submit one particular manuscript to Harper’s: “It goes nowhere; it is not a story; it is not a fully rounded study; it is not a sufficiently developed sketch.” In 1893, prompted by panic-induced business reverses, Gillard gave his oldest daughter permission to “prepare for teaching.” Whether due to family finances, health problems, or other factors, Mira had never enrolled in normal school teacher training or pursued teacher certification. Then, in April 1895, Gilliard died of pneumonia. The youngest child, Emily, was twenty-six years old and pursuing her musical career in New York City. Mira, at fortytwo, was at last relieved of the family obligations she had borne since the death of her mother nearly two decades before.35 The remaining Harrisburg family members—Mira, Margaret, and Laura— moved to a house at the corner of Front and Reilly Streets, facing the Susquehanna River. Of the move, Mira explained to a family friend, “We couldn’t stand living in that empty house. We wondered whether it would be worse to live in a house that had no associations, instead of one that had too many, but Margaret says it is infinitely easier.” As Mira mulled over her future, the younger George Dock came forward with an exciting proposition. Knowing his sister’s interest in botany, George proposed that she enroll at the University of Michigan, where he was teaching medicine, and live with his family in Ann Arbor. Michigan had accepted female students since 1876, so sex would prove no obstacle. At about the same time, Vinnie resigned her position at { 21 }

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the Illinois Training School for Nurses and came home to run the household, making it impossible for Mira to refuse George’s offer.36 Mira became part of an accelerating trend—the enrollment of women into institutions of higher education. According to Barbara Miller Solomon, a rising tide of women attended college in the period between 1870 and 1920. While 21 percent of college students were female in 1870, the percentage would rise to 39.6 by 1910, when 5 percent of the college-aged population actually attended an institute of higher education, and 47.3 percent by 1920. A number of factors, including expanding federal aid to land-grant schools, the need for more high school teachers, and a lack of male college applicants, enabled females to enroll in coeducational schools. The opening of single-sex female colleges, beginning with Vassar in 1865, created additional opportunities.37 Like Mira Lloyd Dock, most of these students came from comfortable, middle-class backgrounds. An Association of Collegiate Alumnae survey of women who graduated from college during the period 1869 to 1898 found that their families’ incomes were twice that of the U.S. average. Late nineteenthcentury colleges had limited funds available for financial aid. Typically, schools gave scholarships only to students who had proved their ability to succeed in college by completing the freshman year. Because taxpayers were not convinced that women needed higher education, male students were more likely to receive financial aid than females. Thus, matriculation was limited to women whose families could pay the tuition and other fees. Like Dock, most female college students were native-born and white. Prior to 1900, immigrant women were more likely to work than attend school. Only a handful of AfricanAmerican women were college graduates by 1910. Typically, these women attended segregated southern schools. In the 1890s, it was not uncommon for women in their twenties and thirties to enroll in college, particularly if they were self-supporting. Dock, however, at forty-two, was considerably older than even these nontraditional students.38 Mira accepted her brother’s offer to move to Michigan, in part because she felt “there were not equal opportunities in Pennsylvania for women students.” After completing a six-week summer course, she enrolled full time at the university in the fall of 1895. She lived with George; his wife, Laura; and their eighteen-month-old son, George Jr. Thus was Mira isolated from the social life of the campus. Hers, however, was not an unusual situation for a college student in the 1890s. The rapid post–Civil War expansion of universities had created housing shortages, and many students, both male and female, thus lived with relatives or in boardinghouses.39 { 22 }

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At Michigan, Dock joined a growing number of women students interested in the sciences. As colleges rejected the traditional, classical curriculum and adopted modified elective systems, both men and women enrolled in courses such as astronomy, physics, geology, chemistry, and zoology. This course work enabled students to develop critical minds and test themselves intellectually. Although an avid reader and an amateur botanist prior to 1895, Mira found this first semester extremely challenging. Her initial college experience “was simply fearful. I nearly died of rage and discouragement many times. Just think, after being out of school more than twenty years, to plunge into modern laboratory methods.” In an 1896 letter to a family friend, she also admitted that she had difficulty with the laboratory work. Years later, Mira still recalled how the course work was “pretty stiff work for my untrained brain, but I learned how to work.” Work she did, studying geology, chemistry, and biology. She dropped zoology after passing the survey course because “I detest touching the animal tissues.” However, she completed both elementary and advanced botany courses. Notebooks from her college years contained references to lectures on plant and cell physiology as well as painstaking copies and descriptions of textbook illustrations.40 During this period, Dock likely read works by Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Lyell. These authors, writing earlier in the nineteenth century, profoundly changed the way educated people thought about the natural world. In Personal Narrative, his memoirs of a trip to Latin America in the years 1799–1804, von Humboldt wrote extensively of the geological features, climates, plants, and animals he encountered. A pioneer in ecological biology, he understood the interdependence of living beings within regions and wrote about nature in a holistic way. Charles Lyell, in his Principles of Geology, described his research with fossils, formulated a concept of extinction, and theorized that individuals and species competed fiercely with each other for food and space. Charles Darwin read Lyell during his voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle and was influenced by the geologist’s work. Dock may even have read Darwin’s work at Michigan. Although the book was quite controversial, American college professors did use Origin of Species by the late nineteenth century. Darwin’s beliefs about the complex web of relationships within nature, the niches held by various species within ecosystems, and the possibilities of extinction would have certainly made an impression upon a budding conservationist like Mira Lloyd Dock. As a botany major, she might also have read the growing body of texts advocating nature study for children.41 While Mira enjoyed her botanical studies and developed a fondness for instructors like a Professor Spalding and a “dear Dr. Newcombe” (Professor { 23 }

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F. C. Newcombe) she returned to Harrisburg in the summer of 1896 without completing a degree. Although she never clearly explained her motives, notes in a handwritten manuscript give some clues into the circumstances surrounding her departure. When starting college at Michigan, Mira had hoped to prepare for laboratory work. “To have a Lab, and slave from morning to night in field work, or with microscope, was my dream of joy.”42 Many obstacles, however, still existed in the 1890s for women interested in scientific careers. While women’s presence did increase on college campuses after the Civil War, the trend provoked controversy. In 1873, retired Harvard Medical School professor Edward H. Clarke published Sex in Education: Or, a Fair Chance for Girls. Arguing that higher education would stunt female reproductive organs, Clarke declared “identical education of the two sexes is a crime before God and humanity, that physiology protests against, and that experience weeps over.” Census figures from 1890 onward showed female college graduates marrying later and having fewer children than nongraduates. Middle-class Americans worried about “race suicide” and debated the goals and curriculum suitable for college women. Universities feared that women’s entry into certain departments would mean feminization, lower salaries for male graduates, and less prestige for their programs. As a result, coeducational schools like the University of Michigan often resisted female students interested in nontraditional majors and careers.43 Dock’s contemporaries struggled with similar prejudices. Ellen Swallow, the first woman to graduate from MIT, received a bachelor’s degree because the institute refused to award her a doctorate. Swallow thus began her professional life as a highly overqualified high school teacher. While she had operated MIT’s science laboratory for women, she received no salary, even though she held the title of assistant instructor. Perhaps, when Mira became conscious of the barriers before her, she decided to pursue other possibilities. An 1899 diary entry, for example, referred obliquely to scientists who were “afraid of learned women.”44 Dock returned to 1427 North Front Street with a new objective. She had accepted that gender discrimination would prevent her from working in a laboratory. While the teaching of nature study had opened a significant career niche for female botanists, Dock did not pursue a job in education, as she had considered doing in 1893. Prior to her father’s illness, however, she had also considered working as a public lecturer. Study groups, women’s clubs, and urban lyceums frequently sought expert speakers on a variety of subjects. A good lecturer could earn fifty dollars plus expenses for each engagement. Nature was a particularly popular theme with audiences who willingly { 24 }

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employed knowledgeable females. As scholars Vera Norwood and Sally Gregory Kohlstedt show, education gave women some claim to expertise in nature study. Nineteenth-century women “articulated a code for women’s contribution to American nature values.” Armed with lantern slides, her new expertise in botany, and her willingness to travel throughout central Pennsylvania, Dock embarked on a career more accepting of females than laboratory science: public lecturer.45

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Beginning with the lyceum movement early in the century, U.S. citizens had flocked to public halls to hear speakers and performers on a variety of subjects. Influenced by the growth of the railroad network, the introduction of booking agencies, and the 1870s Chautauqua movement, late nineteenthcentury Americans from both big cities and rural communities attended lectures for information, entertainment, and spiritual uplift. As lecture attendance soared, opportunities for paid lecturers expanded and became more remunerative. Women, in particular, used paid lecture work to support themselves and their families in middle-class comfort and respectability. Yet her new career provided Dock with more than just a livelihood. As she developed a reputation as a knowledgeable professional, and as she witnessed firsthand the havoc industrialization and urbanization were playing in Pennsylvania, Dock became a leading figure in the Progressive Era’s municipal improvement and forestry campaigns. Her work in these fields brought her statewide attention as well as the opportunity to study and observe abroad. White women had been on the lecture circuit since the 1830s, when the abolitionist sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimke appeared before mixed-gender audiences. Their work generated controversy over the suitability of females speaking in public. By the 1890s, however, Americans had proved supportive of female lecturers, provided they spoke on gender-appropriate subjects. For late nineteenth-century audiences, popular opinion conceded that nature study was a field particularly fitted for women. From their exalted perspective within the domestic realm, wives and mothers could teach their families an appreciation of the natural world, finding moral lessons, for example, in

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the behavior of nesting birds. In particular, the lecture-going public saw the appreciation, nurture, and protection of plants as an appropriately feminine endeavor. As was true with other aspects of Progressive culture, the middleclass, well-educated audiences Dock coveted wanted to hear nature lectures delivered by professionals, and her recent college studies provided the credentials she needed to secure speaking engagements.1 Dock prepared carefully before launching herself as a public speaker. She took photographs, borrowed material from friends, and invested in several sets of beautiful, hand-colored glass slides. These slides, produced by firms in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City, were used with the stereopticon lanterns popular with contemporary audiences.2 Dock also ordered pertinent reference and educational materials from state and federal agencies. By the close of 1896, she had produced a brochure listing her academic credentials, her fees, and her list of “Botanical Talks” for the upcoming year. She emphasized, “Special attention will be given to our native plants and the study of means by which they may be protected and preserved from extinction in thickly settled communities.” She also advertised, “Special Terms will be given to schools, village improvement associations, Fresh Air, and other charitable organizations.” To supplement her lecture income, she also began selling wildflower photographs and writing botanical articles for magazines.3 In 1897, Dock began speaking in Harrisburg and surrounding towns. An acquaintance remembered her lectures positively. “She was a woman with, for want of a better word, I might call ‘Presence.’ She could stand before an audience. She was tall. She was a large woman. And she could talk in ways that were not oratorical, but exuded a certain simplicity and sincerity which I found fascinating.”4 Dock, however, was often critical of her own performances. After a March 1899 lecture, she wrote in her diary, “I was not satisfied with the way I gave John Bartram [the lecture] last night.” A month later, she “told too many stories” during an engagement in Williamsport.5 Yet her delivery of scientific material entertained her listeners. An audience favorite, “The Procession of Flowers in Pennsylvania,” integrated lantern slides with seasonally appropriate language, calling winter the time when “the procession waits” while during spring “the procession moves.” In “The Story of a Leaf,” she vividly described tulip tree leaf buds as “winter coats.”6 Dock also sought to educate and inspire audience members. She taught scientific nomenclature as a means of helping nature lovers “read a landscape like a page in English, and not look at it as if it were in an unknown tongue.” She stressed the interrelated nature of landscapes when she spoke of plants “not as a Rose or Geranium, but as one { 27 }

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of the links of the great world-chain.”7 She also challenged people to preserve and protect wildflowers as a way to “enrich a community.” As she stated in one lecture, “Every person must either be a care-taker or a destroyer.”8 Dock’s first lecture requests came from public officials. During March and September 1897, she spoke at the Farmers’ Institute and the Harrisburg School District’s Teacher Institute, both of which provided in-service education for their constituents. Working with teachers also gave her the opportunity to introduce a new nature-study curriculum aligned closely with developing Progressive ideas about experiential education. As her former professor F. C. Newcombe advised, “I hope you will practice the teaching of scientific experiments to your primary teachers; for I believe it is the general verdict that nothing interests children so much as to see things in action.”9 Dock’s clients seemed pleased with her work. After Dock’s Farmers’ Institute lecture, Pennsylvania secretary of agriculture John Hamilton wrote to her, “The reports that have come to me of your work are quite favorable, and there is no reason why you should not feel encouraged to persevere in this direction.” By the fall of 1897, Dock was receiving lecture requests from other parts of the state. Some of her speaking tours proved to be lengthy, keeping her out of Harrisburg for extended periods. During a trip that took her beyond Harrisburg to towns such as Huntingdon, Riddlersburg, and Bellefonte, Dock wrote to her family, asking them to send clean clothes and her telescope.10 By 1898–99, Dock’s list of references included such noted professionals as Professor C. S. Sargent of Harvard University; Thomas Meehan, the Pennsylvania State College biologist; and L. O. Foose, Superintendent of the Harrisburg School District. Dock’s clientele expanded as she lectured at female academies, Sunday schools, teachers’ institutes, and for a variety of civic groups, most of which were female dominated.11 Dock’s list of “Botanical Talks” at this time had also expanded to include lectures on forestry and village improvement. In the former lecture, Dock defined a forest as a “tract of land which comes under the operation of Forest laws.” She also emphasized conservation, stating that “the Forest area must not be diminished, because of the direct and indirect value to the state of the timber, soil protection, water supply, forest resorts and atmospheric effects.” While lecturing on forestry, she outlined three approaches to the subject—“economic, hygienic, and aesthetic.” When delivering the lecture entitled “Parks, Forests, and Improvement Work,” she discussed the problems of slums and encouraged her listeners to “rescue a river shore,” promote “the love of trees and Arbor Day,” and work toward “the Preservation of Beautiful Places.”12 { 28 }

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Whether Dock had initially intended to lecture on these topics, or whether this interest came later is unclear, but in any event, these new lectures addressed pressing social problems. She once noted that her interest in civic improvement originated during an 1897 trip to Massachusetts, where she contrasted New England’s clean villages with Pennsylvania’s “squalid buildings.” In reality, however, these new lecture topics probably evolved from her own work within Harrisburg’s civic club. Turn-of-the-century Harrisburg, like other urban areas, had grown not only rapidly but also haphazardly. The city’s population had increased by 23 percent in just ten years from 1880 to 1890. In 1900, Harrisburg’s population was 50,167, a 20 percent increase over 1890. According to the 1900 census, Harrisburg was now the seventyseventh-largest city in the United States. The community experienced a host of problems caused by both its rapid growth and the apathy of its political leaders. Newly arrived migrants, both whites from Eastern Europe and AfricanAmericans from the South, competed fiercely for unskilled, ill-paying jobs and inadequate housing in the city’s poor neighborhoods. Because of its position between the Susquehanna River and the western bank of Paxton Creek, Harrisburg was also flood prone. In addition, both waterways had become open sewers. Pigs and children roamed the city’s unpaved streets. Despite Harrisburg’s status as the state capital, both residents and visitors considered it to be one of the ugliest cities in the state.13 Dock and her fellow civic club members had grown concerned about the city’s condition. In 1898, Dock and other clubwomen met with Harrisburg municipal officials to discuss the need for civic improvements. Despite one councilman’s promise to “further your Cause,” the city itself failed to make changes, perhaps because the pressure came from disenfranchised women. As Edith Parker Thompson, a midwestern municipal reformer, wrote in 1897, “Women’s part in public reform is chiefly suggestive or cooperative. They can seldom of themselves carry anything to completion.” Rather than concede the fight, Harrisburg’s civic club took unilateral, albeit philanthropic, action. In August 1898, the club received permission to plant trees along city streets. During the summer of 1900, the club paid playground leaders and donated recreational equipment for summer programs at Harrisburg city schools.14 The civic club’s interest in town improvement coincided with the growth of a nationwide women’s club movement and clubwomen’s interest in urban sanitation. These women were dismayed by the ways in which rapid industrialization and haphazard urban growth had fouled drinking water, air quality, and city streets. Middle-class women’s groups argued that contemporary urban environments degraded home environments by contaminating houses { 29 }

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with dirt and smoke and thus endangering families’ health. Unclean cities put children at risk, particularly those of the working classes. Mothers, either directly or by proxy, needed to serve as the front-line defense against urban despoilment. By using this maternalist rhetoric and claiming that civic improvement work was merely “housekeeping out of doors,” respectable matrons investigated working-class neighborhoods where residents lived in crowded tenements amid dirty streets. Female reformers then castigated city administrations that were too corrupt or apathetic to clean up the filth. Middle-class women also tried to change the behaviors of foreign-born newcomers and rural migrants who practiced “peasant” traditions such as animal butchering and peddling in their new neighborhoods. Southern African-American women as well as northeastern and midwestern white women took up this fight.15 Women worked for sanitation reform in a number of ways. Women’s groups in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago all agitated successfully for street sweeping and garbage collection. Atlanta, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Cleveland harbored all-female smoke-abatement leagues. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs and its state affiliates began working on municipal improvement in the 1890s, around the time Dock began her lecture career. Because many of the GFWC’s state and local affiliates accepted white members only, African-American women performed similar municipal improvement work through the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), organized in 1895, or local organizations like Atlanta’s Neighborhood Union.16 As a founding member and officer in the Civic Club of Harrisburg, Dock had wide access to the network of women’s organizations that belonged to the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, the GFWC’s state-level chapter. These local groups became Dock’s best clients, as clubwomen regularly consulted experts and studied civic issues. Later in her career, Dock would count clubwomen among her most vigorous allies.17 Women, however, were not the only citizens interested in urban reform. The Civic Club of Allegheny County, for example, contained male as well as female members. Middle-class men formed committees such as the Citizens’ Association of Chicago and New York’s Citizens’ Committee of Twenty-one to devise solutions for urban garbage problems. These groups collaborated with groups such as the Woman’s City Club of Chicago and New York City’s Ladies Protective Health Association. The male-dominated American Public Health Association allied itself with chemist Ellen Swallow Richards to fight food adulteration. The American Park and Outdoor Art Association, an organization composed largely of landscape architects, formed ladies auxiliaries that worked with the men for sanitary and aesthetic municipal reforms.18 { 30 }

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In Pennsylvania, middle-class urban residents also expressed concern about the condition of the Commonwealth’s forests. In 1860, Pennsylvania already ranked first in the nation in lumber production. Urbanization and western expansion created a massive demand for lumber in the post–Civil War United States, putting extreme pressure on forest resources. The development of nationwide transportation networks and new technology, such as steampowered sawmills, heightened the commercial appeal of northern Pennsylvania’s mixed pine and hardwood forests. Seventy-five of the Commonwealth’s 110 forest tree species were economically important. In 1898, Pennsylvania ranked fifth in the nation in its production of white pine lumber and first in the production of hemlock tanbark, a critical ingredient in leather production. Pennsylvania’s established railroad network and plentiful coal and natural gas deposits as well as its abundance of hardwoods made the state the center of the chemical wood distillation industry. In 1900, the state produced 60 percent of U.S. wood distillation products. In sheer numbers, Pennsylvania’s production figures are staggering. Between 1870 and 1900, the state’s wood product output increased from 8 million cubic meters to 12.5 cubic meters. Pennsylvania’s seemingly inexhaustible wood supply, however, soon reached a precarious state of affairs, as lumber companies and manufacturers ignored conservation practices and engaged in clear-cut timbering.19 The Pennsylvania Forestry Association, a voluntary organization of conservation-minded men and women, expressed concern over this decimation of white pine and hemlock. Founded in 1886 by two prominent Philadelphia clubwomen, Mrs. John P. Lundy and Mrs. Brinton Coxe, along with the city’s Social Art Club director, Henry Flanders; Dr. E. J. James of the University of Pennsylvania; and B. E. Fernow, chief of the U.S. Forestry Division, the association called for state-level conservation measures throughout the latter years of the century. The group’s suggested array of strategies included offering cash premiums to citizens who cultivated forests, providing public education on “the science and practice of forestry,” and promoting the reforestation of barren lands. The association published an educational newsletter, Forest Leaves, and, in 1892 hired the renowned Pennsylvania botanist Dr. Joseph Trimble Rothrock as a full-time lecturer. Dock, an early member and promoter of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, frequently presented lectures to the membership as well.20 As Pennsylvanians addressed the Commonwealth’s environmental problems, both women’s clubs and mixed-gender village societies kept Dock busy. During the first four months of 1899, Dock spoke in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg as well as smaller towns throughout the state. Requests came { 31 }

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as well from out-of-state locations such as Smithburg, Maryland, and Wilmington, Delaware. Between speaking engagements, Dock taught a series of botany classes to thirty girls at a Harrisburg female seminary. Given statewide concerns about resource depletion, Pennsylvania’s communities particularly wanted lectures on forestry. In the programs she developed in response to this need, Dock mixed scientific forestry with civic improvement concepts, discussing “forest cover, soil preservation and the water supply, forest fires and soil destruction, new growth, wayside shrubs, foreign intruders, school yards, village improvement, and the new era, that is, one in which people conserve natural resources.”21 Judging by local newspaper accounts, Dock and her lectures were well received. The day before she delivered her speech titled “Forest and Woodland Reservations,” the Williamsport Sun predicted that “her lecture will be a high-class, intelligent effort.” The reporter, who was evidently familiar with Dock’s work, characterized her as “a most intelligent woman who is thoroughly conversant with her subject.” In a summary of the lecture, two days later, the reviewer described Dock as “a most fascinating talker.” He found her speech to be “one of the most pleasing, highly instructive, and entertaining efforts of the kind ever heard here.” Not to be outdone, the Sun’s rival the Gazette called the Williamsport gathering of 130 men and women “one of the social events of the season, that was instructive as well as entertaining.” Newspaper reports, besides summarizing Dock’s lecture content, frequently mentioned the ways in which local women’s clubs, the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, and the Pennsylvania Forestry Association worked for street cleaning, tree planting, and water purification.22 Audience members and journalists alike understood this improvement work as no less than benevolent action. After attending a January 1899 lecture, one Dock admirer described tree planting “as just as truly missionary work as going to China.” The Pittsburgh Post labeled forestry work as a “great humanitarian impulse.” Cloaking civic works in such terms justified clubwomen’s public activities and won support from male political leaders, businessmen, and opinion makers. Since the 1830s, females had used what scholar Barbara Cutter calls a “redemptive womanhood” model both to affirm women’s special moral, religious, and nurturing natures and to justify their use of these powers to redeem and reform. After the Civil War, women also used “protection of the home” as their rationale for sanitation reform, child welfare work, and female suffrage.23 Dock herself used such rhetoric, referring to town improvement work as an “actual extension of housecleaning.”24 Nor was the “missionary work” of improvement the exclusive province of female reformers. Harrisburg { 32 }

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businessman J. Horace McFarland, the municipal reformer and public lecturer who headed the American Civic Association, once referred to pollution as “a civic sin” and urban cleanup work as “repentance.”25 Dock’s supporters saw her as more than a nobly minded clubwoman. In Williamsport, the so-called lumber capital of the world, newspapers emphasized Dock’s university-based credentials, the Sun carefully noting, “Miss Dock’s zealous support of forestry work did not come from sentimental pity at seeing a tree cut down.” The article’s reporter further emphasized that conservation preserved forests for future generations of timber workers.26 In April 1899, Dock received an intriguing invitation. Frances “Fanny” Wilkinson, an English landscape gardener and horticultural teacher, had been asked to organize a horticultural section for the International Congress of Women to be held that summer in London. Wilkinson wanted Dock to report on what American women had accomplished in the field of horticulture. Knowing that Dock’s income was modest, Wilkinson offered to arrange lectures for her in England as a means of defraying traveling expenses. Dock recognized this as an opportunity not only to increase her visibility but as a chance to learn about European methods of municipal improvement. In a second letter, Wilkinson had mentioned, “My special line [of work] is improving towns and planting trees and shrubs in them so we shall have much in common.”27 With financial help from supporters, Dock found the means with which to travel to London. The State Federation of Pennsylvania Women nominated Dock as its delegate to the congress, awarding her $275 for the trip. John Hamilton, the state agriculture secretary, also contributed after asking her to write reports, upon her return, on parks, forests, and playgrounds for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. Philadelphia’s New Century Club, the Civic Club of Philadelphia, and the Parks Association of Philadelphia donated funds as well. On 6 June 1899, Mira set sail for England with Lavinia, who planned to attend the congress’s nursing meetings. Mira carried letters of introduction from University of Pennsylvania faculty whom she’d met while lecturing in Philadelphia. A particularly prized letter came from Gifford Pinchot, the U.S. chief forester. Mira hoped, after the London meetings, to travel to Germany to meet Pinchot’s mentor, Sir Dietrich Brandis.28 Brandis, who had worked for the British in both Burma and India, was considered the foremost forester in the world. During the 1860s and ’70s, he had established a forest service in colonial India and trained native-born Indians to manage forestry practices there. Despite opposition from powerful British tea planters, Brandis acquired 38 percent of the land in provincial { 33 }

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Assam for the Indian Forest Service. Prior to his retirement, Brandis had turned his attention to reforestation in the princely state of Travancore. Having earlier toyed with the idea of studying forestry at George W. Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate, in North Carolina, Dock wanted to use this trip to learn about European forests as well as urban improvements.29 Upon her arrival in England, Dock threw herself into educational, investigative, and organizational work. She studied botanical specimens at the British Museum and toured Swanley Agricultural College, in Kent, with Wilkinson, who had recently been named the school’s principal. In early July, at the International Congress of Women, Dock both attended and spoke at horticultural section meetings. After the congress, while Lavinia worked with the newly formed International Council of Nurses, Mira visited the London Botanic Garden and consulted with British officials. In mid- and late July, the Docks traveled through rural England and to Edinburgh, Scotland, where they attended horticultural society meetings and visited private forests. In the English countryside, Dock observed dairymaids producing Stilton and cheddar cheeses, and she attended an agricultural fair in Cirencester, Gloucestershire. During the first week in August, the Docks returned to London, where Mira investigated public parks and improved tenements. She seemed much impressed, on 5 August, with St. Mary’s facilities and the landscaping work on the Thames at Victoria Embankment.30 While touring the United Kingdom, Dock anxiously waited to hear from Brandis, whom she’d met in London during the congress. The German forester’s time and attention were highly sought-after commodities. A letter, dated 8 August, however, brought Dock good news. Brandis would be glad to see her in Bonn and offered to arrange a visit to the Agricultural College at Poppelsdorf, an important school of agriculture and botany. As for Dock’s offer to pay Brandis for forestry lessons, the older man replied, “As regards forestry, if you wish to understand something of the business, your best plan is, to go through a regular apprenticeship under an executive Forest Officer (Oberfurster), the longer the better. This I shall be happy to arrange for you.”31 Mira and Lavinia hastened to Bonn, where they met their sister Emily, and called on Sir Dietrich and Lady Brandis. The Germans proved to be gracious hosts who invited the American sisters to tea, introduced them to prominent botanists, and took Mira on tours of nearby public baths, parks, and playgrounds. Worried about finances, she declined Brandis’s offer of a long-term apprenticeship, opting instead for a one-month tour of German forests and villages. Brandis promptly wrote letters of introduction to colleagues throughout the Black Forest region.32 { 34 }

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The Dock sisters began their German tour on 19 August. In the late nineteenth century, Germany had the best forest program in the world. German forestry can be traced to the mid-sixteenth century, when Duke Albert V of Bavaria established forest preserves, hired wardens to patrol these areas, and set penalties for trespassers. Other nobles, eager to maintain their prerogatives, followed Duke Albert’s lead. The Landgrave of Hesse, for example, limited firewood gleaning and prohibited hog grazing in his forests. In the early 1800s, leaders of the German states had initiated scientific forestry—establishing training programs, publishing journals, and experimenting in arboretums and nurseries. After the formal unification of Germany in 1871, both the national and provincial governments took over responsibility for preserving existing timber stands and for reforesting areas with traditional hardwoods and economically profitable conifers.33 The Docks began their forest tour by visiting Freiburg, where Mira was “delighted with Stadtgarten [the city garden] and park.” They traveled next to Stauffen, where she studied both town improvement projects and forest conservation work. Two local foresters, Herrs Thilo and Thoma, took Dock on extensive tours of Krotzingen and Stauffen Forests and tutored her in the principles of forest management. Dock visited tree nurseries, natural and “planted” forests, “newly planted hanging woods,” vineyards, and irrigation ditches. In German villages and towns, she also investigated bathhouses, roadside tree-planting activities, and road-mending projects. She seemed particularly impressed by the Germans’ policy of substituting commercially valuable trees for less profitable species. She noted the importance of planting according to scientific principles and replicating nature as much as possible. She understood that “a true self-sown forest should be as like a primeval one as possible. A pure forest suffers more from storm, snow and insects than a mixed one.”34 Dock forwarded her impressions of Stauffen to Brandis, who expressed delight with her growing grasp of forestry principles. He enjoyed her literary style as well, comparing her prose to Rudyard Kipling’s. From Stauffen, the Dock sisters proceeded to Belchen Forest, escorted by Herr Thilo. After their arrival in Belchen, a Forester Dislirn took all three women on tours of nearby woodlands and villages, where Dock admired “beautiful houses.” They completed their August tour of other regional forests in the company of the foresters Schofaflein and Huber, Dock referring to the latter mentor as “a nice old man.” In September, Brandis sent Mira to Uhlingen to study natural forest regeneration and state forest administration. As the trip proceeded, Dock’s admiration for the expertise of German foresters grew. After touring Schonau, { 35 }

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for example, she wrote, “Today I saw impossible places planted.” She described the roads interspersing the Black Forest as “magnificent” and, after touring Mohrinthurm, concluded that Forester Dislirn was “a perfect genius.”35 This Black Forest tour proved to be a turning point in Dock’s life. Indeed, it marked a notable moment in the history of forest science. Granted, by the close of the nineteenth century, women had firmly established themselves in the profession of botany. The prominent educator Emma Willard taught botany at the Troy Female Seminary and her sister, Almira Phelps, published the best-selling Familiar Lectures on Botany in 1829. During the nineteenth century, women also worked as botanical illustrators for museums and government agencies, and, by the 1890s, as teachers and supervisors of nature study in schools and colleges. Dock herself had gained acclaim as a botanical lecturer. Forestry, however, was still an exclusively male preserve. Brandis’s foresters, in both India and Germany, were men. So were the students in the premier European programs like England’s Cooper’s Hill forestry school and the L’Ecole Nationale Foresterie in Nancy, France.36 Dock’s 1899 trip thus involved more than just physical miles. She had embarked as well upon a psychological journey fraught with gendered obstacles. Women had not previously trod into the world of forest science, for the work was considered beyond females’ physical capacity. The Dock sisters proved the physical equals of their German hosts. While visiting Belchen, for example, the resident forester, Herr Dislirn, led the sisters on a twenty-eight-kilometer hike. Mira described this trek as “the most tremendous walk I ever took, I feared we would all fall dead.” Yet Dock not only survived this experience; she appeared before Dislirn the next day fresh and ready for the next adventure. Her association with the Pennsylvania Forestry Association and the work she’d done in preparing forestry lectures, moreover, gave her a knowledge base upon which to draw and intellectual common ground with her hosts. In fact, Dock so impressed the Oberförster of Uhlingen, G. R. Yeager, that he wrote her a letter of recommendation, stating that she had “studied with me in Uhlingen during the time September 3rd–25th in forests and theory with the very best results in the different branches of Forestry.”37 For their part, the Germans seemed charmed with Dock. Her diary entries described professional foresters who behaved with perfect courtesy and attention. Nowhere did she mention even a hint of hostility or condescension. To a man, the foresters refused Dock’s offers to pay for their services, although they did eventually accept gifts.38 As a result of Dock’s Black Forest tour, she developed lasting friendships and lifelong correspondences with some of the foresters, including Brandis and Yeager. { 36 }

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In September, Dock visited Switzerland and then returned to the United States in October with a wealth of new ideas for lecture topics. First, however, she fulfilled her obligations to her sponsors. She wrote a report for the State Federation and the City Parks Association of Philadelphia detailing both the International Congress of Women and European municipal improvements. She recommended that American cities make several changes, many of which became part of the GFWC’s twentieth-century agenda. 1. Trees planted on public streets should be uniform in age and species. This imparts dignity. 2. Small homes in the U.S. are monotonous. They should display individuality. 3. Village Improvement Societies should employ landscape gardeners who have training in drainage, planting, etc. 4. Schools should organize Leagues of Good Citizenship whose members would pull weeds, plant wild gardens, study road issues. 5. Public school teachers should instruct children in nature study. 6. Women who show marked ability should have special training in general or landscape gardening. 7. Europeans do a better job than Americans in providing playgrounds. U.S. cities, towns, and villages should purchase land for this purpose. 8. In the free baths of Zurich where every provision necessary is made for the comfort and health of the patrons, I was much impressed with the fact that the poorest child in that town had greater opportunities in this respect than any child in cities and towns situated on the Schuylkill, Susquehanna or our other large rivers. 9. Women’s clubs should collect statistics on county beautiful and historic places with photographs and information on topography and features of interest.39 Dock also wrote the report she had promised to the Pennsylvania secretary of agriculture. By 6 January 1900, she was able to write in her diary, “Secretary Hamilton approves of the Bulletin, wants the Forestry Part enlarged.” Hamilton, in fact, was so pleased with the report that he published it. This pamphlet, entitled A Summer’s Work Abroad, in School Grounds, Home Grounds, Play Grounds, Parks, and Forests, earned Dock widespread praise. The media reviewed it favorably. According to the Philadelphia Press, “Such publications as this report of Miss Dock’s are just the thing Pennsylvania needs.” Dock’s friends and colleagues also were complimentary. After reading { 37 }

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the bulletin, Horace McFarland wrote Dock, “It strikes me as an exceptionally valuable document, not only for what it tells, but more especially for what it suggests. I do not see how any intelligent person can read this bulletin, either in whole or in part, without feeling a desire to improve the conditions in our own beautiful state, because of the comparison you have given with the thoroughly economic beauties of an older civilization.” Landscape architect Warren Manning, who had never met Dock, was also impressed, recommending that “such a Bulletin could be published by the government for general distribution throughout the United States.”40 In A Summer’s Work Abroad, Dock described the clean, well-ordered, and beautiful urban areas she toured in England, Scotland, and Germany. By law, she observed, the English prohibited actions allowing sewage to run into waterways and outlawed the dumping of rubbish along riverbanks. Therefore, England was “exquisitely neat.” Such practices were also common on the European continent, where “clean streets are a matter of course.” Dock found English roads to be “perfect for walking,” because they were “picturesque as well as well-ordered.” She thoroughly described London’s three hundred open public spaces, well stocked with benches, playgrounds, and trees, as well as Edinburgh’s preserved monuments and Royal Botanic Garden. She also mentioned that even smaller towns such as that of Leamington, in rural Warwickshire, England, had a public library and several parks. Such practices occurred, she stated, because Europeans recognized “the need for interest in public welfare,” which translated into “playgrounds, parks, swimming baths, and other healthful amusements.” European attitudes, she hinted, contrasted unfavorably with the laissez-faire public policy in American cities.41 Dock also informed her American audiences that European citizens willingly initiated and paid for such municipal services. “The great civic improvements abroad,” she reported, are “originated by the citizens and the government, undertaken by the more responsible members of society for the general welfare.” Leamington, for example, had acquired its amenities through an improvement association, which planted street trees, organized summer festivals, and subsidized a town band and recreational boats. Such a view of urban life was not unique to the English. According to Dock, the Germans considered public-supported playgrounds “most important to their [children’s] healthy development.”42 Besides reporting on the conditions of European cities and towns, Dock spent considerable space in A Summer’s Work Abroad describing Germany’s Black Forest and its administration. In 1899, the forest contained 1.4 million { 38 }

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acres. One-third of it was privately owned, with one-sixth in possession by the state of Baden and the remaining one-half owned by local villages, schools, churches, and hospitals. The publicly owned portions had been divided into 104 districts, each managed by an Oberförster who supervised timber cutting, soil improvement, and reforestation. Private owners needed formal permission before clear-cutting their land. Dock found no signs in the Black Forest of the fires that routinely threatened Pennsylvania’s forest areas, in part because good road networks, built and maintained by the foresters, enabled the Germans to effectively prevent incendiary disasters. Moreover, Dock maintained, scientific forest management protected watersheds and provided German villages with good water supplies. Dock argued as well that publicly maintained forests provided the German people with additional benefits. Timbering work gave steady employment to villagers, and periodic tree thinning made firewood and pulp available to local homeowners and industries. German municipalities reaped financial rewards as well. Some families received annual dividends from publicly owned woodlands, and villages derived income from Oberförster-approved lumber purchases. Stauffen, for example, earned an annual net income of ten thousand dollars per year from its forest, and Schonau earned between six thousand and seven thousand per year. Dock therefore advised, “Pennsylvania should model its forestry program after the Black Forest’s.”43 With the European trip and subsequent publication of A Summer’s Work Abroad having secured Dock’s reputation as an expert on both village improvement and forestry, lecture invitations and requests for information poured in from all across the northeastern United States. Dock used her expertise and confidence to develop new lecture topics. For 1900–1901, the advertised lectures included “Improvement Societies at Home and Abroad,” “Forestry at Home and Abroad,” and “Farm and Garden Work for Women,” as well as old favorites such as “The Procession of Flowers.” During the spring of 1900, she embarked on an extended tour of western Pennsylvania, speaking in Monongahela, McKeesport, Braddock, and Erie. She spoke as well for her friends in the New Century Club in Philadelphia, introduced by Pennsylvania forestry expert Joseph Trimble Rothrock. Dock lectured twice in Massachusetts in early 1900, once for the Massachusetts Forestry Association and once at a General Federation of Women’s Clubs’ meeting in Williamstown. Requests came also from businessmen impressed with Dock’s new, international credentials. A New Jersey attorney, for example, asked for Dock’s fee schedule and lecture topics, as he hoped to interest his neighbors in the subject { 39 }

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of village improvements. Dock’s friend, Pennsylvania Railroad executive William J. Rose, mentioned that an associate at the Long Island Railroad also wanted “one or a series” of her lectures.44 During her 1900–1901 lectures, Dock emphasized the lively civic spirit that had engulfed Europe and “the amount of voluntary unpaid labor that is performed on behalf of the community; not only in large cities, but in quite small communities.” To audiences, sometimes so large that there was standing room only, Dock both described Europe’s municipal improvement work and expressed concerns about pollution, overcrowding, and substandard public services in America’s communities. Newspapers continued to give her positive reviews. After a lecture for the local Farmers’ Institute, the Somerset Herald praised her “especially pleasing personality,” her “conversational tone,” and her ability to give advice while refraining from “harsh criticism.” The Philadelphia Press summarized a Dock lecture more explicitly, noting that she emphasized how “picturesque surroundings as well as well-ordered roadways and well-kept properties have a money value.” Dock’s friends were impressed by the way European travel and study had broadened her knowledge and sharpened her public-speaking skills. After hearing her lecture in late 1899, Rothrock wrote to Brandis, “She is now, and will be to a still greater degree, a power for good in this country. I wish you could see and hear her speak in public. Her eloquence and earnestness fairly thrills her hearers.”45 Dock did, in fact, shortly become a powerful force for good in Harrisburg. Confronted with the urban problems she decried, residents struggled to implement Progressive goals and construct the “City Beautiful.” She would play a crucial role in this movement, first at the local, and later at the state and national levels.

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Among the lecture requests Dock received after her return from Europe was one from the prestigious Harrisburg Board of Trade. Chartered in 1886, the board of trade existed to encourage and protect the trade and commerce of the city. Its members included retail shop owners, artisans, professionals, and manufacturing executives. Late in 1900, on 20 December, Dock delivered her lecture “The City Beautiful” to this august body of her hometown’s business leaders.1 J. Horace McFarland, a board of trade member, personally secured Dock’s invitation. McFarland, like Dock, had long been concerned about Harrisburg’s lack of municipal amenities and the pollution that despoiled the city. He also considered Dock a good friend who shared his love of flowers and photography, and he served as her civic mentor, even though he was slightly younger than she. Born in 1859, the son of a schoolteacher and Civil War officer, by the 1880s McFarland owned a successful Harrisburg business, Mount Pleasant Press, which specialized in printing seed and plant catalogs. A devout Methodist and a temperance lecturer, McFarland was active in public affairs, providing Dock entrée into the city’s civic and cultural life after her return from Michigan. In 1896, at the start of Dock’s lecture career, McFarland loaned negatives, secured speaking engagements, and wrote letters of introduction for Dock. He was among the first to pay Dock for the use of her own photographs. This relationship, however, was far from one-sided. Dock often shared the locations of rare wildflowers with McFarland, cautioning him to communicate this information only to “our kind.” Dock, ever the trained botanist, always feared that city dwellers, uneducated about nature

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and conservation, might uproot fragile plants and destroy habitats. Because of their mutual love of botany and their desire to maintain and beautify rural and urban landscapes, Dock and McFarland became lifelong allies in the conservation movement.2 McFarland had good reasons for wanting his fellow businessmen to hear a lecture on municipal improvements. He was aware of the civic club’s earlier failure to spur Harrisburg’s city government into action and had begun planning for a broader cleanup campaign as early as 1899. Writing to Dock during her European tour, McFarland proposed that he should lecture to the civic club where he would “mildly point the finger of scorn.” He planned to show lantern slides featuring “potato pairings [sic] on the river bank, the dump heap by the cemetery entrance, and a few other spots most apparent every day all about.” It is unclear what McFarland hoped to accomplish by publicizing Harrisburg’s condition to these clubwomen and sending Dock to the board of trade, as clubwomen were well aware of the situation and, in McFarland’s own words, “They had already taken up the work.” Perhaps he felt male relatives, friends, and acquaintances might take women’s civic work more seriously if wives, daughters, and sweethearts quoted a male authority on municipal improvement, rather than just Dock. Perhaps McFarland believed simultaneous lectures by Dock and himself would spur dinner-table discussion, and subsequent action, among the men and women of Harrisburg’s most prominent families. Perhaps he saw this opportunity as a dress rehearsal. McFarland did mention to Dock that if his civic club lecture proved successful, he’d make a similar presentation to city officials.3 In any case, Dock and McFarland exchanged podiums, so to speak, in 1900. The civic club’s reaction to McFarland’s lecture has not survived, but Dock’s presentation to the board of trade received widespread acclaim from both the local press and prominent citizens. The Harrisburg Telegraph heralded the speech as a “big success.” One day after the lecture, a local publishing company president wrote Dock, promising a “several hundred dollar” contribution for parks and swimming pools, if the city would appropriate twenty thousand dollars for municipal improvements.4 The city council’s failure, however, to respond to both this offer and the entire issue of municipal reform led the board of trade to take the initiative. In his book, The Awakening of Harrisburg, McFarland outlined the series of events that followed Dock’s lecture. Shortly after 20 December 1900, J. V. Reynders, a civil engineer and the superintendent of Pennsylvania Steel, wrote a letter to the Telegraph proposing grassroots action. If, Reynders suggested, the Harrisburg City Council refused to provide money even to investigate { 42 }

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the need for municipal improvements, the citizens should raise it themselves. Reynders’s own pledge of one hundred dollars was matched and surpassed by others. Subscribers to the Fund for Investigating Municipal Improvements, organized shortly after Dock’s lecture, raised five thousand dollars in ten days. The fund received another five thousand in contributions over the next six months. McFarland gleefully informed Dock, “Did I tell you that one man, whom I have always known to be extraordinarily tight with his money stopped in and told me he was willing to be one of 50 men to give $200 each? That is the most practical evidence of the force of your presentation.”5 The Subscribers next hired three experts to survey the city and make recommendations. This was a common Progressive tactic, popular among educated, middle-class reformers looking for scientific solutions to urban problems. New York City, for example, had hired drainage engineer Colonel George E. Waring Jr. to manage urban refuse in 1895. Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, and New York had all hired professional landscape designers to construct city park systems during the 1890s.6 In Harrisburg, however, grassroots reformers, rather than city government, recruited the expert talent. These experts included James H. Fuertes, a New York City sewage and filtration expert; M. R. Sheered, a Newark, New Jersey, paving engineer; and Warren H. Manning, a landscape architect from Boston. Manning’s hiring was particularly important from Dock and McFarland’s point of view because of his broad expertise in park planning. Manning had formerly worked with Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect for Central Park and other major urban parks. Manning had helped Olmsted design the Chicago Columbian Exposition grounds in 1893 and managed implementation of plantings and horticultural displays at the exposition’s Jackson Park site. In 1901, all three experts visited Harrisburg and made recommendations for urban improvements. An executive committee, appointed by the Subscribers, adopted the reports in their entirety and published them in a pamphlet entitled Proposed Municipal Improvements for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.7 The reports essentially confirmed the agenda of McFarland, Dock, and their supporters. Fuertes advised building a low dam on the Susquehanna and widening and deepening Paxton Creek as a means of flood control. He also recommended a water filtration system, upgraded sewers, and a new reservoir. Sheered suggested macadam pavements for residential streets and granite block pavement for streets with heavy traffic. These streets should be kept “scrupulously clean” with regular flushing and sweeping. Manning made extensive recommendations for Harrisburg’s park system. These included a new park along the riverfront, an expansion of Reservoir Park, conversion of { 43 }

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Wetzel’s Swamp into parkland, a playground system, and a ring boulevard that would connect all of the city’s larger parks. The Subscribers now turned to getting these recommendations translated into action.8 The Subscribers’ executive committee, which included City Councilman H. M. Holstein and Mayor John Fritchey, called on the Harrisburg City Council to adopt “appropriate ordinances.” The council enacted no municipal improvement legislation, but it did put a bond issue on the 1901 ballot. If the referendum passed, the city would borrow money for this “Harrisburg Plan.” McFarland and Dock feared the measure would be defeated, for the program faced opposition. The reformers now organized a new Progressive organization, the Harrisburg League for Municipal Improvements, to promote the bond issue and refute their critics.9 Detractors had nicknamed the “Harrisburg Plan” the “Front Street Scheme,” arguing that the proposed improvements would profit wealthy residents and businessmen, not ordinary citizens. Such suspicion was understandable, as a riverside park and flood-control measures certainly benefitted families who lived in fashionable homes along the Susquehanna. Perhaps working-class Harrisburg voters were suspicious of the board of trade’s role in promoting the plan, seeing the bond issue as a thinly disguised attempt to enhance commercial and industrial property values at the expense of ordinary taxpayers. In any case, city homeowners, landlords, and working-class citizens were clearly concerned that tax and rent increases would arise from the adoption of the plan.10 Local working-class and immigrant citizens might also have felt personally alienated from the leaders of the new League for Municipal Improvements. Of the twenty-one people actively involved in the league, all but Dock were male and represented Harrisburg’s business and professional community. Six had attended college and five others had completed secondary school. All were white and were of British or German ethnicity and all but one, a Roman Catholic, held memberships in local Protestant churches. The male members of the league came from both the Republican and Democratic Parties. McFarland, of course, was prominent among these twenty-one citizens, and was also well known as a temperance advocate. This likely discomfited working-class city dwellers suspicious of middle-class attempts at social control. McFarland’s chief male ally, Vance McCormick, likewise came from the city’s elite and had roots in the temperance movement.11 Vance Criswell McCormick, born 19 June 1872, was the typical turn-of-thecentury Progressive, solidly middle class and college educated. His father and grandfather, Henry and James McCormick, were Harrisburg businessmen, { 44 }

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temperance advocates, and philanthropists. James, for example, donated parkland to Harrisburg, with the provision that “no intoxicating liquors shall ever be used on McCormick’s Island.” After graduating from Yale University in 1893, Vance returned to Harrisburg and assisted his father, Henry, in managing the family’s diverse business holdings. These included a newspaper, the Patriot, which Vance published. The younger McCormick had joined the civic improvement movement in 1900 and had been appointed to the Subscribers’ executive committee. A Democrat, the twenty-eight-yearold McCormick had decided to run for mayor in 1900 at the urging of civicminded citizens. Fritchey could not run for reelection and the municipal improvement advocates hoped the well-known McCormick might break the local Democratic machine’s grasp on the mayor’s office.12 As reformers mobilized to pass the bond issue and elect McCormick, the Harrisburg League for Municipal Improvements raised five thousand dollars for this twin campaign. Dock, McFarland, and McCormick took charge of these efforts and used the funds for publicity purposes. They printed and mailed literature to every household in the city. A downtown league headquarters displayed and dispensed pertinent materials, while sympathetic ministers delivered pro-improvement sermons. Dock and McFarland also wrote press releases for the local newspapers with McCormick, using his position as publisher of the Patriot to issue pro-bond articles and editorials. Playing on fears that other cities might outstrip Harrisburg in terms of population and wealth, he characterized the plan’s opponents as “tightfisted landlords” who stood in the way of the city’s economic growth. McCormick argued that if Harrisburg failed to keep up with the times, cleaner and more attractive municipalities would recruit business and residents away from the state’s capital, thus costing the city jobs. In a brilliant political move, the league convinced city officials to create a board of public works prior to the election, and then argued that the bond issue should pass because the money would be placed in competent, expert hands. In these ways, Harrisburg’s Progressives used campaign tactics that would become standard fare for American reformers over the next two decades. The Harrisburg Plan advocates publicized the city’s problems, proposed scientifically sound solutions, and sought to vest control within the purview of experts. In the meantime, Harrisburg landlords raised rents, undercutting their own arguments about the impact of the plan. Residents concluded that if they had to pay higher prices for housing, “We might as well have the improvements.”13 Dock’s civic club co-members fully cooperated with the males who spearheaded the League for Municipal Improvement. These women worked hard { 45 }

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for passage of the bond issue, although their tactics, and likely their rhetoric, differed from those of the men. As male voters and civic leaders attended political meetings, wrote supportive newspaper letters, and promoted the economic value of civic improvement, the women worked through more genderappropriate, and less visible, channels. They visited Harrisburg’s schools, explaining the proposal to children they’d already served through the summer playground program. The women clarified the ways in which the bond issue provided ordinary families with cleaner streets and pure water, protection from floods, and recreational opportunities. Civic club members hoped to impress children about the quality-of-life possibilities inherent in the Harrisburg Plan. Enthusiastic children might, in turn, influence their workingclass fathers, who had the vote and thus the opportunity to embrace or reject the bond issue. The civic club also monitored the municipal league’s proposals carefully, making sure they addressed all pressing city needs. Club officers, as befitted municipal housekeepers, made sure the league developed a plan to stop riverbank trash dumping. Clubwomen, furthermore, lobbied for suitable water filtration. Dock, perhaps fearful that women’s concerns might be dismissed as sentimental, sought expert advice on these topics from her physician brother, George. Thus, Harrisburg’s middle-class citizens collaborated for municipal improvement, much as New York City and Philadelphia residents had during the 1880s and ’90s, although along complementary gendered pathways.14 Harrisburg Progressives achieved all of their goals on Election Day 1901. Voters both approved the million-dollar bond issue and elected McCormick mayor. They also elected a reform-minded Democrat as city treasurer and a Republican comptroller. In rejecting “machine rule,” Harrisburg voters imitated residents such as those in St. Louis who had replaced a political machine with a reform-minded mayor in 1897. The referendum passed with a threethousand-vote majority, reflecting both working- and middle-class support for municipal improvements. The bond issue passed in every city ward except one, where the measure lost by only four votes. Three working-class wards returned sizeable majorities. The lone holdout, the Tenth Ward, which defeated the bond issue, was not surprisingly a solidly wealthy neighborhood. The reformers’ successes were not necessarily unusual. Cross-class cooperation was not unheard of, even during the turbulent late nineteenth century. In Chicago, for example, working- and middle-class women had jointly investigated city school finances and initiated school-restructuring reforms. Similarly, in Tampa, Florida, Latin elites and working-class citizens had cooperated to provide social services and cultural events for the immigrant community.15 { 46 }

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But in these instances, cross-class collaboration was grounded in voluntary action, dependent upon volunteers and charitable donations. Harrisburg was different in one important respect. In Harrisburg, middle- and workingclass males agreed to pay higher real estate taxes in return for a cleaner city and better services. Local conditions may have helped prompt this behavior. According to historian William Wilson, “Sewage odors wafted over parts of Harrisburg throughout the campaign,” and “Paxton Creek flooded twice during 1901.”16 McFarland attributed the success of the municipal improvement campaign to Dock, whom he believed had convinced local citizens that parks and playgrounds were “due every American child.” In a February 1902 letter, he explained, “I don’t know whether any of us could have accomplished anything had not the Civic Club paved the way. Back of the Civic Club is your own effort and enthusiasm, and I think, when this thing is hunted down to its sources, you will have to stand as the sponsor of the whole movement.” Dock, indeed, provided the glue that gave the reformers’ efforts cohesion. She mobilized and recruited municipal improvement advocates. As a trained botanist, Dock gave the breakthrough presentation that convinced the board of trade to take action, despite city government’s apathy. As the campaign progressed, Dock gave additional public lectures on municipal improvement, worked with core male allies, and coordinated between the League for Municipal Improvement and the Civic Club of Harrisburg. Her work facilitated communication between male elites and female grassroots workers, in a movement where coordination and cooperation was essential.17 Dock, then, served as what scholar Belinda Robnett refers to as a “bridge leader.” Bridge leaders have significant leadership experience but are often denied prominent, formal leadership roles because of gender or other personal characteristics. Bridge leaders initiate movements, recruit followers unknown to formal leaders, and perform effectively at the grassroots level. Bridge leaders, however, generally lack formal institutional and organizational power. In the case of Dock, lack of suffrage curtailed her ability to assume a more powerful leadership role, such as that of McCormick, the newspaper publisher and later elected official, or McFarland, the prominent businessman and church leader.18 In 1902, then, Harrisburg officials and reformers set about implementing the will of the voters. Despite McFarland’s complaints about a city council that voted down McCormick’s proposals, the new mayor’s administration began a number of improvements. By 1905, the city had made enough progress for McFarland to invite the National Municipal League to hold its { 47 }

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annual meeting in Harrisburg. In 1907, Harrisburg had twenty-two miles of paved streets that municipal employees swept every day. The “Paxton Creek nuisance” had been abated through channel deepening and the construction of storm sewers. Harrisburg had also built a drainage dam and a water filtration plant, and it had upgraded the sewers. These improvements eliminated typhoid and malaria in the city. Moreover, because McCormick had placed the city “upon a business footing,” tax millage in 1907 was less than had been estimated in 1902. Residents were so pleased with their city’s amenities that they approved three further bond issues, totaling more than $1.3 million, between 1906 and 1914.19 Harrisburg’s park system expanded greatly after the bond issue’s passage. The city created a park commission and retained Manning to advise the body. McFarland, who was not originally appointed to the commission, secured a seat in 1905 and remained on this board until 1913. The commission worked hard to secure land and implement Manning’s designs. The park system grew from 46 acres in 1902 to 958 by 1915. A three-acre section of land abutting the Susquehanna became Riverfront Park and, in 1907, 140 acres around Wetzel’s Swamp became Wildwood Park. By 1915, Harrisburg owned eleven public playgrounds and had swimming facilities, athletic fields, and a grandstand on City Island. Reservoir Park expanded and acquired a nine-hole golf course.20 The park commission’s 1908 report provides a vignette of park activities and policy during implementation of the Harrisburg Plan. In that year, five male commissioners, including McFarland, oversaw 707 total acres of parkland that contained 27 acres of playgrounds and 51 acres of parkway. More than a million visitors, a 31 percent increase over 1907, used these recreational properties. Pennsylvania’s second annual High School Track and Field Meet used City Island facilities in May, where Carlisle Indian School student Jim Thorpe won the high jump. The City League of Amateur Baseball Clubs and the Harrisburg Park Golf Club likewise used park facilities for games and tournaments. Visitors attended the Labor Day Water Carnival and seventeen summer concerts in Reservoir Park. Increased use, according to the park commission report, meant “there were twice as many drunks along Front Street [Riverfront Park]” in 1908. Furthermore, the report continued, “The dogs have been hard on the State Street Park.” Commissioners wanted more money from the city for routine maintenance, new equipment, and land acquisition. Park facilities, however, had been improved through shrub planting, park bench building, and the creation of Wildwood Park Lake for boating and swimming.21 { 48 }

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Dock took particular interest in the work of the Harrisburg Park Commission. While neither she, nor any other woman, served on this board, she attended meetings at the invitation of the commissioners and gave her expert advice. Dock believed that the park system needed a pine forest, similar to those owned by German cities, and subsequently donated one hundred seedlings for the project. A year after receiving this donation, F. L. Mulford, the Harrisburg Park superintendent, proudly reported that every one of the seedlings “is living and almost with out exception has made a satisfactory growth.” As late as 1913, McFarland, in his role as the Harrisburg Park commissioner, sought Dock’s advice on tree planting.22 While monitoring and advising the Harrisburg Park Commission, Dock engaged in other civic improvement work as well. Upset over teenage vandalism, she embarked on a one-woman campaign to stop the destruction of property along the Susquehanna River. Convinced that local working-class boys caused mischief out of boredom, she “extended an invitation to have a meeting at her home” for the purpose of forming a neighborhood boys’ club. Presumably, she hoped to encourage wholesome amusements as well as tackle the vandalism problem. At this first meeting, the attendees decided to form a baseball league, charge themselves dues, and use the money for athletic equipment. Dock volunteered to open her home for future meetings and to act as the club’s treasurer and banker, provided the members drew up a set of formal rules. Their constitution began in fine American fashion, with a preamble. “The object of this [Riverside Juniors Club] is to co-operate with all efforts to improve and beautify the river bank, and also to have an Athletic Association.” All members “agree that each one personally would not disfigure any further improvements” to the riverbank. Within seven months of the initial meeting, the club treasurer’s report showed a balance of $16.50, which the boys used to purchase gloves, bats, and baseballs. Dock had stopped complaining about riverside vandalism, although this does not necessarily mean that the behavior had stopped.23 Dock also continued to work on civic club improvement projects. She made donations and visited the summer playgrounds, which the club continued to fund. With her siblings grown and her nephews in Michigan, she likely enjoyed the opportunities to engage with children at the playgrounds. In 1903, as chairman of the civic club’s Department of Forestry and Town Improvement, she began the hugely popular Backyard Contest. The contest’s purpose was to encourage homeowners and renters to beautify private properties while the city paved streets, cleaned up waste and water, and built parks. Children as well as adults could enter, and entrants received free written { 49 }

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gardening advice, and sometimes seeds. The competition spanned the spring and summer seasons and awarded cash prizes. Judges, chosen by Dock and her department, inspected each contestant’s yard on three separate occasions. The club awarded the largest prize, the handsome sum of ten dollars, for “the most improved backyard.” Contestants could also win smaller prizes of between fifty cents and several dollars for flower beds, window boxes, and vegetable gardens. Such prizes represented a windfall for cash-strapped families of modest means. Women’s clubs, affiliated with both the GFWC and NACW, soon copied this method of winning over the working class to municipal improvement.24 Dock herself wrote the publicity and education materials that were essential to the Backyard Contest’s success. In these pamphlets, she carefully spelled out contest rules, offered gardening advice, and advertised companies that discounted prices for seeds and plants. She visited schools as a way of encouraging children to participate, remarking, “Gardening is fun, even though some seeds don’t come up and some plants die.” Dock’s Backyard Contest writings also promoted middle-class aesthetics to working-class gardeners, who presumably lacked taste and refinement. In the 1903 contest brochure, Dock advised her readers, “Always have some low, white flowered plant along the front edge of a flower bed. . . . Don’t cut up the grass with flower beds, but make a border along the wall or fence. . . . Don’t forget to plant at least one nice old-fashioned red or pink Rose.” Such sentiments among middle-class reformers were fairly common. The nineteenth-century landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing had stated that gardening elevated the human mind and awakened spirituality. And in Dock’s own lifetime both George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington believed that training in scientific agriculture and horticulture would create morally superior farmers and homemakers as well as increased crop yields and beautiful home gardens.25 Dock, however, was also sympathetic to the needs and feelings of Harrisburg’s working-class and immigrant communities. Moreover, she valued their perspectives on city issues. During the 1910s, after having moved out of Harrisburg, she wrote to the current civic club president, asking if the club had ever “entertained” the city employees. She went on to explain, “I do not mean elected officials, but the janitor and scrub-women, and elevator men, the street cleaners, all the people who really do the work. Don’t you suppose it might be very interesting to give a supper, or something, for them and to ask them to do the talking, for very often I think they know of many improvements that could be introduced in their departments, but which the town generally does { 50 }

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not happen to think.” In 1919, at the beginning of the Red Scare, Dock complained in a letter to the Patriot editor about the city’s practice of arresting suspicious-looking, non-English speakers and sending them to the county jail. She lamented, “Upon two occasions I have found that those persons who were ‘acting strangely’ upon those occasions were starving. Is there no one in Harrisburg whose duty it is to endeavor to provide interpreters for the ‘strangers in our midst’?” Six years later, she fumed to a correspondent about discriminatory state laws, complaining, “Pennsylvania is not a good state for an industrious alien to live in.”26 Through their work in overseeing parks, developing playgrounds, and encouraging city gardening, both Dock and McFarland found themselves in great demand as lecturers for cities hoping to copy Harrisburg’s City Beautiful movement.27 During 1902 and 1903, Dock spoke in communities as farflung and diverse as Baltimore and rural Mohawk Lake, New York. She also gave advice on neighborhood beautification for the Patriot and considered writing a series of village improvement articles for the Ladies’ Home Journal. McFarland also wrote articles during 1902–3, most notably for the Progressive magazine the Outlook. Both Dock and McFarland spoke at the American Park and Outdoor Art Association’s annual meeting in Boston during 1902.28 As a result of Harrisburg’s successes, and encouraged by Progressives like Dock and McFarland, many communities worked for municipal improvements and adopted City Beautiful campaigns. Between 1901 and 1910, the heyday of the City Beautiful movement, countless urban residents worked to make their communities both attractive and functional. In Chicago, for example, voters approved a 1902 bond issue for the construction of small neighborhood parks and playgrounds. Five years later, the San Diego city government adopted most of a hired urban planner’s recommendations. By 1909, San Diego could boast of wider city streets, a zoning plan, and municipal improvements financed by bond issues. Between 1907 and 1912, as a result of the publication of The Pittsburgh Survey and pressure from Progressives, Pittsburgh opened twelve new playgrounds, appointed a city smoke inspector to enforce local ordinances, and built a water filtration system. In Detroit, Toledo, and Cleveland, voters replaced unresponsive city officials with reformer-mayors who took municipal improvement seriously. Their efforts, and those of their constituents, made urban communities safer. Waste-related infections from cholera, typhoid, and yellow fever decreased as cities built gravity-flow water reservoirs and new sewer systems. In most cases, men and women cooperated to initiate cleanup, beautification, and an expansion of city services. In Chicago, clubwomen studied the { 51 }

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waste disposal issue and pressured the Chicago Waste Commission to build two reduction plants. In Pittsburgh, the Ladies Health Society of Allegheny County and the mixed-gender civic club worked together to lobby for passage and enforcement of smoke ordinances. At times the sexes clashed, as in San Diego, where male city commissioners concentrated on improvements that developed the bay front and ignored female reformers’ demands to end prostitution and gambling.29 Dock’s 1902–3 lectures and writings presented while working for the City Beautiful movements were noticeably free of the maternalist rhetoric that characterized so much of women’s municipal improvement work in this era. Caroline Bartlett Crane, a Universalist minister and sanitation reformer, justified her work by asking, “And is not one’s city in truth the extension of one’s home?” Similarly Katherine L. Bowlker, founder of the Women’s Municipal League of Boston, characterized “the housekeeping of a great city as women’s work.”30 Dock, perhaps because of her professional and scientific training, her close work with men in Harrisburg, and her desire to attract other male allies, shied away from such characterizations. She preferred, instead, to speak of municipal improvement as “part of the patriotic duty of every citizen” and to emphasize the benefits that Europeans derived from their enhanced communities.31 McFarland, whose spiritual beliefs informed his Progressivism, used language more emotional and religious than Dock’s. While he might applaud McCormick for his businesslike administration of Harrisburg, McFarland often sounded more like an evangelical than a business- and scientifically minded Progressive. In The Awakening of Harrisburg, he described how “the administration of Mayor McCormick was a revelation. The city was cleaned up physically and morally.” In his article “The Great Civic Awakening,” published in 1903 and sounding almost like a nineteenth-century Methodist circuit rider’s sermon, McFarland wrote about “that self-respect which comes to a community when it has roused to a sense of its civic sins and has Methodistically shown by repentance a desire for regeneration.” McFarland’s private correspondence was likewise full of religious imagery. In one 1904 letter to Dock, he all but likened Harrisburg to Sodom and Gomorrah. McCormick’s political opponents, McFarland complained, allowed Harrisburg to stay “an open, dirty, careless, wicked, and generally nasty town.”32 Other male reformers, like Harrisburg printing executive H. W. Fishel, also referred to civic improvement work as a religious duty that would help “uplift” Harrisburg’s laboring classes. Uplift was a constant theme among Progressives who sought to control city dwellers’ behavior by replacing the { 52 }

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saloon and brothel with more wholesome, municipally sponsored amusements like playgrounds and parks.33 Whatever their rhetoric or motives, their success with the Harrisburg Plan allowed McCormick and McFarland to move into larger and more influential political and civic circles. McCormick remained the president of the Harrisburg Municipal League until 1946. He served as a trustee for Pennsylvania State College during the years 1908–11. After being defeated as the Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania’s 1914 gubernatorial race, McCormick successfully managed Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 reelection campaign. McFarland became the first president of the American Civic Association when the American Park and Outdoor Art Association and the American League for Civic Improvement merged in 1904. He would hold this post for the next twenty years.34 Civic improvement and forestry work also propelled Dock into a new position in 1901. Beginning in 1899, she had sought appointment to the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission, established by a Legislative Act of 25 May 1895. The Pennsylvania General Assembly had charged the new agency with locating three state-owned forest reservations on the headwaters of the Susquehanna, Delaware, and Allegheny Rivers. Legislation passed in 1897 authorized the forest commission to purchase suitable acreage at tax sales. The General Assembly also allowed the commissioner of forestry to buy other land, provided he did not pay more than five dollars per acre over the assessed value. Dock’s friend J. T. Rothrock, the appointed forest commissioner, presided over a board composed of five men. These board members included a civil engineer, a prominent Pittsburgh attorney, a wealthy lumberman, and Major Isaac B. Brown, the state’s deputy secretary of internal affairs.35 Dock, eager for a seat on this commission, asked for endorsement from Marlin P. Olmstead, her congressman, who in a January 1899 letter had assured her that his support “is yours at command.” Dock’s eventual meeting with the governor was less satisfactory, her diary entry from 20 January 1900 stating laconically, “Saw the Governor this A.M. Nothing special decided.” The governor was probably reluctant to promise a seat to a woman, particularly when no vacancies were expected. In Pennsylvania, such a job would also be seen as a prime patronage position, due someone to whom an elected official owed favors. As the Harrisburg Beautiful campaign gained momentum, however, and Dock achieved state and regional prominence, her value to Pennsylvania became clearer and her expertise impossible to refute. As Progressivism took hold in the state, it would become harder to overlook a { 53 }

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university-trained botanist with powerful male allies of her own in favor of an unqualified political crony.36 Dock’s opportunity came in 1901, when Albert Lewis, a lumber company owner from Luzerne County, resigned from the Pennsylvania Forest Commission. Rothrock, who had long supported Dock’s candidacy, wrote his friend a letter of congratulations on 24 July 1901. He welcomed “an honest, capable officer” to the commission. One day later, Dock received Governor William A. Stone’s official appointment in a letter of notification from the Secretary of the Commonwealth. On 26 July, she swore her oath of office before notary Norman D. Gray, becoming the first woman in the world to sit on a public forestry commission.37

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Fig. 1 Mira Lloyd Dock (seated center) and friends from Brook Hall School. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives.

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Fig. 2 Gilliard Dock, around 1889. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives.

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Fig. 3 Children playing at a Harrisburg Civic Club Summer Playground site, 1902. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives.

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Fig. 4 Sir Dietrich Brandis. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives.

Fig. 5 Dr. Joseph Trimble Rothrock, 1905. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives.

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Fig. 6 Pennsylvania State Forest Academy students practicing forest-fire fighting at Mont Alto, 1904. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives.

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Fig. 7 Pennsylvania State Forest Academy students lounging on the porch of Wiestling Hall. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives.

Fig. 8 White Pine Camp at the Mont Alto Sanatorium, 1906. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives.

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Fig. 9 Clear-cut Pennsylvania forestland, 1912. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives.

Fig. 10 Deforested acreage in Cameron County, 1900. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives.

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Fig. 11 Map of Pennsylvania forest reserves, 1910. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives.

Fig. 12 Greenhouse at the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Pennsylvania State Archives.

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Fig. 13 Wildwood Lake Park, 2010. Photo: John F. Katz.

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Fig. 14 Wiestling Hall, Penn State Mont Alto, 2010. Photo: John F. Katz.

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Dock received widespread acclaim upon her appointment to the Pennsylvania Forest Commission. The Harrisburg Telegraph highlighted her qualifications approvingly, noting that Dock had “given years of study to the question [of forestry] and is an authority.” Congratulations streamed in from friends and colleagues. Fellow civic club member Eefleda Gottschall stated, “We are proud of our [Department of Forestry and Town Improvement] Chairman.” Letters came as well from the Harrisburg Board of Trade, the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, and Secretary of Agriculture Hamilton. Dietrich Brandis sent Dock congratulations as well as instructions outlining the tasks before her. In Brandis’s opinion, her “first duty is to form State Forest Reserves . . . where under good management the land will produce a crop of fine marketable timber. You must look out for competent executive officers who understand their business.”1 Brandis’s advice was timely, given the condition of Pennsylvania’s forests in 1901. The Pennsylvania Forestry Association’s earlier warnings about lumber shortages seemed destined to come true, as companies decimated stands of white pine and hemlock. Dock likewise had warned about clear-cut logging and its destructive impact on watersheds and soils. The Pennsylvania State Agriculture Society and the Pennsylvania Fruit Growers Association had joined the chorus of concern when the state’s lumber industry experienced phenomenal growth during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.2 Economic productivity in this industry had come at a high price. Capitalism, rather than conservation, dominated the thinking and practices of late nineteenth-century lumber companies. Land, like capital and labor, was a

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commodity in need of efficient organization and management. Land-based resources were developed, marketed, and sold to make quick profits for investors. Capitalist land management quickly took its toll in Pennsylvania. By 1900, clear-cutting had wiped out the old-growth forests on the High Allegheny Plateau. Exploitive land practices created a new microclimate and habitat as clear-cutting opened up the forest canopy. Clear-cutting also led to some of the worst forest fires in Pennsylvania history. Abundant waste materials, like wood debris and conifer needles, combined with locomotive sparks, farmers’ land-clearing fires, and hunters’ matches resulted in numerous ignitions. Pennsylvania, as Dock stated after her Black Forest tour, had neither a network of forest roads nor professionals trained in forest-fire fighting. Therefore, blazes rapidly became devastating conflagrations. These occurrences disturbed seeds and saplings, increasingly jeopardizing forests’ ability to regenerate. Valuable commercial species like white pine and hemlock waned. Inferior tree varieties—aspen, pin cherry, and scrub oak—proliferated. Pennsylvania’s fifteen northernmost counties, the Northern Tier, were particularly devastated by these developments, since these communities depended upon lumbering for their sustenance. By 1920, Pennsylvania had only 0.06 percent of its original 28 million acres of forestland intact.3 In terms of lumbering and deforestation, the Commonwealth exemplified national trends. Deforestation had occurred as early as the colonial period, when New Englanders harvested timber for local fuel supplies and industries as well as for Caribbean and English markets. Boston suffered firewood deficits as early as 1638, and Maine experienced a timber shortage during the 1790s. Over the first half of the nineteenth century, the six New England states reported that their forestland decreased from 21 to 65 percent. Dramatic habitat change followed. Pastures replaced forests and English botanical species overtook native varieties. Wolves, cougars, deer, and moose vanished. In 1864, environmentalist George Perkins Marsh observed in his book Man and Nature that forest depletion in New England caused warmer winters, drier summers, soil damage, and decreased agricultural productivity. Moreover, the lack of lumber hurt the region’s shipbuilding industry. New England was not alone. According to the U.S. Forest Service, by 1900 logging and forest fires had also ruined 20 percent of the forestland in other parts of the Northeast and the Midwest. The developing West proved no better. During a 1900 survey of federal lands in Arizona, Gifford Pinchot reported that overgrazing had destroyed forests and contributed to soil erosion and silted rivers.4 As Dock noted during an 1897 trip to Massachusetts, New Englanders had responded to the deforestation problem. Concerned citizens organized { 66 }

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state-level conservation movements as early as the 1810s. In addition to providing citizens with free information on forest conservation, voluntary associations gave prizes to farmers who planted trees. New Englanders also lobbied their state officials to authorize investigatory reports, pass conservation laws, and establish regulatory agencies. Under pressure from agricultural interests, New Hampshire created a state forest commission in 1891. The Keystone State employed similar measures later in the century. In 1887, under pressure from farming and forestry groups, the Pennsylvania General Assembly authorized the governor to appoint a commission to “examine and consider the subject of forestry in Pennsylvania, and report to the next regular session of the Legislature.” This three-member commission solicited suggestions from the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, held county-level hearings, and collected information from state and federal agencies.5 Dock’s friend Joseph Trimble Rothrock ably chaired this commission. Born on 9 April 1839, he held a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and lived in West Chester, near Philadelphia. While accompanying the Wheeler Expedition on its geological survey of the West, Rothrock developed an interest in botany. He was the American Philosophical Society’s Michaux Lecturer on Forestry and was well respected by farmers, foresters, and government officials. As such, he was altogether an excellent choice to spearhead the ad hoc forestry commission.6 The commission’s 1889 report gave a dismal picture of the Commonwealth’s forests: “It is now very generally admitted that our forests are exhaustible.” Pennsylvania’s woodlands suffered from “reckless waste” and “almost total disregard for the future.” Because coal mines, railroads, public utilities, and construction industries depended on timber, a future lumber shortage had dire consequences for the state’s economy and standard of living. Furthermore, Pennsylvanians needed forests for soil conservation and water purification, although “a lamentable ignorance of the importance of the subject seems to prevail in many localities.” Dock would make use of both Rothrock’s preliminary findings and this final report during her 1897–1901 lectures.7 The investigatory commission chided Pennsylvania for its lack of public policy and made a number of recommendations. The board members noted the abundance of lumbered-off, abandoned land, and suggested the Commonwealth acquire and reforest this acreage. Experimental stations, which conducted research on state forestland, “would prompt the people to individual effort in the same direction [reforestation].” Furthermore, state-employed foresters could educate citizens in ways that would “produce a more healthy { 67 }

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and progressive public spirit in regard to the value of our forests and the need of using them to the best advantage.” Both the Pennsylvania General Assembly and Governor James Addams Beaver ignored these recommendations.8 A second investigatory commission, appointed in 1893 and headed by Rothrock, found the situation even worse, with soil erosion, fires, and bad lumbering practices contributing to the decimation of Pennsylvania’s forests. This second board bluntly advised the Commonwealth to immediately establish a permanent forest commission. The General Assembly took this advice and established a permanent Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission, with Rothrock as the forest commissioner, in 1896. The board commenced its work in 1897. Stone appointed Dock to the commission in 1901.9 Rothrock, who had known Dock since the 1870s, had pushed hard for her appointment. He had earlier forwarded Dock’s career by recommending her as a Farmers’ Institute instructor to agriculture secretary Hamilton. Rothrock and his wife also spent personal time with Dock, frequently inviting her to join them on photography and wildflower expeditions.10 As a new commission member, Dock’s first concern centered on Section 6 of the 1897 act establishing the commission, which called for it to “employ forest wardens.” Like Brandis, Dock wanted these positions filled by competent, trained employees. No Pennsylvania institution, however, offered a forestry program, and very few existed elsewhere in the United States. George W. Vanderbilt had established Biltmore Forestry School on his estate near Asheville, North Carolina, in 1898. Cornell and Yale Universities began their forestry programs in 1898 and 1900, respectively. Harvard professors taught appropriate courses at the Arnold Arboretum, in Boston, and the Bussey Institute, in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yet the Forester complained, “There is no institution in this country which gives a thorough course in forestry such as is given in the foreign schools of forestry.”11 American conservationists and budding foresters were well aware of the problem. In order to prepare for his future career, Gifford Pinchot had enrolled in L’Ecole Nationale Forestrie in Nancy, France, in 1889. He spent 1890 working in Zurich’s municipal forest and touring northern European woodlands with Brandis and a group of British forestry students. While Pinchot found his course of study useful, he also believed that European methods could not be systematically transplanted to the United States. Although he had the utmost respect for Brandis and the Swiss foresters he encountered, Pinchot was not impressed with the men who taught and studied at the Nancy school. Furthermore, Pinchot believed the French model was too autocratic for the United States. A distinctly American forestry curriculum { 68 }

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was needed, one that understood both the North American environment and the U.S. system of federalism that divided authority for resources between national and state governments. Moreover, American forestry should be scientific and innovative, to attract the nation’s best young minds.12 Dock, with Rothrock’s encouragement, gathered information on the need for more college-level forestry programs well before her appointment to the commission. She, along with her clubwomen allies, then lobbied the state legislature for a forestry education appropriation. Rothrock, disgusted that applicants for forest commission jobs were unqualified former lumbermen, tried to persuade the University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State College to offer forestry course work. Neither school expressed interest initially, although Penn State did establish bachelor’s and master’s programs in 1907. Undeterred, Rothrock outlined, in the Pennsylvania Forestry Association’s 1901 issue of its publication, Forest Leaves, a plan for a state-operated school of forestry. In 1902, Rothrock approached Governor Samuel Pennypacker, asking permission to establish such an institution at the Mont Alto Forest Reservation, sixty miles southwest of Harrisburg, where “the student would combine work and instruction.” Pennypacker gave his permission, but the General Assembly appropriated no money for the purpose. Rothrock next asked Andrew Carnegie for a $26,625 grant. Rothrock envisioned a campus on the forty thousand acres of Mont Alto, where three instructors would teach forty students in a two-year program. Carnegie did not provide any funding, but in 1903, two years after Dock joined the forest commission, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed House Bill 33, which appropriated sixteen thousand dollars for the school.13 With funding assured, the forest commission advertised its new program. In a 1902 bulletin, the deputy commissioner of forestry, Robert S. Conklin, outlined qualifications for applicants. Conforming to societal beliefs that forestry was a manly enterprise, only male citizens of Pennsylvania, between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five years of age, could apply to the Pennsylvania State Forest Academy. Applicants also had to pass a physical examination and “a test of scholarship.” Those who qualified received state-paid tuition as well as room, board, stationery, and linens. Each student had to supply his own clothing as well as a horse. Pennsylvania would, however, feed, stable, and shoe the animals. Since students were being educated at taxpayer expense, forest commissioners decided to accept only Pennsylvania residents.14 The Pennsylvania State Forest Academy opened its doors in July 1903 with ten students, four faculty members, and a housekeeper. State forester George H. Wirt served as the academy’s director. Ralph Brock, who took { 69 }

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charge of the nursery, was among the first African-Americans to study botany at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to becoming part of the South Mountain Forest Reserve, the campus had belonged to the Mont Alto Iron Company. Its 22,000 acres, which had been used by the Iron Company for charcoal production, still contained vast forest acreage and were home to 144 species of native Pennsylvania trees. The Cumberland Valley Railroad linked Mont Alto to Harrisburg, making it easy for state forest commissioners to lecture in classes and make inspection tours. An existing farmhouse served as a dormitory while the former ironworks’ office was used as a classroom building and residence hall. By 1905, thirty students attended the school. The ten newly admitted freshmen constituted an elite corps, as sixty young men had submitted applications for the 1905–6 term.15 From the outset, Dock involved herself heavily in the forest academy. Because she had visited the Tharandt Academy in Germany during her Black Forest tour, she consulted frequently with Wirt on curricula and instruction. With Dock’s advice, for example, Wirt lengthened the Pennsylvania program from two to three years. Dock also insisted that forest academy students learn German, as the best forest research articles and most forestry textbooks were written in that language. Later, hoping to provide professional development for academy graduates, Dock arranged for her “boys” to take graduate courses at Lehigh University. Dock even concerned herself with details of the students’ uniforms. In a 1903 letter to Wirt, she suggested that students wear khaki rather than navy blue: “In blue the boys will look like soldiers, orphans, or broken-down motormen.”16 A change of address in 1901 enabled Dock to invest a great deal of personal time and energy into the academy. In 1900, she bought a property close to Mont Alto that included an old stone house and sufficient acreage for a tree plantation. Since 1889, the Dock family had been visiting the nearby Graeffensburg Inn, a former water cure establishment now owned by the forest commission and leased to an innkeeper. Dock had grown to love the area and hoped to use her property as an experimental nursery where she could “practice what I had been preaching.” As she explained in a 1925 letter, “In the Black Forest I had been shown in 1899 how to start a forest nursery . . . so in October 1901 I gathered some pine seed . . . and in May 1902 my first thousand pine trees germinated. . . . My original intention was to annually raise enough trees to replant some of our land. . . . The second purpose was to have a forest arboretum.”17 By 1901, repairs to the farmhouse had been completed and Dock and her sister Margaret moved into their new home. In 1902, Mira was hard at work, { 70 }

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planting coniferous and deciduous seedlings, including specimens she’d received from Pinchot. Through 1904, Mira continued to make “grand improvements on the property.” Letters to Lavinia and Margaret, who were visiting Europe that year, described tree pruning, manure spreading, flower planting, stone digging, and shrubbery staking. Mira confided to her sisters in one letter, “Your hair probably rises sometimes as you think of the money being poured forth.”18 The younger Dock sisters might very well have been concerned about finances. By 1902, Mira had cut back on her lecture career, “for the state work became more and more exacting.” As a forest commission member, Dock received “no salary but [had] many expenses to be paid personally.”19 Fortunately, the Docks had considerable real estate holdings in Harrisburg, and later in rapidly developing Florida, that supplied family income. Margaret Dock took charge of managing these properties, dealing with mortgages and leases and making repairs. Lavinia, Laura, and Emily also contributed to their oldest sister’s support. Mira acknowledged this in a 1903 letter to Rothrock, writing, “My sisters always pulled me out of holes, because they thought I had a certain ability to do other things than make money.” Mira, however, did not totally discount her own earning potential, for she made sure to stock her nursery with “trees of economic value.”20 With her sisters’ support, Mira continued to renovate the property, subscribing to phone service and improving the water system in 1907. Her diary for May of that year described “planting, cleaning of beds” on the fourteenth and, on the twenty-second, sowing “my soaked Pine & other tree seeds. . . . Also Sweet Alyssum in Phlox bed.” The sisters found themselves enjoying country life, with Lavinia, Laura, and Emily spending frequent and extended vacations there, and with Vinnie retiring to the farm herself in 1918. When the family’s collie, Sugger, died in 1910, Laura buried him by an apple tree east of the farmhouse. Margaret, absorbed with Mira in the tree plantation, brought home botanical samples from a European trip in 1911. The next generation of Docks loved this farm as well. George’s sons spent many summers at their aunts’ home. In July 1903, George Jr. wrote to his father, still in Michigan, about a novel gift from Aunt Mira—a rattlesnake’s tail containing thirteen rattles. As a result of his trips to rural Pennsylvania, the teenaged George Jr. developed a lifelong interest in bird banding. Mira, who had so carefully mothered her siblings, no doubt delighted in nurturing her nephews and sharing her love of nature with them.21 Dock now spent much of her time at Mont Alto. As both a Pennsylvania Forest Commission member and a neighbor of the forest academy, Dock performed a number of functions at the school. She gave frequent botanical { 71 }

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lectures to academy students and arranged for University of Pennsylvania faculty to speak on topics in which she and academy instructors were deficient. She regularly attended the Friday night lecture series inaugurated in 1905, the only female present at what the Mont Alto students referred to as “smokers.” On one particularly stimulating evening, she wrote, “Went over to the school & heard a most interesting, discursive discourse, full of good things.” Dock showed considerable interest in the Mont Alto tree nursery, where students performed manual work and engaged in research. After a generous donation of seeds in 1908, academy director Wirt wrote Dock, promising, “We shall keep a record of the number of seeds which you have sent us, and the number germinating.” Dock herself experimented with former students’ inventions, such as buying and using Raymond Winter’s acorn planter and Alfred Rupp’s planting tool.22 During her years as a forest commission member, Dock often served as an inspector, visiting the academy and reporting on its activities to fellow commission members throughout the state. Her status as the lone female in this male preserve never deterred her from campus participation, although inclement weather sometimes curtailed her visits. On 3 February 1910, for example, it was “raining too hard to go out to see [the new] dormitory.” Later that year, however, Dock did attend Mont Alto’s commencement on 10 August. She found it a “very interesting day. . . . Dr. Rothrock’s address simply perfect. The young men’s papers very good.” While she represented the highest authorities, to which students were beholden for their education, academy pupils seemed to delight in her company. On Sundays, enterprising young men frequently rode their horses to Dock’s farm, where she welcomed them with tea and cookies. Her diary entry for 19 February 1910 mentioned, “4 of the graduating class to dine with me today.” Like her nephews, academy students served as surrogate sons for Dock. Her work on behalf of these foresters-in-training extended beyond her professional duties as a forest commission member.23 Students appreciated Dock’s personal attentiveness as well as her botanical expertise. In overseeing her “boys’” welfare, Dock took on a more femalespecific, surrogate mother role. When students complained about their school’s distance from towns with public libraries, Dock appealed to the Pennsylvania Forestry Association. Its members then donated twenty-five dollars for works of fiction, history, biography, poetry, and travel. Dock received regular reports from the academy outlining students’ health problems, and she helped oversee social functions. In 1911, one senior expressed gratitude for the concern she’d exhibited during his recent knee injury. Thirteen { 72 }

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months later, a class officer, James Irwin, thanked Dock for chaperoning a dance to which Chambersburg girls and Wilson College students had been invited. Irwin wrote, “The boys appreciate your interest and patronage very much, and I am requested to convey to you their individual thanks.” Over the years, students and alumni presented Dock with several honors. The alumni association of the Pennsylvania State Forest Academy inducted Dock into their ranks in 1912. In 1914, the students’ literary group, the Rothrock Club, made Dock an honorary member. Dock was the only female to ever receive membership in these Progressive Era organizations.24 Under Dock’s tutelage, academy students not only learned the profession of forestry but also accomplished important forest commission objectives. At Mont Alto, the young men cut fire lines, investigated chestnut blight cases, cut and thinned diseased trees, transplanted nursery seedlings, and surveyed property lines. During summer, practicum students traveled to other state forest reserves, where they helped experienced foresters build roads, cut trees, and install telephone lines. Senior theses, required of all graduates, provided research findings helpful to the commission’s reforestation efforts. Forest academy students sometimes performed dangerous work. Upon arriving at Mont Alto, students were sworn in as local justices of the peace and expected to arrest vandals and arsonists while patrolling South Mountain. Beginning in 1904, students received firefighting training and often helped extinguish the blazes that frequently threatened state reserves.25 With such extensive and varied experiences, Dock’s colleagues among the Mont Alto faculty and her former students achieved distinguished careers. Her esteemed colleagues included Dr. Joseph S. Illick, who taught biology at the academy beginning in 1907 and served as acting dean in 1917. He became Pennsylvania’s state forester in 1927, was later promoted to chief of silviculture and research, and ended his career as Syracuse University’s dean of the College of Forestry. Edwin A. Ziegler, professor during 1902–3 and 1909–10, and director during the years 1910–29, served with the U.S. Forest Service from 1903 to 1909 and was the senior research forester in Pennsylvania during the years 1932–37. Illick’s and Ziegler’s students were no less accomplished. Among the 243 men who graduated from the forest academy during the years 1903–29 was B. Frank Heintzelmen (1907), who worked for the U.S. Forest Service for forty years and served as governor of Alaska beginning in 1953. His younger classmate R. Lynn Emerick (1909) was chief of Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Forests for many years. John W. Keller (1910) held the posts of both deputy secretary and secretary in the Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters.26 { 73 }

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More importantly, Mont Alto alumni provided skilled labor so desperately needed in state forests. By 1910, forty-one foresters worked at the Commonwealth’s reserves. Thirty-eight of these men were academy graduates. Indeed, only two of the alumni had left state employment since 1903. Until 1911, state law required the forest commission to hire all of its former students. After that, the commission continued the practice except in those years in which an inadequate state appropriation forced the board to make “considerable reduction in the [labor] force.” Most Mont Alto students, however, had experiences comparable to those of Harold Emery Bryner, who received his employment contract on 12 August 1908, just days after his graduation. Robert Conklin hired Bryner to the commission at a salary of sixty dollars a month and immediately dispatched him to New Germantown to “acquaint yourself thoroughly with the lands you have charge of.”27 These new state employees faced many challenges. Monthly reports, compiled by Philip Hartman Fox during 1912 and 1913, give a glimpse into the multifaceted job of a Pennsylvania state forester. Fox graduated from Mont Alto in 1911 and received an appointment to Sinnemahoning State Forest, in Potter County. A newlywed, Fox and his German-born bride honeymooned in a tent camp at Sinnemahoning while he settled into his job. The new forester spent most of his time replanting the badly deforested hillsides, devising a new planting board and set of mallets to help in this operation. His planting work proved so successful that he was soon able to sell seedlings, at cost, to local residents. Fox also fought fires, such as one in May 1913 that burned one hundred acres of the forest commission’s land. Frequently, Fox worked as manager as well as forester. He interviewed candidates for ranger positions, passed his recommendations on to state authorities, and supervised the work of these men. He kept payroll records, dispensed labor checks, and sympathized with commissioners when the state General Assembly “pared it [the commission’s annual appropriation] down to the lowest possible amount.”28 At times, Fox and his colleagues were called upon to be Progressive educators, in all senses of the word. In November 1913, Fox lectured to Austin, Pennsylvania, teachers and schoolchildren on forestry, as part of the local school’s Arbor Day activities. He helped the school community plant 192 pine seedlings, enabling the youngsters to practice educator John Dewey’s philosophy of learning by doing. That same year, other state foresters supervised school-yard tree plantings, led schoolchildren on tours of their reserves, and lectured at county teachers’ institutes. Such work complemented the nature-study curriculum taking hold in American schools and expressed { 74 }

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Dock’s philosophy that planting trees “promoted public sentiment [for conservation] among children.”29 Educational work extended beyond Pennsylvania’s classrooms. Foresters forged relationships with Dock’s allies in the women’s clubs eager to work for conservation. Several state foresters wrote articles on forest fires and chestnut blight for local newspapers. Others lectured at regional colleges and designed public exhibits. In 1911, John Keller arranged for George Wirt to deliver a forestry lecture that he hoped would “pave the way for other talks on the same subject.” Two years later, Alfred Rupp asked Wirt to lecture at a public meeting of farmers and businessmen, “as the people do not understand our work.”30 Indeed, the Mont Alto graduates, and forest academy itself, proved to be unique. It was the only school ever established by a U.S. state to educate foresters, and it fulfilled a number of functions. It both trained its students in practical and theoretical forestry and assured the Commonwealth a steady supply of professional foresters. The school at Mont Alto trained students under local conditions, equipping them to efficiently conserve, reforest, and manage Pennsylvania’s woodlands. Furthermore, the academy’s existence meant that state foresters were hired on merit, not patronage. Pennsylvania State Forest Academy graduates, therefore, were the quintessential Progressives, able to serve the public and solve pressing social problems on the basis of their scientific training and their professional expertise. Dock had reason to be pleased with her role in both founding the school and assuring its students’ success.31 Dock also played a role in the founding of another forest commission institution, the Mont Alto Sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. Here, Mira worked closely, not only with J. T. Rothrock, but also with her sister, Lavinia, who, through her work as a public health nurse at Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement House in New York City’s Lower East Side, had become an expert on tuberculosis. As early as 1901, the American Journal of Nursing published her articles on tenement house inspections, hygiene courses, and the nursing of contagious disease patients—all measures designed to stop the spread of tuberculosis. In 1908, Lavinia and a former colleague, Adelaide Nutting, presented a session on tuberculosis for the International Council of Nurses meeting.32 Tuberculosis, a disease known to the ancient Greeks, had become a scourge of turn-of-the-century industrial society. Immigrants, in particular, succumbed to this lung disease exacerbated by malnutrition, long hours of labor, and filthy living and working conditions. By the 1890s, physicians understood that { 75 }

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tuberculosis was the result of environmental conditions, not vice and heredity. They recognized as well that the disease was contagious. In 1791, English physician John Cockley Lettsom established a thirty-sixbed sanitarium at Margate, in Kent, where patients could engage in moderate exercise and breathe sea air as a cure. In 1853, German medical student Hermann Brehmer wrote a groundbreaking doctoral dissertation on tuberculosis, claiming that this disease could almost always be cured in its early stages, provided patients lived above sea level. One year later, he established the first modern sanitarium, in the Bavarian Alps, where patients took daily forest walks, rested for lengthy periods, ate nutritious foods, and drank springwater. Brehmer’s ideas spread to other parts of Germany as well as Switzerland. By 1900, wealthy Europeans and American tourists could recuperate at sanitaria, which resembled luxury hotels.33 Meanwhile, in the United States, Edward Livingston Trudeau, a medical doctor from New York, cured himself of tuberculosis in 1882 by moving to Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains and practicing a Brehmer-like regimen. Realizing that poor urban residents lacked the means to recuperate at mountain resorts, Trudeau used donations from wealthy New Yorkers to establish a sanitarium at Saranac. Patients lived in cottages, rather than hospital wards, to preserve a measure of independence. Patients also took daily walks, ate three meals per day, and drank glasses of milk every four hours. Trudeau afforded other physicians the opportunity to study at Saranac Lake. While Trudeau was curing New Yorkers, Vincent Y. Bowditch established the first state-run tuberculosis sanitarium at Rutland, Massachusetts, in 1899.34 Rothrock himself suffered from lung trouble and had once founded a mountainside summer camp for sickly boys. The forest commissioner had been interested in using state forests to “provide citizens with health” since his days on the second investigatory forest commission. As a physician himself, Rothrock would have been familiar with Brehmer’s and Trudeau’s sanitaria. It is likely as well that Rothrock consulted with the Dock sisters. He worked collegially with professional women and had the opportunity to confer with tuberculosis expert Lavinia during one of her many visits to her sisters’ home. In fact, Mira, in a 1902 forest commission report, wrote of visiting the tuberculosis camp with “my sister, L. L. Dock, a trained nurse with considerable experience of [tuberculosis] camp life.”35 Mira seemed eager to connect forestry work with public health. Through her club activities in Harrisburg and her tour of European cities, she understood the connections between squalid living conditions, dangerous work environments, and contagious diseases. In 1906, she commented, “The rapid { 76 }

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growth of towns and cities has been effected without regard to the future health, pleasure, or recreation of the large majority of the population, who for many reasons are unable to have the amount of space about their dwellings which would be both wholesome and pleasant, and desireable to have.” A decade later, in a letter to a steel company executive, Dock explained that the high rate of tuberculosis found among coal and steel town residents resulted from “low percentages of open space.” In another letter, to a Pennsylvania congressman, she lamented, “I happen to see in my daily work and life so much unnecessary suffering caused by the nonhumane manner in which many persons have to work.” Sanitarium founding fitted well with her philosophy that Progressive Era reforms were part of one “fundamental idea” and should not be pursued in “piecemeal” fashion.36 Lacking official mandate, Rothrock nonetheless admitted his first tuberculosis cases to Mont Alto in 1902. These patients lived in tents and outbuildings funded through private donations. Patients paid for their own food. The state provided no medical supervision, other than what Rothrock might have given on his visits to the reserve. At this juncture, the commission had no authorization or funds to establish a sanitarium on state land. Dock, however, had it on good authority, from the deputy attorney general, that the governor would approve such measures once the General Assembly passed appropriate legislation. In 1903, the legislature provided eight thousand dollars to be provided to the commission over a two-year period for the creation of the Mont Alto Sanatorium. During 1903, the facility treated twenty-five inmates, all of whom, according to Rothrock, “were improving.” In 1904, he boasted of a “forty percent cure rate” and only two deaths among the twenty-two male and female patients.37 By 1906, eighty-nine patients had been treated at Mont Alto. Sixtyone people, 69 percent of the total sanatorium population, had been cured or had “greatly improved.” This cure rate “compared favorably with sanatoriums worldwide.” Mont Alto then became a national model for other states and organizations interested in establishing similar facilities. Rothrock received inquiries from both private physicians and organizations, like the White League, that were interested in curing tuberculosis. Dock likewise fielded questions about the sanitarium, and took members of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association on a tour of the facility in 1904.38 Like the state forest academy, the Mont Alto Sanatorium admitted only Pennsylvania residents. Those desiring admittance had to apply to the camp doctor, A. M. Rothrock, son of the forest commissioner. Governor Pennypacker had appointed the younger Rothrock, a physician at Rush Hospital in { 77 }

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Philadelphia, in 1904, after a previous camp doctor proved to be incompetent. From the outset, the Rothrocks emphasized that the sanatorium functioned as a camp and not a hospital. Inmates prepared their meals, brought their own bedding, and cleaned their quarters. As J. T. Rothrock wrote in 1904, the state provided only “shelter, pure air, and pure water.” Over time, however, the camp’s facilities became more substantial. After being assured of legislative support and the legal right to establish Mont Alto, the forest commission erected cabins for sanatorium patients. Forest academy students also built benches on the sanatorium’s grounds out of native timber. By the fall of 1903, Mont Alto had an assembly hall, six cottages, and ten cabins.39 As was the case at other state-run sanitaria, Mont Alto patients lived according to a strict regimen where the institution regulated every aspect of the inmates’ lives. Patients ate, exercised, and rested at set times. Local clergymen saw to residents’ spiritual needs. Gum chewing, firearms, and swearing were all strictly prohibited. In this way the forest commission assured both taxpayers and donors that there was no “immoral element” and “no carousing” at Mont Alto. Drinking alcoholic beverages was among the most serious of all infractions, subjecting patients to instant dismissals. When J. T. Rothrock heard of a drinking incident in 1903, the inmate in question hastened to assure the forest commissioner that he had not been drunk. In a letter of apology, the man explained that he had only imbibed “a little Whiskey to warm up and as a Stimulant.” As Rothrock pondered expulsion, the patient sent a second letter, pleading, “You will never regret, that you have given me another chance.”40 While Rothrock, as a licensed physician and Pennsylvania’s chief forest commissioner, served as the public face of the Mont Alto Sanatorium, Dock also involved herself heavily in the institution. She frequently inspected the camp, sometimes by herself and sometimes accompanied by Lavinia, and she received written reports from the Rothrocks. Just as she’d done in Harrisburg during the City Beautiful campaign, Mira showed concern for the physical environment of Mont Alto and the degree to which the facility met residents’ physical and emotional needs. She examined all details of the institution from the cleanliness of the quarters, to the purity of the facility’s water, to the recreational opportunities. During an early visit in 1902, she wrote, “We [Mira and Lavinia] found the campers very cheerful, even happy, most grateful for the opportunity of living in such a health-giving spot.” Besides performing official forest commission work at Mont Alto, Dock served as a philanthropist and private benefactor. In 1902, George Wirt, who also frequently inspected the sanatorium, thanked Dock for the packages she’d sent to the patients. { 78 }

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Wirt wrote, “The campers do not know who sends the gifts but extend their thanks to whomever it may be.” Six months later, he advised Dock to wait until the anticipated construction of Assembly Hall before buying the patients a Ping-Pong table. In 1906, a fellow commission member, John Fulton, thanked Dock for supplying newspapers to Mont Alto inmates. Dock worked hard as well to interest public officials and private citizens in Mont Alto’s work, inviting both Governor Pennypacker and voluntary associations to visit the facility.41 During the five years in which the Pennsylvania Forest Commission ran the Mont Alto Sanatorium, Dock and Rothrock had good reason to be proud of their work.42 Establishment of this open-air camp enabled indigent Pennsylvania residents to receive tuberculosis treatment available in other states and regions only to the wealthy. As one grateful patient explained in 1903 of his family’s circumstances and his short stay at Mont Alto, “Financially we are in a very bad fix. . . . I think that I have improved considerable.” Former inmates, cured of their disease, remembered Mont Alto as a place where they had received “tender, loving kindness.”43 As for Dock, her experiences with the sanatorium convinced her of the success of open-air tuberculosis treatment. Part of her campaign for municipal and state forests centered on sanatoria’s potential to provide clean air and green space for urban Pennsylvanians as an antidote to environmental conditions that fostered the disease. Since her 1899 European trip, she had decried the “insufficient provision for light and air, clouds of dust and waste carelessly thrown upon streets and open lots” that characterized American cities. As she explained European cleanup measures, she recommended “municipal forests” as well as “sewage treatment, pure water, parks.”44 Yet Dock realized that other remedies such as protective legislation were also needed to eradicate the causes of tuberculosis. She therefore also supported such reforms as the prohibition of child labor, explaining her support in this way: “My long acquaintance with our tuberculosis camp has made me fanatical about over-work . . . intensified by the case of a boy, who is now dying of tuberculosis due to overwork.”45 Her interests in educating foresters or treating tuberculosis patients notwithstanding, Dock’s primary job as a forest commission member was to assist in acquiring, conserving, and reforesting woodlands. In turn-of-the-century Pennsylvania, the commission faced a difficult job. Despite the conditions Rothrock had documented in his 1893–95 investigation, forestry was not a popular movement at the time of Dock’s appointment. In the 1860s and ’70s, Pennsylvania had been the greatest timber-producing region in the world. Although much of northern Pennsylvania had been clear-cut by the 1880s, { 79 }

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citizens wondered whether conservation might deprive the economy of wood, workers of jobs, and lumber companies of revenue. This was a serious concern at a time in which U.S. annual wood consumption was 25 billion cubic feet. Taxpayers objected to the use of public money for forest reserve purchase, and many argued that such purchases were unconstitutional.46 In Pennsylvania’s Northern Tier, oil company executives feared that the establishment of large reserves might remove potentially profitable acreage from the commercial sector. As state forester Walter Mumma complained in 1912 after completing a land survey around Oil City, “It is surely deplorable to note how little sentiment there is in this region towards conservation and our policy. . . . People here are too much interested in oil and gas.”47 Complicating the commission’s job was the fact that Pennsylvanians who lived adjacent to abandoned former woodlands often felt free to harvest remaining timber, graze cattle, and hunt on this acreage. When the forest commission bought lumbered-off tracts and foresters began their work, clashes inevitably occurred between state employees and local citizens. In some instances, former lumber company employees squatted on the land they had previously worked, often refusing to vacate the state-owned property. Local citizens ran bootleg lumber operations, farmers nailed fence wire to forest reserve trees, and grazing cattle ate newly planted seedlings. In 1912, the notice in the Clinton County Times that cattle found on state forestland would be impounded greatly upset county residents. Foresters found themselves the targets of verbal abuse and threats of violence. One such individual, F. P. Sunday, faced a rather common situation in 1909 when he caught some timber thieves on his reserve. The report he sent to Robert Conklin at the forest commission stated, “Mr. Heger called me everything but a man when I stopped the men from cutting the telephone poles off this tract.” Two years later, another forester, W. L. Kauffman, reported that the president of a local sportsmen’s club “threatened to knock my face off.” Class and ethnic differences compounded these exchanges. After evicting illegal campers in 1909, Kauffman made clear to Conklin that the twenty men were “all foreigners from the coal towns” who were in “an ugly mood.” In White Deer, a township in Union County, working-class taxpayers greatly resented the commission’s presence, for they believed the agency had been established solely “for the Lumber Companies to get rid of their lands when Lumbered off.”48 Such conflict over conservation policy was not unique to Pennsylvania. New York Adirondack Commission employees also dealt with illegal woodcutting and hunting as well as revenge arsonists upset about what they perceived to be restrictive state laws. Southern states’ conservation laws that { 80 }

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restricted hunting and required the fencing of cattle presented hardships for blacks and poor whites alike. Federal officials managing Yellowstone asked for military assistance to evict poachers and illegal cattle grazers. Frequently, this issue pitted white authority figures against Indians, who resented the loss of traditional hunting grounds. The U.S. government forced tribes to cede their rights to land in both Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks. After creation of the National Park Service, NPS agents at Yosemite sent Native adult trespassers to jail and youthful offenders to Bureau of Indian Affairs’ schools. Yet not all conflict over conservation was racialized. Adirondack poachers and arsonists were generally longtime white residents. While serving as U.S. chief forester, Gifford Pinchot spent considerable time soothing western elite white mine owners, ranchers, and lumbermen who opposed federal conservation laws. Like J. T. Rothrock and Robert Conklin in Pennsylvania, Pinchot found himself constantly defending the foresters who upheld congressional law and arresting the miscreants who trespassed in western national forests.49 Aware of this formidable opposition, Rothrock and Dock recognized early the need to educate citizens and taxpayers, particularly middle-class, potentially Progressive businessmen, about the need for conservation and the benefits Pennsylvanians would derive from the practice. In a series of articles, published and disseminated by the Pennsylvania Forestry Association in the late 1890s, Rothrock outlined his case for conservation and reforestation. He focused on the natural consequences of exploitive timbering practices, described the environmental degradation caused by clear-cut lumbering, and explained how scientific forestry might preserve Pennsylvania’s water and soil quality. In his article “Water Supply,” for example, Rothrock blamed tree removal and water runoff for decreased volume in the Schuylkill River, which supplied Philadelphia’s water. A later essay implicated the same causes for low volume in the Ohio and Susquehanna Rivers. Rothrock cited “competent engineers” who had found that “wooded areas have three-fifths more water than treeless ones.” Furthermore, wrote Rothrock, soil erosion, caused by deforestation, had impoverished the soil in prime agricultural counties like Chester, Lancaster, and York.50 Rothrock also carefully soothed the state’s business community, insisting, “Lumbering is not necessarily antagonistic to forestry.” In an essay entitled “What Forestry Is,” he stated that trees were crops produced on land unsuitable for other types of agriculture. Forestry, then, was “the production of the largest possible crop of the best lumber in the least time, at the least expense . . . in such a manner as to do the least injury to the soil or the succeeding crop.” { 81 }

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According to Rothrock, lumber companies and the commission could work together, ensuring that profitable Pennsylvania forest products would be available to successive generations. Wrote the commission, “Forestry can render perpetually useful and productive large areas in this State upon which no agricultural operations have ever been attempted.” In a further attempt both to satisfy the lumber companies and to reverse harmful public policy, Rothrock advocated changes in Pennsylvania laws. He recommended, for example, amendments to the state tax code to allow property owners to defer taxes while trees grew on their farms and woodlots.51 The forest commissioner also delivered messages that appealed to constituencies outside of Pennsylvania’s business community. To arouse citizens suspicious of foreign nations and large corporations, Rothrock stated that tree conservation made the United States independent of foreign timber and protected American consumers from price gouging by corporate trusts. As a means of appealing to public health reformers, preservationists, nature-study educators, and summer camp organizers, Rothrock declared that public forests provided citizens with “health, recreation, and amusement.” For those citizens who still needed convincing, Rothrock used a bandwagon approach, citing the newly aroused interest in conservation among farmers, teachers, and the Pennsylvania Forestry Association.52 The forest commission member Dock used language similar to Rothrock’s. In a 1903 speech, she listed the commission’s objectives as protecting streams, soil, and forests; reviving the state’s lumber industry; and promoting public health and pleasure. She informed her audiences of the need to “cut worthless stuff” and to plant “good timber trees,” reminding them, “Forestry has been said to begin with the axe.”53 As a way of reassuring business interests, she recommended that “conflicting interests” be resolved through “amicable agreement.” Lecture notes, written at one point during Dock’s two terms as a commissioner, emphasized the ways in which trained foresters protected lumber resources against insects and fungus, promoted natural regeneration, and suppressed economically useless trees. She hammered away on the subject of forest fires as well, emphasizing how fire prevention protected valuable young trees.54 Rothrock’s and Dock’s conservation arguments were neither new nor original. Their justifications for scientific forestry closely paralleled those of other prominent Progressive Era conservationists. In a 1901 speech to Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt declared that forestry simply promoted the “right use of resources.” In a show of his utilitarian philosophy, Roosevelt asserted, “Forest protection is not a means in itself; it is a means to increase { 82 }

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and sustain the resources of our country and the industries which depend upon them. The preservation of our forests is an imperative business necessity.”55 Pinchot, another Dock ally, took the argument for utilitarian forest management programs a step further. He argued that preserving resources for the future safeguarded the welfare of all Americans, not just capitalist businesses. As U.S. chief forester he defined good conservation practices as those that produced “the greatest good, for the greatest number, for the longest run.” In his signature book, The Fight for Conservation (1910), Pinchot referred to conservation work in both altruistic and democratic terms: “Conservation is not merely a question of business, but a question of a vastly higher duty. That duty is to see, so far as in us lies, that those who are coming after us shall have the same opportunity for happiness that we have had ourselves. Conservation is the most democratic movement this country has known for a generation. It regards the absorption of these resources by the special interests, unless their operatives are under effective public control, as a moral wrong.”56 In Pinchot’s mind, professional foresters, employed by the government, were best equipped to implement the policies that safeguarded resources, since these men were guided by science and not the profit motive. Yet Pinchot also displayed a keen interest in forest economics and held no sentimentality about trees per se. Defending his management policies in his 1947 publication Breaking New Ground, Pinchot argued of cutting trees, “You can’t practice Forestry without it.”57 Despite being female and thus, according to contemporary thinking, being prone to emotionalism, Dock was no more sentimental about trees than was Pinchot. In her mind, scientific management and proper utilization of forest land and trees were the paramount objectives of the forest commission. She did not use gendered or sentimental language when lecturing or writing about forestry, and she had little patience with preservationists who saw trees only in aesthetic terms. Nor was she averse from scolding her ally, McFarland, who was prone to stating, “It shall not be cut.” In 1909, furious about a bill that McFarland supported but the commission did not, Dock sent her friend a biting letter inquiring, “Why do you never take time to spend half an hour in reading over the laws governing the Forestry Department and Water Commission. The Dept. is doing the best it can, believe in it, use your influence for its bills.” McFarland replied politely, “I guess we had better not pursue further the subject of the Public Forest Control bill, for we seem fated to misunderstand each other.” Dock’s spats with McFarland over conservation policy in Pennsylvania reflected utilitarian-preservationist conflict nationwide. Divisions between preservationists and “right use advocates” plagued { 83 }

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the Roosevelt administration. A major conflict erupted between Pinchot and Sierra Club founder John Muir in 1905 when Pinchot told the U.S. secretary of the interior that damming the Hetch Hetchy River would not hurt the Yosemite Valley. Muir, who had previously had mild disagreements with the chief forester, battled with Pinchot over the Hetch Hetchy dam project for the next eight years, the issue eventually breaking their friendship.58 While Dock might disagree with both anti-conservationists and preservationists, she also believed her role as a forest commission member included citizen education. She reminded fellow board members, in a 1907 report, that when commission members traveled the Commonwealth, they helped “convert unfriendly residents” to conservation work. She herself set the example, meeting with groups as diverse as the Lumberman’s Association, the Wilson College faculty, and Franklin County judges. She also served as the forest commission’s representative at national conservation congresses in 1911 and 1912, and on the state’s Chestnut Tree Blight Commission in 1912. On several occasions, she invited governors and their wives, or Pennsylvania Forestry Association officers, to visit her tree plantation, from which she could stage visits to the South Mountain reserves. In 1903, Governor Pennypacker accepted Dock’s invitation and toured the reserves. Among Dock’s extensive writings on forestry issues during her years on the commission were a 1908 reply to the Philadelphia Press, which asked her to render an opinion on local controversy over the cutting of live conifers at Christmastime. She assured newspaper readers that they should not disappoint their children, and suggested parents buy live trees that could be replanted. Between 1910 and 1912, Dock worked on a book-length guide to Pennsylvania trees. In 1912, she published an article on forest-fire prevention, explaining how state foresters performed the work and why the current state appropriation for this item was inadequate.59 Dock particularly excelled at organizing public exhibitions and meetings on forestry that appealed to a wide variety of constituencies. At some point during her commission career, she created an exhibit aimed at educators and instructed that it be erected “in a good place during the time of the Annual Convention of County [public school] Superintendents in January.” When the Pennsylvania Forestry Association held its annual meeting in Chambersburg in 1908, Dock suggested that the group’s evening meeting take the form of a lecture, and that it be open to the general public. Enthusiastically, the association rented a large hall at Wilson College, invited Governor Edwin Sydney Stuart, and asked Dock to “make sure the house is full.”60 A year later, she used a forests, orchards, and gardens exhibit she had prepared for a State { 84 }

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Federation of Pennsylvania Women meeting in Harrisburg to showcase forest commission work. She labored tirelessly on this project, securing the board of trade building for the exhibit, arranging for press coverage, and securing materials from state foresters and academy faculty. Robert Conklin, who had replaced Rothrock as the Pennsylvania forestry commissioner, was quite complimentary on the exhibit. George Wirt, who had worked with Dock to organize the display, believed the effort “more than justified itself.” Dock, looking for new ways to educate the public about conservation, continued to develop new initiatives. In 1911, after ten years of hard work on the commission, she sent Conklin her most recent plan for educational work. Her strategies included updating the commission’s library, supplying newspapers with “materials of interest,” and continuing her work with farmers’ institutes, inservice teacher education, and business groups. The commission reported ongoing use of the forestry exhibit during 1912 and 1913.61 Part of Dock’s educational work included lobbying for legislation that promoted the forestry commission’s objectives. In 1903, for example, she spent considerable time working to increase the Department of Forestry’s annual appropriation. Dismayed that a proposed state budget would slash the commission’s budget, she caught a train to Harrisburg and “went straight for the Governor.” During this meeting, she wrote, “I said all I could for the appropriation.” Fearful that she had not convinced the governor, she next “thought of my influential cousin, Aleck Pedrick.” Pedrick stated that he objected to increasing the forestry appropriation but, after hearing Dock’s arguments, promised, “Well I can’t do anything to help you, but I won’t do anything against it.” This 1903 incident was not the last time Dock opposed politically powerful males and former allies. She upheld the need for eminent domain laws, even when this put her into conflict with the railroad executives who supported her during Harrisburg’s City Beautiful campaign. Yet she also continued to work with longtime friends in the conservation movement. She collaborated with McFarland and the American Civic Association on bills of mutual interest, such as the Shade Tree Planting Act of 1907, and wrote to Pennsylvania Forestry Association officials asking them to lobby for a state park association.62 Most of Dock’s commission duties, however, did not center on educational or lobbying work but on inspecting the state’s forest reserves and consulting with the foresters she’d helped to train. She took such work seriously, securing sixty-eight topographical maps of Pennsylvania from the U.S. Geological Survey before performing her first inspection tour. From 1902 until her retirement from the commission in 1913, she spent a considerable amount of time { 85 }

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visiting the reserves, interviewing the foresters, and making recommendations. In May 1905, she wrote to her sisters describing the forest conditions around Easton and Stroudsburg and then mentioned she would shortly be in Philadelphia. During 1907, she spent five days at the Greenwood Furnace Reserve in Huntingdon County. Her typical travel itineraries were daunting, particularly at a time when paved roads were nonexistent in much of the Commonwealth. During one particular trip, she spent the month of October traveling through northern Pennsylvania via railroad and horse-drawn buggy, inspecting reserves in Erie, Kane, Coudersport, and other Northern Tier areas. This journey entailed crossing half a dozen counties and traveling several hundred miles. On another, two-day, trip, she visited numerous sites in Bradford, Tioga, and Potter Counties. These inspection visits took Dock into hostile territory—the same locales where state foresters battled trespassers, poachers, and arsonists. Many Progressives generally considered these rural Pennsylvania mountaineers rough, uncouth, and even criminal. Given contemporary middle-class opinion, Dock’s willingness to travel alone into these remote regions of the state is remarkable. Yet neither her public correspondences nor her diaries reflect any sense of danger or fear. Perhaps she felt her femaleness, along with Victorian codes of decorum, gave her a measure of protection. Perhaps her tall stature, commanding voice, and the poise that came from years on the lecture circuit discouraged potential troublemakers. Whatever the reasons, she seemed comfortable in the male, rough-and-tumble world of Progressive Era forestry.63 Dock succeeded as an extremely productive and efficient forest commissioner. Conklin, in his 1911 report, noted that she had worked eighty-five days, almost a quarter of the year, on state business. Almost all of the commission’s information on Mont Alto had come from her. While engaged on forest commission business, she received no salary, although the state did reimburse her for travel expenses.64 During her site visits, Dock carefully inspected tree nurseries, timber stands, roads, and outbuildings. She spoke with both state-employed foresters and private citizens from nearby communities. Then, in true Progressive fashion, she reported her professional observations and made recommendations to her fellow commissioners. For example, in 1902, Dock witnessed an out-ofcontrol forest fire and concluded the problem occurred because “the law did not permit Constables to work across or outside their township lines. I so reported at the next Commission Meeting, and I think a change was made in the fire law at the [Pennsylvania General Assembly] session of 1903 which gave wider powers to constables.” After visiting the Huntingdon County reserves { 86 }

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in November 1907, she suggested that the state both make some “experimental planting” and thin out the “spindly” oak and chestnut. Memos, written after inspection tours in June and August 1910 mentioned “new notices on trees at Caledonia” and “banks of streams” and asked, “Are they to be protected from garbage, litter, etc.?” In January 1912, she commented on the “excellent white pine plants” at the Asaph Nursery, and she recommended that fire lanes be widened at Sinnemahoning Creek, in Potter County, Pennsylvania, along the New York border.65 Dock’s recommendations often centered on personnel and physical plant matters as well as botany and forestry. In 1903, in a five-page report to Rothrock, she asked for an additional watchman at Caledonia State Park. In her opinion, three guards could not adequately patrol eighteen thousand acres. A year later, she supervised the installation of a new reservoir and pumping system at Mont Alto. When she had to miss a commission meeting in 1911, she sent a written report, describing repairs needed on Mont Alto buildings, and the next year she suggested the use of native stone for a new bridge at Caledonia. Ever the educator and publicist, she asked the State Run forester in 1911, “Why not get the Public Schools to help plant a mountain side?”66 Dock often interceded with managers and fellow commission members on behalf of employees. When a state forester wanted to rehire a ranger, previously fired for drinking, Dock noted the man’s previous exemplary work record and suggested he sign an abstinence pledge as a condition of his continued employment. In 1910, Conklin forewarned the Michaux district forester that Dock would be visiting his reserve to investigate several personnel matters. Sawmill employees, unhappy “with regard to the manner in which they are being paid at present,” had specifically asked to meet with Dock. While in the area, Dock also planned to discuss the working hours of female employees at the Graeffensburg Inn—which the commission leased and regulated until the 1920s—with the commission’s lessor, Mary Withers. According to Conklin, “Miss Dock also feels that the labor during the fall and spring months by the girls should be of shorter hours, probably starting at 8 o’clock in the morning and quitting at 4:30.” Once again, Dock’s broad-based view of conservation, which included human health and safety, influenced her work on the state forestry commission.67 Despite the professional credentials and energetic temperament that made her a suitable forest commissioner, Dock displayed sensitivity to the fact that she was a woman involved in a male-dominated occupation. Throughout her career, she insisted that the “profession of forestry was a man’s work.” In her 1903 report to Rothrock, she worried that she would be perceived as “the { 87 }

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weak element on the board.” These were not unfounded worries at a time when critics labeled male conservationists as effeminate, and reformers like landscape architect Charles Eliot Jr. felt the need to state that his profession was manly. Dock attempted to stem this type of criticism by insisting that official forest commission letterhead during 1901–2 list her as “M. L. Dock” as a way of disguising her gender. This often worked, as correspondents sometimes addressed her as “Dear Sir.” By 1903, however, either Dock had changed her mind or the ruse was no longer effective, for commission letterhead identified her as “Mira L. Dock.”68 Dock’s fellow commission members and employees, however, had no doubts as to her qualifications and genuinely appreciated her input. Foresters, in particular, welcomed her visits and frequently sought her expertise. On one occasion, she did receive queries about wallpaper for a forester’s house, from a soon-to-be-married young man who wanted “a woman’s opinion.” Primarily, however, foresters’ questions concerned botanical and physical plant matters. One such individual, D. B. Meredith, in 1904, consulted with Dock on a faulty underground drain, while in another instance foresters David Libby and W. L. Byers needed help with insect-infested oak and pine. Foresters wrote Dock requesting Arbor Day literature for local schoolchildren and copies of geological surveys. These young men, often new academy graduates who lived and worked in isolated locations, looked forward to visits by their former neighbor and teacher. In 1908, Libby enthusiastically informed Conklin that he was prepared to meet Dock at the train station with a carriage and drive her “as far as Miss Dock wishes to go.” Walter Mumma likely spoke for many Pennsylvania foresters when he described a 1911 inspection visit with Dock to Galeton and Coudersport. In his monthly report to Robert Conklin, Mumma wrote, “The trip was of wonderful value to me.”69 The men who served on the Pennsylvania Forest Commission likewise treated Dock as a valued colleague. Samuel B. Elliot, a former lumberman from Reynoldsville, frequently sought Dock’s opinion on issues such as reforestation, professional development for foresters, and nursery capacity. After a reassuring letter in 1911, Elliot responded, “I am glad to know that it is your intention to visit more of the reservations and consult with the boys.” Rothrock and Conklin likewise asked Dock’s advice on problems ranging from hostile public opinion to fire prevention. Political leaders were also aware of Dock’s value to the forest commission. After attending a 1909 political event, George Wirt made the following observation to Conklin: “You should have been to the Reception Friday night and heard the Governor speak in the highest terms of Miss Dock and her work.”70 { 88 }

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Dock and her colleagues undeniably accomplished much for Pennsylvania forestry during the twelve years she served on the commission. A summary of the commission’s work, during three fiscal years for which official reports exist, is revealed in table 1. Records indicate that Pennsylvania’s 827,723 total acres in 1909 had expanded to 994,029 acres by 1913, by which time forest commission work in purchasing land, reforestation, and forest-fire prevention had paid handsomely. In 1913, Mont Alto nursery stock alone was worth three thousand dollars. Forty-six thousand hardwood conifers from this reserve, worth over a million dollars, were available for planting in 1913, and 785,000 were available to the public in 1914. In 1912, private citizens of the Commonwealth purchased 66,854 seedlings from forest commission nurseries. Moreover, in 1912–13, Pennsylvania received revenues of $21,606.66 from one reserve alone via business leases and sales of timber and stone.71 To the delight of Dock and Rothrock, Pennsylvanians also used their state forests for recreation. As early as 1901, the commission established public parks in the reserves at South Mountain and in Pike and Monroe Counties. In Dock’s words, the commission’s arrangement to operate the Graeffensburg Inn meant “persons of moderate means can enjoy scenery and opportunities for quiet inexpensive recreation.” Caledonia, the park at South Mountain, received an average of 25,000 visitors each summer, many coming via trolley from Harrisburg and Chambersburg. In 1908, foresters issued 596 camping permits to 3,409 people in eighteen counties. The next year, 622 permits were issued to 3,590 people in twenty-two counties. On 3 October 1913, the commission fulfilled one of Dock’s goals by granting Pennsylvania’s children the free use of recreation grounds in state forests. The growth of recreation in state forests was perhaps not surprising, since hunters and fishermen were early and ardent proponents of conservation. Pennsylvania’s hunters lobbied heavily for the establishment of a state game commission in 1895, which responded to the concerns of middle-class urban sportsmen by issuing restrictive regulations and supporting the work of the forest commission. At the national level, wealthy New York members of the Boone and Crockett Club lobbied for federal laws to conserve forests as a means of protecting big-game habitat.72 Table 1 Accomplishments of the Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission, 1901–13

Acreage purchased Trees planted Forest fire property losses

1901–2

1908–9

1912–13

572,722 15,000 $1,240,000

75,230 838,416 $688,980

27,799 5,090,932 $761,590

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Pennsylvania’s achievements led other states to follow its example in forestry matters. Massachusetts and Vermont established state forest commissions in 1903 and 1905, respectively. New York, which had created an Adirondack forest preserve and commission in 1885, involved itself heavily in conservation and reforestation. The state also regulated hunting and fishing, with the full support of its sportsmen and women. Northeastern states were not the only ones concerned with the condition of woodlands. Maryland, for example, passed its first forestry bill in 1906.73 Other states were eager to copy the Keystone State’s policies. Even those with long-established boards showed interest in the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry’s unique structure. Only in Pennsylvania did the forestry department exist as a separate, distinct entity. Other states submerged forestry within their agricultural departments, and the federal government divided issues related to woodlands between the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior. (This federal, “bureaucratic jumble” led Pinchot to lobby heavily for Congress to transfer all Interior-managed forests to Agriculture, a strategy that succeeded in 1905.) One Progressive Era forestry publication mentioned that Virginia, Alabama, and Maryland “are copying Pennsylvania’s methods.” During her tenure as a forest commission member, Dock received inquires about Pennsylvania policies from as far away as California. She explained Pennsylvania’s forestry cachet to D. L. Bitler, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, in this way: “Pennsylvania is pre-eminent now in Forestry, other States are very desirous of knowing all about it.” Many correspondents credited Dock with the Commonwealth’s forestry successes. A Rhode Islander, for example, wrote, “I believe that you have done about as much to encourage this work as anybody in the state.”74 In 1905, four years after Dock’s initial appointment, Dietrich Brandis congratulated her on the “success of the work undertaken by the Forestry Commission.” Governors Samuel W. Pennypacker and Edwin Stuart agreed and reappointed her in 1906 and 1909, respectively. Thrilled by Pennypacker’s decision, Conklin sent a congratulatory letter, stating, “It gives me great pleasure to learn that you are still being regarded as the foremost woman in the United States advocating the forestry movement.” The mother of Pennsylvania forestry, however, could not keep up her frenetic pace of work forever. During her second term on the Pennsylvania Forest Commission, illness plagued her family. Emily suffered from poor health, and Mira nursed her sister, as she had previously cared for their father. One of George’s sons had a severe accident during 1907. Dock never mentioned the details in her correspondence, except to mention “how wonderful it was that he escaped with { 90 }

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his life” and that he now bore a scar. While her nephew’s accident occurred in Michigan and Dock bore no responsibility for his convalescence, the incident nevertheless upset the fifty-three-year-old doting aunt. Mira herself dealt with a bout of temporary blindness in 1907, brought on by sunstroke. In a 1911 letter to General Federation of Women’s Clubs officer Mrs. Lovell White, Dock explained that once again a family member was ill and required her attention. Citing her family responsibilities, Dock finally resigned from the commission in 1913.75 At its final meeting in 1913, the Pennsylvania Forest Commission passed a unanimous resolution honoring Dock for “12 years of faithful productive effort.” Her male colleagues further stated that Dock “stood in a class by herself.” Although highly complimentary in nature, the resolution did duly note Dock’s gender. Dock’s fellow commission members stated, “With a woman’s instinct she saw the need of measures which escaped notice of other members of the commission, and with a woman’s tact she led to their adoption.”76 Dock received many letters from state foresters as well as from Brandis’s widow expressing their regret at her resignation. Dock, however, had not retired from public life entirely. She continued to work for conservation and forestry as well as municipal improvement, albeit in a different venue.77

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Having worked with the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women and its member clubs during her career as a forest commission member, Dock found that her expertise in conservation and municipal improvement work had propelled her by the 1910s into the leadership of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Here, Dock worked on projects of national as well as state and local importance. The GFWC had evolved in 1890 from an older organization, the Association for the Advancement of Women, founded in 1873. The association’s members were municipal women’s study clubs, founded after the Civil War, to promote middle-class women’s efforts at self-improvement. At its annual congress for women, association members presented papers and networked with clubwomen from across the nation. According to Jane Cunningham Croly, president of New York City’s Sorosis and one of the GFWC’s founders, women’s clubs were the “school of the middle-aged woman.” Through their club activities, white upper- and middle-class women developed business acumen, learned parliamentary methods, and honed their verbal and written communication skills. The Dock sisters’ Wednesday Club was one such organization. Barred from GFWC membership, African-American women did similar work through the National Association of Colored Women.1 Sorosis and other clubs had, by 1890, evolved from groups that studied the arts and concentrated on their own uplift to organizations concerned with current events and civic reform. During the Progressive Era, new clubs formed with civic affairs as their sole agenda. Described by Croly as the first “truly civic club in the U.S.,” the well-to-do members of the Civic Club of

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Philadelphia, organized in 1893, pledged to “promote, by education and active cooperation, a higher public spirit and a better social order.” The club organized four departments dealing with municipal government, education, social science, and art. Club members educated themselves on civic matters by reading pertinent literature, discussing municipal issues, and inviting experts like Dock to deliver lectures. The civic club soon became a major force for reform in Philadelphia—advocating the establishment of civil service, agitating for better city schools, and renovating housing through the Octavia Hill Association in South Philadelphia. Clubs in other cities engaged in similar work. During the 1890s, Akron, Ohio, women’s clubs worked for the employment of police matrons in city jails, cleaner streets, and art education in public schools. In Chicago, members of the Women’s Club supported the work of the Hull House settlement, while the Woman’s City Club organized the Clean City campaign.2 The GFWC facilitated this club work in ways that the older Association for the Advancement of Women, a mere clearinghouse, could not. The GFWC encouraged state and local federations to collaborate, coordinate, and avoid duplication of effort. The federation’s Bureau of Information provided clubs with research papers, books, and other information on civic and social issues. Periodicals such as the Woman’s Cycle, the Club Woman, and the Federation Bulletin informed members about civic work occurring throughout the nation. At biennial conventions, GFWC officers and delegates met to share strategies and develop policy. By the time of its third biennial, in 1896, member clubs and federations engaged in a wide array of projects promoting public health, education, conservation, and safer working conditions for women and children. By 1906, forty-six state federations had town and village improvement committees or forestry departments similar to those Dock had organized in Pennsylvania.3 As Dock did on the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission, GFWC members engaged in a wide range of activities that they saw as essential and interconnected. Clubwomen justified this work by claiming their public labors were simply extensions of their domestic roles. As a GFWC delegate stated at the 1898 biennial, “Poor Uncle Sam has no wife. . . . What he needs is a real ‘Aunt Sam’ who will see to the housekeeping.” From the GFWC’s perspective, all manner of institutions needed women’s help, and thus no field of endeavor should be closed to its members. At the 1900 biennial, delegate Mrs. William Christie Herron argued that American cities needed the expertise of homemakers who had proven their abilities to make their houses beautiful and their families comfortable. Wives and mothers should transfer their { 93 }

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skills from the home to the larger community, according to Herron, as a means of improving public health. Herron’s definition of public health was quite broad, encompassing city government reform, park creation, and playground supervision. One year later, an author writing for the Club Woman justified women’s involvement in public education reform, anti-obscenity legislation, and municipal improvement as means of “surrounding children with the beautiful and protecting them from the harmful.” Dock, while more likely to define public work as a patriotic duty, did on occasion describe both municipal improvement and forestry as “better housekeeping out of doors.”4 Pennsylvania clubs, like Dock’s Civic Club of Harrisburg, joined both the GFWC and the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women. The group, formally organized in Philadelphia on 29 October 1895, held its first annual meeting one year later in Bradford. Representing thirty-six clubs from twentyfive municipalities with seven thousand members, the federation grew as Progressive reform engaged more women. Rural communities, such as Cashtown and Mount Union, organized clubs in the early twentieth century, much as urban women had done a decade or two earlier. In 1908–9, for example, 183 clubs with twenty thousand members belonged to the state federation. The Central District, which contained only one-seventh of Pennsylvania’s population, was home to twenty-nine of these clubs and boasted 1,828 active members. Much of this growth occurred because of tireless work by state federation officers. Dock, who was vice president of the Central District, often lectured to non-affiliated clubs on the benefits of state federation and GFWC membership.5 Like those in other states, the Pennsylvania clubs included women interested in both self-education and reform. Many of these organizations had roots in older, charitable associations. As early as 1828, Carlisle women formed a Female Benevolent Society to “ameliorate the conditions of the Poor.” The society held monthly meetings, visited poor families in their homes, raised funds, and provided relief. In 1886, the society collected $656.59 and spent $649.09 on “relief in fuel, food, and pensions.” During the 1889 fiscal year, the society amassed $711.45 from individual donations, local church offerings, and interest on the society’s bonds. It spent $700.57 on “flour, wood, groceries, bread, coal, and three coffins.” In antebellum New Brighton, Beaver County, reform-minded women organized a Female Moral Reform Society and a Ladies Benevolent Society. Pennsylvania’s women continued founding charitable and reform societies well into the late nineteenth century. By 1882, New Brighton was home to a thriving Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Wilkes-Barre women organized a { 94 }

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Christian Benevolent Association (CBA) in 1888 to provide relief to families who lost breadwinners in the frequent mining accidents that plagued the community.6 These charitable and reform associations, while organized around community concerns, differed in both philosophy and methods from the Progressive Era women’s clubs. Antebellum organizations focused on providing relief or changing the habits of individuals, rather than wholesale societal and institutional reform. Even the WCTU, which supported initiatives such as juvenile court systems and women’s suffrage, saw its political and social work as tools used to achieve larger temperance objectives, rather than worthy reforms in their own right. Benevolent societies, moral reform groups, and temperance associations organized around religious principles. Their members couched both societal ills and their proposed solutions in religious terms. The New Brighton Moral Reform Society framed prostitution as “the sin of licentiousness.” Its founders pledged themselves to ostracize the “licentious male,” prevent innocent women from “falling,” and to “reclaim by such means as are sanctioned by the holy scriptures those of our own sex who have fallen into this odious vice.”7 The Carlisle Female Benevolent Society encouraged its members to engage in the “moral improvement” of their clientele. In 1886, the society’s officers condemned “indiscriminate and injudicious almsgiving which fosters idleness and encourages deception.”8 Hannah Packard James, vice president of Wilkes-Barre’s CBA, explained in the association’s 1897 annual report that one of the organization’s goals was to “drive the drones to work, or from our midst, as well as diminish the army of unworthy paupers in our valley.” Ten years after the New Brighton WCTU’s founding, a member characterized its work as “principally Evangelistic and Educational.”9 By contrast, Pennsylvania’s Progressive Era women’s clubs were secular organizations that promoted reform primarily on the local level. The first woman’s club in Bucks County, the Doylestown Village Improvement Association, was organized solely for “the improvement of the health and beauty of the town.” Similarly, the Woman’s Club of Mechanicsburg’s constitution stated, “The object shall be the mutual improvement of its members, and also such civic and other work as may be deemed advisable by the Club.” Neither group mentioned any religious purpose or philosophy in its organizational documents.10 Yet clubwomen also hoped their reforms would improve the character of individuals, particularly immigrants. The Woman’s Club of New Castle believed its mission to be “the cultural advancement of the community.” Dock and her fellow clubwomen saw the Civic Club of Harrisburg’s playground { 95 }

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program as a means of socializing and Americanizing the children of workingclass immigrants. Playground directors carefully documented, in their annual reports, the ways in which they taught good behavior and love of country to Jewish and Slavic schoolyard denizens. Recreation workers posted U.S. flags at the playgrounds and started each morning with patriotic exercises. Playground leaders took pains to model and teach American middle-class, workplace values like fair play and turn taking. Generally, they believed their efforts were successful. As the director of the Harris Playground reported, “There was a marked improvement by the end of August in the way the ring games were played.” In this way, she sounded remarkably like John C. Olmsted, a member of the Portland, Oregon, Park Commission, who claimed, “Parks educate the people to better things,” and New Yorker William George, who established summer camps to “uplift the poor” and socialize immigrant children. Dock herself on occasion wrote of the need to “Americanize the foreigner.”11 Unlike early women’s charitable associations, turn-of-the-century women’s clubs also studied social issues scientifically, acquainting themselves intimately with problems before taking action. In 1905, Mechanicsburg clubwomen studied “Food Principles and Home Sanitation” before joining the GFWC in lobbying for the Pure Food and Drug Act. The Woman’s Civic Club of Wilkes-Barre invited experts on youth recreation and sanitation to inspect their city’s dance halls, jails, and streets. Middletown clubwomen sponsored a lecture given by Dauphin County’s juvenile probation officer. The state federation followed suit, inviting such experts as Alice M. O’Halloran, a member of the Pennsylvania Dispensary Corps, and Elizabeth Meek, a bacteriologist, to lecture at its 1909 convention. Before lobbying for a Pennsylvania Shade Tree Commission Act in 1910, federation officers obtained copies of New Jersey’s model law and sought advice from Elizabeth Leighton Lee, a landscape architect.12 As the chairman of the Civic Club of Harrisburg’s Department of Forestry and Town Improvement, and later as an officer in the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, Dock involved herself heavily in the work of Pennsylvania’s women’s clubs. While working on Harrisburg’s City Beautiful campaign, she also lectured on municipal improvements for local clubs and at state federation conventions. After speaking to the Woman’s Club of Lebanon in 1898, for example, “she returned numerous times,” visiting there as late as 1911. When the Philadelphia Civic Club lobbied for city shade-tree ordinances in 1910, its officers similarly called on Dock for support, noting, “Your name would add much weight to our efforts.”13 { 96 }

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During her years as both a State Federation of Pennsylvania Women officer and a member of the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission, Dock continued to visit and correspond with women’s groups. She sent as many as 906 letters, petitions, leaflets, and meeting notices annually to member clubs, the materials dealing primarily with municipal improvement and forestry. As a means of handling this correspondence, while engaged in other club and forest commission duties, Dock developed an efficient mailing system. She proudly described this routine to a GFWC officer, Marion Crocker, in a 1914 letter: “Here is my system on mail: Put the date of arrival on envelope; rubber [band] each day’s mail together. Send typed postal of acknowledgment if unable to answer at once. Have carbons of all letters filed with letter and indexed to transfer to you. Of course I list mail sent out, circulars, etc.”14 Dock’s energy and efficiency on behalf of Pennsylvania’s women’s clubs propelled her into GFWC leadership at the highest level and enabled her to work on a variety of nationwide initiatives. These included forestry and natural resource preservation; water and mineral conservation; creation of the National Park Service and the Lincoln Highway, an early transcontinental auto route; and support of the U.S. forest regiments during World War I. Closer to home, however, much of Dock’s state federation work involved helping local clubs with their cleanup and conservation projects. Initially, this work required her, through lectures and writings, to inform clubwomen and local communities of the need for municipal improvement. Dock knew that women’s public work was still somewhat controversial, and that, to the general public, problems such as garbage collection seemed better suited for scientifically trained males than amateur females. Despite her belief that municipal improvement was largely an issue of responsible citizenship, she took care to frame the issues in ways that fit with public sensibilities. Lectures from 1898 and 1899, for example, encouraged women’s involvement in the public parks movement as a means of providing “physical rest and moral uplifting” along with “better housekeeping out of doors.” In 1909, she further emphasized, “The Primary purpose of almost every Civic Club is a cleaner town.”15 Appeals of this genre made sense to Dock’s audiences. Turn-of-thecentury Americans did, for the most part, concede that females had special moral, religious, and nurturing characteristics. Progressives, furthermore, believed that these qualities should be used for the redemption and uplift of others, particularly the working class. As the New York Evening Post reported on one of Dock’s conservation lectures, “It is naturally to be supposed that women would be foremost in a good work of this kind.”16 { 97 }

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While clubwomen overtly stated, “The purpose of the club is not to overturn women’s relation to home as house-keeper,” they vastly expanded their roles and influence within their communities. Many clubs accomplished the stated objective of Philadelphia’s New Century Club, “the opportunity for a broader life.” Pennsylvania clubwomen certainly framed their projects— working for healthier and safer communities, protecting powerless children, and safeguarding public morals—as simply extensions of their traditional roles as wives and mothers. In this way, their rhetoric mirrored that of clubwomen nationwide. Yet club members’ willingness to engage public officials in grassroots politics, confront prominent business interests, and raise money through high-stakes investment were not considered typically feminine activities.17 The work of Carlisle’s civic club was a case in point. Founded in 1898, the club’s focus was considerably broader than that of providing food and fuel for indigent residents, as the older Benevolent Association had done. In a 1903 article, Dock’s friend, club president Gertrude Biddle, in rather unfeminine language, wrote that borough women literally “attacked the dirty streets.” Club members arranged for newspaper coverage of the issue, drummed up public support, and lobbied for borough ordinances to solve the problem. During 1905–6, clubwomen spent considerable time attending meetings and monitoring the borough council in the hopes that the council would address the street-cleaning problem. Club members also confronted the Opera House manager, extracting a promise to keep the building in better condition. In 1908–9, the civic club membership, concerned about child labor in the borough, sent one hundred letters to Cumberland County businessmen and Governor Stuart, expressing support for pertinent legislation. The civic club’s fund-raising techniques, moreover, differed from those of the Benevolent Association, which relied on private donations and church offerings. When clubwomen decided that Carlisle residents needed more wholesome, lowcost recreational opportunities, the civic club bought stock and used the dividends to finance a new public park.18 In Philadelphia, Dock’s allies in the civic club formed a broad-based Civic Betterment Association to coordinate the grassroots work needed to carry out the club’s municipal improvement objectives. Much of this work took club members into poorer urban areas and involved contact with the city’s notoriously corrupt politicians. In eighty-six city neighborhoods, female volunteers reported to the Bureau of Health about neglected outhouses, smelly stables, and sewage problems. Philadelphia clubwomen monitored streets to ensure that city departments cleaned and repaired thoroughfares. In 1904, { 98 }

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unhappy with the way in which city contracts were awarded, association members wrote to Mayor John Weaver, suggesting changes. Clubwomen studied other cities’ smoke ordinances and then petitioned the city council for abatement legislation. After investigating Philadelphia’s transit system, the association also demanded adequate night service, free transfers, and improved cleanliness in streetcars. Such work, according to scholar Marion Roydhouse, was more public and assertive than the charitable benevolence performed during the Gilded Age by wealthy women who visited slum dwellers, lectured them on middle-class virtues, and dispensed charity to the deserving poor. The Civic Betterment Association and civic club were also involved in municipal elections, checking the lists of eligible voters for mistakes and fraud and disseminating educational literature. These groups were partially responsible for the appointment of clubwoman Mary Mumford to the state board of public education when Pennsylvania women lacked the franchise.19 Whenever possible, clubwomen sought to collaborate with like-minded men, rather than antagonize their community’s business and political leaders. The Allegheny County Civic Club, unlike most civic clubs, included both male and female members. Two of its fourteen presidents, and many of its other officers, were women. In 1913, for example, eleven of twenty-five civic club officers were female. Both men and women served on the club’s Public Baths Board, monitored county schools, taught English-language and citizenship classes, and lobbied for municipal fire and anti-billboard ordinances. The civic club also collaborated with male-dominated organizations, such as the YMCA, on projects such as services for newly arrived immigrants. The club’s female officers also worked closely with the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women and the GFWC. Kate Cassatt McKnight served as the civic club president from 1902 to 1907 and a state federation vice president, beginning in 1903. McKnight lobbied heavily on behalf of the GFWC’s education and child labor agendas. Mrs. F. P. Iams, civic club president during 1914, worked closely with Dock when both women chaired national federationwide committees.20 Most Pennsylvania civic clubs, however, were populated only with female members. They worked with male counterparts who also belonged to singlesex organizations, and who were likewise concerned with urban social ills and municipal improvement. These collaborations were similar to the cooperation that Harrisburg’s civic club and board of trade had undertaken during the City Beautiful campaign of 1901. In 1906, the Carlisle Civic Club and the borough’s Good Will Fire Company cooperatively watered public parks. In WilkesBarre, the Woman’s Civic Club worked with both the elected city council and { 99 }

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the board of trade, a voluntary association, to ensure public support for a municipal cleanup day in 1911. Members of Doylestown’s women-only Village Improvement Society collaborated with local clergy and physicians to establish a town hospital. Women’s clubs solicited help from state employees when warranted. Lock Haven’s Women’s Civic Club, for example, requested from the regional state forester copies of Pennsylvania’s Shade Tree Commission Law and seeds for local school gardens. Dock herself encouraged this work in both her capacities as a Pennsylvania Forest Commission member and a State Federation of Pennsylvania Women officer.21 Women’s study and civic clubs did improve many Pennsylvania communities. Three years after forming their first women’s club, McKeesport matrons secured a pledge of three thousand dollars annually from Andrew Carnegie for the local library. In Lebanon, clubwomen were the guiding force behind the girls’ club, which provided recreational opportunities for community youth. Both the Gettysburg and Carlisle civic clubs bought street sprinklers for their boroughs. The Newport Civic Club refurbished “a neglected cemetery at the expense of $300.” In her 1908–9 vice president’s report, Dock detailed how the Civic Club of Harrisburg served 4,070 children at two playgrounds and the Hanover Civic Club planted shrubbery around the railroad station. Dock kept careful records on women’s clubs activities, sending out yearly surveys that requested “all the up-to-date information,” which could then be “presented at the annual meeting of the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women.”22 An analysis of thirteen clubs gives a more detailed perspective on the Progressive Era work of Pennsylvania clubwomen. These clubs existed in every region of the state, ranging from small boroughs like Sewickley, outside Pittsburgh, with thirty-eight hundred residents, to the state’s two largest cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. All the clubs were organized between 1875 and 1909. The earlier associations began as study clubs, while the more recent ones started as civic organizations. Membership rosters included the names of both prominent local matrons and unmarried professional women. In Carlisle, the wife of Judge Edward Biddle presided over the civic club. The State College Woman’s Club met under the auspices of Frances Atherton, wife of the Pennsylvania State College president. Lawyers, physicians, journalists, teachers, artists, and clergy belonged to the Woman’s Club of Pittsburgh. Elizabeth Leighton Lee, a landscape architect and colleague of Dock’s, held membership in the Civic Club of Philadelphia and was instrumental in organizing the city’s school gardens program.23 The seven most common municipal improvement activities for these clubs are summarized in table 2. As they worked for cleaner towns and other { 100 }

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community amenities, clubwomen raised money and bought needed equipment such as street sweepers and garbage carts. They organized libraries where none had existed and raised funds that supplied books to understocked classrooms and pictures to dismal school hallways. Clubwomen contributed to the assimilation, education, and recreation of both immigrant workwomen and local schoolchildren through English-language classes, summer playgrounds, and school gardens. In addition, 23 percent of the clubs lobbied municipal governments for smoke abatement, anti-spitting, and anti-billboard ordinances. Twenty-three percent also held local gardening competitions, similar to the Civic Club of Harrisburg’s Backyard Contest originated by Dock. Fifteen percent lobbied for public water systems, funded kindergarten programs, and provided their communities with free concerts and art exhibits, drinking fountains, and public baths. Another 8 percent pressed cities to provide snowremoval services, public restrooms, and cleaner streetcars.24 Like the Civic Club of Harrisburg, other Pennsylvania clubs included forestry in their community work. At its first annual meeting in 1896, state federation delegates, like their GFWC counterparts, voted to place forestry on their agenda, along with municipal improvements, education, and child labor. Dock and Mrs. J. T. Rothrock, the future forest commissioner’s wife and prominent West Chester clubwoman, likely encouraged this action. Thereafter, according to Dock, “the Federation was active for the cause in every way possible.” Women’s clubs were among the groups that lobbied for the creation of the Forest Commission and, later, for appropriations for both the forest academy and the Mont Alto Sanatorium. After state-level convention delegates toured the sanatorium in 1903, many local clubs became involved in providing material comforts, such as periodicals, for the patients. Dock had arranged the tour, expecting the convention-goers would support her “puny little efforts” once “even a few of the women saw the place and the necessity.”25 Table 2 Activities of Pennsylvania women’s clubs, by percentage involved Summer children’s programs Library programs (formation, purchases) Street cleaning (lobbying, purchases) Garbage disposal (lobbying, purchases) Tree/shrub/flower planting School cleanup (grounds and buildings) Annual town cleanup day Immigrant programs (education, recreation)

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Federation affiliates also engaged in a variety of other projects related to tree-planting and conservation. As part of her 1905 report for the state federation, Dock found that 41 percent of the member clubs had done some sort of forestry work over the past year. Activities ranged from sponsoring public forestry lectures, to tree plantings, to lobbying for local and state conservation laws. Some clubs—like the Towanda Village Improvement Association, the Carlisle Civic Club, and the New Era Club of Pittsburgh—planted hundreds of trees annually. Clubs also purchased memberships in organizations like the American Civic Association and the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, which devoted themselves to tree conservation. On their way to annual state federation conventions clubwomen, at Dock’s behest, “carefully observed the forest conditions in those parts of the country through which they passed.” Delegates then discussed topics such as “waste areas” and “constructive forestry” at convention sessions. Dock saw these observations as “a generous contribution to a general knowledge of outdoor conditions throughout our state.”26 Many clubs used Arbor Day as an opportunity both to educate schoolchildren, the next generation’s citizenry, about forestry and to stimulate interest in the subject among the general public. Edith Wetherill gleefully informed Dock in 1898 that the Philadelphia School District would allow the civic club to plan and lead the city’s schools’ Arbor Day activities. Such work fit well with the nature-study curriculum adopted by other urban school districts such as New York City, Minneapolis–St. Paul, and Boston. The involvement of knowledgeable clubwomen provided assistance to teachers who were often ill prepared to teach nature study or burdened by other curricular demands. In 1898, the Women’s Musical and Literary Society of Irwin also took charge of Arbor Day festivities in the borough’s schools. They society contacted state forester John R. Williams, asking him to deliver an appropriate classroom lecture and participate in the children’s tree-planting ceremony. By 1900, Arbor Day had become such a popular project that Dock spent considerable time disseminating appropriate literature to clubs around the state, asking them to participate “in the movement for a more beautiful America.” In 1906 and 1910, she wrote advisory leaflets for clubs interested in organizing Arbor Day activities. These materials included careful instructions: “Try to get a census taken of all the beautiful trees and wild flowering shrubs in your locality. Try to prevent the frightful destruction of roadside trees by trolley and telephone companies. . . . If you plant trees, don’t plant large ones. . . . Plant trees that have beautiful Autumn colors. . . . Plant shrubbery with brilliant berries or fruit.” By 1911, the state federation Forestry { 102 }

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Committee, which Dock chaired, had an Arbor Day subcommittee to handle the demands for information and advice.27 As both a trained botanist and a clubwoman, Dock often served as a bridge leader between professional male foresters and laywomen in the civic and study clubs. In both her lectures and writings, she recommended that all clubwomen read appropriate arboricultural literature. She also suggested that clubs join their state forestry associations and order governmental forestry bulletins. She followed her own advice, establishing an Advisory Committee on Forestry and Horticulture to the state federation that included forestry commissioner Robert Conklin and H. A. Surface from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. Eager to preserve the state federation’s scientific approach to forestry, Dock urged her successor to the Forestry Committee, in 1914, to “get facts from the Forestry Commission” before undertaking any work. This concern likely came from Dock’s awareness that the American Forestry Association had begun distancing itself from the GFWC, arguing that women amateurs were “too sentimental” to be effective forestry advocates. Forestry association officers had stated that the women’s clubs harbored “immature thought” concerning forestry. The organization’s journal, American Forestry, stopped publishing accounts of women’s clubs’ activities in 1910. Dock, a member of both the American Forestry Association and its Pennsylvania affiliate, was determined to preserve the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women’s integrity and stave off criticism that its membership was “sentimental.” State federation officers were also aware of this marginalization of women and thus often consulted Dock, the expert, before taking positions on state forestry bills. As Gertrude Biddle, the federation president, wrote Dock in 1909, “Rest assured that I will not urge any forestry measure of which you disapprove.”28 Dock mobilized clubwomen in support of state forest commission programs and objectives. Pennsylvania’s women’s clubs lobbied heartily for the Mont Alto forest academy and sanatorium appropriations. Clubwomen also supported legislation protecting shade trees and roadside plantings, giving tax breaks to landowners who planted trees, and legalizing municipal forests. Dock used her influence with clubwomen to garner support for national conservation work, such as the Niagara Falls preservation campaign and the creation of a Calaveras Big Tree National Forest in California. Male conservation leaders clearly recognized that the Pennsylvania State Federation of Women’s focus aligned well with its own agendas. State and federal conservationists fully appreciated this support and worked hard to garner the federation’s help. In 1913, the chairman of the National Conservation Congress’s Executive { 103 }

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Committee invited Dock to a meeting, noting she should feel free to send a substitute from the state federation if she could not attend. As E. A. Ziegler wrote to Dock from Mont Alto in 1917, “The Federation of Woman’s Clubs is certainly a tower of strength to Forestry and Conservation. They get results!”29 Pennsylvania’s clubwomen took Dock’s advice, working closely with forest commission employees and the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, frequently seeking help from local foresters. These young men, who were used to working with Dock and needed local allies to defend forest commission policy, seemed happy to support clubwomen’s activities. Foresters helped clubs with their Arbor Day programs, provided seedlings from state nurseries for community tree plantings, and spoke at lectures sponsored by civic and study clubs. Throughout the Progressive Era, while the American Forestry Association was marginalizing female allies, Pennsylvania women sat on the state association’s governing body, the council-at-large. Helen Grimes, a prominent club member from western Pennsylvania who also sat on Dock’s state federation Forestry Committee, judged contestants vying for the forestry association’s Arbor Day planting prize. Florence Keen, a Philadelphian and friend of Dock’s, researched European forestry, prepared educational exhibits, and served on Pennsylvania Forestry Association committees with Mrs. Coxe and “mainly moribund old men.”30 Clubwomen, with Dock’s encouragement, also allied themselves with the American Civic Association (ACA). Because J. Horace McFarland served as national president, Pennsylvanians had easy access to the organization. The ACA depended on women’s clubs for financial and volunteer support, and in 1903 and 1904 McFarland himself paid tribute to Pennsylvania’s clubs and their collaboration with the ACA in forestry work. While Dock, the utilitarian, sometimes clashed with McFarland, the preservationist, each generally supported the other’s agendas. In 1907, Dock asked for ACA involvement in her plan to organize a state parks association. McFarland, in turn, continually relied on Dock’s European data to promote ACA-endorsed objectives such as municipal tree planting. In 1908, on the eve of the White House Conference on the Conservation of National Resources, McFarland asked Dock to arrange for clubwomen to send supportive letters to President Theodore Roosevelt.31 Pennsylvania clubwomen both sought McFarland’s advice and served as leaders themselves in the ACA, at a time when the U.S. Forest Service and some City Beautiful advocates were also distancing themselves from women reformers. The Carlisle Civic Club solicited McFarland’s opinion on tree preservation, while other clubs, like the Woman’s Club of Mechanicsburg, { 104 }

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actually joined the American Civic Association. As was true of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, female members held office in the ACA. Civic association documents from 1908 and 1917 showed large numbers of women vice presidents and department heads. In 1917, the ACA’s executive board members included prominent GFWC officers Mrs. Josiah Evans Cowles and Mrs. John D. Sherman, along with Miss H. M. Dermitt of the Civic Club of Allegheny County. Gertrude Biddle of Carlisle also served as an ACA vice president. During her term, Biddle vigorously recruited new ACA members from her clubwomen associates because “the organization is of inestimable value to the country.” Dock, who knew all of these women from her own state and national club work, supplied forestry data to these allies and helped coordinate state federation and GFWC activities with those of the ACA.32 The state federation incorporated national forestry and preservation matters. Dock once again served as bridge leader between Pennsylvania women and a variety of state and national civic organizations headed by men. When asked by the Audubon Society and the New Hampshire Forest Commission to support the creation of a federal forest reservation in the White Mountains, Dock lobbied the Pennsylvania congressional delegation and sent twelve hundred petitions to local women’s clubs. In 1901 and 1908, after consulting with the Appalachian National Park Association, Dock apprised the state federation’s legislative committee of the issue and worked closely with local clubs to garner female support for a congressional bill that would protect forests in that region. In Dock’s circular letter to women’s clubs presidents in 1908, she urged her members to support not only the Appalachians bill but also preservation of the Calaveras Grove in California.33 The Calaveras Grove project was endorsed not only by the GFWC but also by “dozens of other organizations.”34 Dock and her clubwomen allies collaborated closely with the ACA in its campaign to preserve Niagara Falls. McFarland had been committed to the preservation of Niagara since his days as a member of the American Park and Outdoor Art Association in the 1890s. While New York and Canada had established parks on their respective sides of the falls, commissioners indiscriminately sold water rights to private businesses interested in generating electricity. In 1905, ACA delegates adopted a resolution, asking their president to prevent Niagara from becoming a “hydraulic canal.” ACA officers met with President Roosevelt in November 1905 and suggested that concerned Americans write their congressmen and senators. McFarland next mobilized Dock and, through her, conservation-minded women in both the state federation and the GFWC. During an “extremely { 105 }

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arduous” battle between McFarland and electrical power companies in 1906, Pennsylvania clubs rallied to the ACA president’s side in support of the Burton Bill, a measure that prohibited diversion of the Niagara River, unless expressly permitted by the U.S. secretary of war. Carlisle Civic Club members sent letters to their congressmen, to U.S. senators Philander Knox and Boise Penrose, as well as to Secretary of War William Howard Taft. The Philadelphia Council of Jewish Women, a state federation affiliate, did the same. After a huge national outpouring of public support, the Burton Bill passed in June 1906. In 1908, Dock personally wrote to club presidents, asking them to support H.R. Bill 7554, an extension of the Burton Act. In addition to working tirelessly for her friend’s cause, Dock listened sympathetically to McFarland’s complaints about President Roosevelt’s reluctance to negotiate with Canada on Niagara and about the electrical companies, who were still trying to get access to the Falls as late as 1911.35 The State Federation of Pennsylvania Women exuded such a strong presence in forestry that Dock frequently received requests for advice from local club officers and forestry chairs in other states. The Arundel Club of Baltimore invited Dock to lecture there in 1903, since the members “have given less attention to the question of forestry and parks, than a great many other cities.” Despite her claims that State Forest Commission work kept her too busy to lecture, Dock delivered the Baltimore presentation. In 1903, she also addressed the Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey state federations. In 1908 Henry Barker, the ACA vice president of the Parks and Public Forest Reservations Department, thanked Dock for speaking on forestry to clubwomen in Providence. In 1909, when Connecticut women’s clubs needed information on tree conservation at water company sites, Dock recommended Wilkes-Barre resident Martha A. Moffet, “a very practical woman” with expertise in this area. As congressional efforts to protect the White Mountains faltered, Dock worked with the New Hampshire Federation of Women’s Clubs (NHFWC), which had taken up the issue. The NHFWC helped preserve both Crawford Notch and caves around the Lost River Gorge. Occasionally, Dock received challenging requests, such as a plea for help from the Louisiana state federation in 1908. Dock politely refrained from giving advice, since she knew little about forest conditions in that state. She did, however, send the forestry chair back issues of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association’s Forest Leaves, along with copies of Pennsylvania’s forestry laws.36 Throughout her career, Dock advised and collaborated with the GFWC’s forestry program. By virtue of her expertise and university training, the state federation appointed her as a delegate to both the 1898 and 1900 biennials. { 106 }

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While attending the 1900 convention in Milwaukee, she accepted the invitation of the Minnesota federation president, Lydia Phillips Williams, to accompany her on a trip to study clear-cutting on a Chippewa reservation upstate. Dock kept careful notes on her trip and thereafter advised Williams on appropriate reform measures. As her reputation grew, she lectured on forestry at GFWC biennials. Philadelphian Mary Mumford and Jessie Bryant Gerard of Connecticut, both GFWC forestry chairmen, each sent Dock drafts of statements and reports asking her to offer suggestions or “enlarge and criticize.” GFWC officers recognized her talents and expertise by recruiting her to write the chapter “Forestry and Tree Protection” for the 1904 publication A Civic Primer and to collect data on shade-tree planting, care, and protection for a 1915 committee meeting. In 1910, Dock accepted nomination as vice chairman of the GFWC’s newly reorganized Forestry Committee, now called the Conservation Department, and represented the federation at national conservation conferences.37 By the 1910s, Dock was in her late fifties and suffering, in her own words, from “rheumatism.” She found her public work increasingly tiring. Personal health concerns, along with family obligations, led her to resign from the state forest commission in 1913. This retirement, however, did not offer much respite. In March 1914, she told McFarland that a lecture for the Chambersburg Civic Club “exhausted me so much that I had to just rest for days.” Two months later, she wrote to her old friend, explaining that she planned to leave her state federation office. But her total retirement from public service proved to be short-lived. She agreed to become acting chairman of the GFWC Conservation Department in 1914, during Marion Crocker’s illness. Between 1914 and 1921, Dock served as vice chairman under Mary Sherman of Chicago. In 1922, once again, she became Conservation chair for a brief period.38 Dock enjoyed her work with clubwomen from other states, developing personal friendships among the GFWC leadership. With Marion Crocker, for example, she shared her love of dogs. In a 1911 letter, Crocker enclosed a photo of her Pomeranian, Peter. She wrote, “Probably most of the august members of the G.F.W.C. would consider this letter decidedly too frivolous to pass between the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Conservation Department, but never mind.”39 Despite working as hard as ever in these GFWC positions, Dock never seemed to entertain thoughts of resuming her work on the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission. She considered entering the commercial nursery business, consulting Mont Alto foresters about pricing and inventory. Pennsylvania politics of the 1910s and early ’20s may have influenced her choices. { 107 }

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In 1910, John K. Tener, the handpicked candidate of U.S. senator Boise Penrose, won a three-way race for governor. Penrose supported Tener, a relatively unknown congressman, because he hoped to defeat State Treasurer William H. Berry, famous for uncovering a state-level graft scandal that involved Penrose cronies. Tener had a clean and Progressive record as governor, but Dock loathed the Penrose political machine and would likely not have asked Tenor to reappoint her. Tener’s successor, Martin Brumbaugh, was not only a Penrose candidate but a conservative who once stated that Pennsylvanians “have been overlawed.” The political climate, from Dock’s perspective, was no better during the next administration. In 1920, when Governor William Cameron Sproul fired Forest Commissioner Conklin, Dock saw the dismissal as a political move, noting in one letter that “there was trouble in the Forestry Commission.” Under these circumstances, she would also have been reluctant about approaching Governor Sproul for a forest commission appointment.40 During these years as a GFWC officer, Dock wrote the federation’s 1915 forestry statement. Here, she advocated federal control of national forests, cooperation among eastern states with forest reserves, federal appropriations for both national and state forestry programs, increased reforestation work, and women’s club involvement in tree planting and protection. She corresponded with state-level chairwomen, urging them to collaborate with likeminded organizations and to lobby in support of the GFWC’s political work. As she had with her state-level club work, Dock insisted that the GFWC ground its conservation policy in scientific fact, rather than emotionalism. She advised the Massachusetts conservation chairman, in 1914, to consult with Harvard botany faculty, the staff at the Arnold Arboretum, and the state’s forester. In a 1915 letter to Mary Sherman, she cautioned, “Under no circumstances should any member of a club write a paper unless she has been able to find her subject treated in some of the books or periodicals I have mentioned.” As part of her bridge leader efforts to mediate between professional and lay conservationists, Dock herself corresponded with state foresters and forestry educators throughout the United States. In these letters, she asked professional foresters to send literature to state federation leaders or teach local clubs about tree planting and preservation. On occasion, she vented to her male colleagues about her frustrations with amateurs, as in 1915, when she complained about laypeople “who won’t learn scientific nomenclature.”41 Dock also planned GFWC programs that brought together national and grassroots conservation efforts. For the federation’s 1916 biennial in New York City, she arranged a forestry exhibit that highlighted the best of both professional forestry and women’s club work. Held at the Seventh Regiment { 108 }

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Armory, the exhibit contained information, displays, and photographs from clubs, state forestry departments, and universities throughout the nation, presenting a wealth of information on what each state federation had accomplished in forestry. From 1912 to 1914 and again from 1914 to 1916, twenty state federations lobbied for appropriate national and state legislation, twentysix and twelve, respectively, engaged in public or school forestry education work, and twelve and ten held statewide Arbor Day programs. Twenty-one and eleven federations collaborated with the United States Forest Service or other federal agencies; nineteen and twelve worked with state forestry departments or other state agencies. Nine and five allied themselves with the American Forestry Association, the ACA, or the Audubon Society. Decreased conservation activity in 1914–16 was likely to do state federations’ shift to preparedness measures related to World War I.42 The GFWC’s conservation program, however, comprised more than just tree protection, reforestation, and scientific forest management. In 1909, the federation established a Waterways Committee to promote clean water and the development of waterpower as an alternative to dirty coal. One year later this committee became part of the reorganized Conservation Department. Dock’s role in water conservation consisted of publicizing newly introduced legislation, like the 1914 Rivers Pollution Bill, as a means of “jacking up interest” and encouraging clubwomen to lobby Congress. By 1913, the GFWC had also endorsed bird protection—lobbying successfully for a tariff bill that prohibited the importation of wild bird feathers for women’s hats, organizing Bird Day educational activities, and allying itself with the Audubon Society. Clubwomen also supported conservation of U.S. mineral resources. During 1913–14, the GFWC and its affiliates plied Congress with letters and petitions in support of the Forster Bill, legislation that authorized the president to restrict uranium mining on land administered by the Secretary of the Interior. Supporters of this measure cited public health concerns. As a colleague expressed to Dock, “Recent experiments show conclusively that radium is a necessary curative mineral in the fight against cancer. In view of the fact that the death rate of this terrible disease is 75,000 persons a year . . . I am sure you will be greatly interested in this legislation.”43 Male conservationists acknowledged the GFWC’s role in conservation, often singling out Pennsylvania and Dock for recognition. In his 1910 book, The Fight for Conservation, former U.S. chief forester Gifford Pinchot hailed the forestry work of women’s clubs in California, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. As early as 1901, he had acknowledged that “nowhere so much as in Pennsylvania has the success of the forestry movement been due to the activity of { 109 }

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the women.” Eight years later, in an interview for the GFWC, U.S. forester Enos Mills praised Dock herself, stating, “She has done more for forests than any woman in America.” Pinchot, however, was also sensitive to the American Forestry Association’s attempts to downplay women’s roles in forestry and he felt uncomfortable about the GFWC’s opposition to the Hetch Hetchy dam. Pinchot stopped his own outreach to women’s organizations in 1908 and fired Mills, who had been a frequent and favorite women’s club speaker.44 Yet those male conservationists and politicians who recognized women’s expertise and influence increasingly collaborated with GFWC leaders, making sure that federation officers were included on policy-formulating bodies. In 1908, GFWC president Sarah Platt Decker was the only delegate from a woman’s organization invited to the White House Governors Conference on Conservation. Jessie Bryant Gerard and Mrs. Philip N. Moore, Forestry Committee chairman and GFWC president, respectively, attended the National Conservation Congresses between 1908 and 1913. Moore served on the Congress’s first Executive Committee and became its vice president in 1913. Dock represented Pennsylvania and the GFWC at the 1913 and 1914 congresses and attended its 1916 meeting.45 While working on these national issues, GFWC officers and committee chairs often emphasized utilitarian forestry, citing the economic reasons for conserving natural resources. In a 1905 issue of the Federation Bulletin, forestry chairman Mrs. P. S. Peterson specifically told clubwomen to “emphasize the utilitarian side in preference to the aesthetic” and to promote “scientifically handling [of] all forest reserves.” In their eulogy to Mrs. Lovell White, the California club president who had saved the Calaveras Grove, Jessie Bryant Gerard and Dock noted, “Her grasp of economic forestry was clear and sound.” The GFCW also cited public health concerns among its motives. Peterson, for example, urged local clubs to study forestry because forests, or the lack of them, affected human health. In a Palisades preservation campaign, the New Jersey federation’s president asked club presidents, “Will you emphasize the importance of forest lands, not only as lumber producers, but in their influence upon climate, health, etc?” Dock likewise promoted the health benefits of conservation, particularly reforestation, noting that such practices protected watersheds and drinking water supplies.46 The GFWC’s definition of public health included mental, moral, and civic characteristics as well as physical attributes. Nowhere was this more evident than in the federation’s campaign for national parks. Clubwomen argued that natural parks preserved wild and beautiful areas, and that recreation in { 110 }

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national parks kept tourist dollars at home rather than abroad. They also stated that exposure to nature inculcated citizenship and improved mental health and character, particularly for male citizens who might be called upon for military service. In 1917, just days before the United States entered World War I, Mary Sherman, Dock’s GFWC conservation chair, published an article entitled “National Scenery, Parks, and Preparedness,” in which she maintained that parks promoted the development of America’s human resources. While she stated, “You may or may not believe in military preparedness,” she also argued that “preparedness will make you and your children efficient, will give you health and strength and courage.” Sherman noted that Americans currently enjoyed approximately 3 billion leisure hours per week, and that these hours should be spent in physical, mental, and moral improvement. “These are the hours when habits are formed, when character is in the making. The problem of leisure time is as important as the problem of earning a living. . . . A state without parks where the people may profitably spend their leisure time is negligent of the physical, mental and moral welfare of its people.” Dock likewise saw the creation and preservation of national parklands as “a moral question and a duty.”47 Once again, GFWC officers framed arguments that were similar to those of many male national park advocates. In his 1912 presidential address to the ACA, Horace McFarland urged the creation of national parks as a way of “increasing human efficiency at times when the tired spirit seeks a wider space for change and rest than any city, or indeed, any state, can provide.” He also asked his audience, “Consider what it is that inspires us as we sing the national hymn. . . . Devotion to the flag begins in that love of country which its beauty has begotten. The national parks are planned to show forth the beauty of the land.” Male Progressives also believed that national parks played particularly important roles in Americanization efforts. In the words of urban reformer Jacob Riis, exposure to nature helped immigrant children “rebel against the traditional values of their parents.”48 Both the United States government and states such as California had protected scenic western lands like Yellowstone and Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove as early as the 1860s and ’70s. New York established the Niagara Falls Reservation and the Adirondacks Forest Preserve in 1885. Legislative protection, however, did not necessarily protect wildlands from development. After California turned Yosemite over to the U.S. government in 1890, the area was still vulnerable to sheep grazing and lumbering. In 1904, the park lost 542 square miles of forest and grasslands. Congress amended both the 1899 Mount Rainier Park and the 1902 Crater Lake Park Bills to allow for { 111 }

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mining and mineral exploration. The Glacier Park Bill of 1910 gave the U.S. Reclamation Service the right to utilize water resources and authorized the secretary of the interior to sell the park’s timber. Rocky Mountain National Park had its area reduced by two-thirds to accommodate mining companies and ranchers. Increasingly, utilitarians believing in use clashed with preservationists advocating zero use over how to manage federal lands.49 The GFWC, which believed along with the ACA that “the national park is a different thing from a national forest,” viewed these encroachments as a serious threat to the parks’ integrity. The federation was particularly concerned about proposals to develop Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley. Preservationists received a major blow in 1909 when Pinchot, a utilitarian conservationist, advocated a plan to dam the valley to provide water for San Francisco. In 1912 and 1913, the GFWC, along with sportsmen’s groups and the ACA, lobbied against the Raker Bill, which authorized the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. McFarland himself testified against the legislation during congressional hearings in 1910 and thereafter wrote anti-reservoir letters to cabinet officials and U.S. presidents. When the bill passed Congress in 1913, both the GFWC and McFarland unsuccessfully urged Woodrow Wilson to veto it.50 Dock vigorously opposed the Hetch Hetchy development plan and participated in the GFWC campaign to stop the reservoir. This decision put her at odds with one good friend, Pinchot, and on the same side as McFarland, a unique situation for a utilitarian conservationist. Like Dock and McFarland, the botanist and the forester had a long history of collaboration and mutual admiration. Dock and Pinchot had first met in 1899 at a Philadelphia Horticultural Society meeting, subsequently occasioning his writing of a letter of introduction for Dock to Dietrich Brandis and loaning her his own personal lantern slides to assist in her burgeoning lecture business. Thereafter, he followed and encouraged her career. They had worked together on the preservation of the Calaveras Grove, and she sometimes referred state forestry chairs who had questions to Pinchot. Pinchot, in turn, respected her expertise and valued her opinions as a botanist. Dock found it painful to disagree with her friend, colleague, and mentor.51 In September 1909, Dock wrote to Pinchot, explaining her position on Hetch Hetchy and adding, “I have always held a great admiration for your work and for your ideals.” Pinchot’s reply came within two weeks and was reassuring: “Whether or not we differ on one or two, or even more items of policy, there can, be no doubt whatever as to our complete sympathy on most things and our ability to work together.” Many park advocates, however, were never able to forgive Pinchot. Following passage of the Raker Bill, { 112 }

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Marion Crocker wrote to Dock, “At the foot of the last letter I had from him [Pinchot] he said: ‘I hope you don’t really mind about Hetch Hetchy.’ But I do.” After clashing with Pinchot on Hetch Hetchy and a Roanoke River Dam bill, McFarland wrote, “It has been mighty hard to lose my faith in him.” Dock, however, continued her collaboration with Pinchot into the 1930s.52 The development of Hetch Hetchy caused Dock, the GFWC, and the ACA to redouble their efforts to advocate for a national parks bill. Such a measure would separate these preserves from the U.S. Forest Service and other federal agencies, protecting their integrity. Women’s clubs had already preserved the Calaveras Grove and Mesa Verde. The New Hampshire state federation had been working to preserve the White Mountains for over a decade, and the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs had secured passage of a bill establishing the Royal Palms area in Palm Beach County as a state park. In 1915, GFWC conservation chairman Mary Sherman participated in a National Parks Conference. That same year, Sherman and Dock initiated a national scenic survey, in which local women’s clubs and state federations identified wild areas in need of preservation. At its May 1916 biennial, the GFWC passed a resolution calling for a National Parks Bill and lobbied successfully for the enabling legislation that passed Congress in August. Thereafter, the GFWC worked to secure adequate appropriations for the National Park Service and add parklands to the agency’s domain.53 The work of GFWC conservationists changed somewhat after the United States entered World War I in 1917. The Federation’s Conservation Department collaborated with federal agencies such as the National War Gardens Commission and the United States Department of Agriculture to grow, preserve, and conserve food resources. In 1917–18 the 10th and 20th Engineers— comprising a thousand foresters, lumbermen, and college forestry majors— supplied troops with timber from French forests for trenches, bridges, railroads, and military buildings. These regiments included men from Pennsylvania, including many that Dock knew personally. Three-quarters of the forest academy’s 1917 graduating class served in the 10th Engineers. State foresters John Seltzer and H. B. Rowland requested leave from their jobs to serve with the forestry regiments. During this period, Dock took on the new project of supporting the forest regiments that served overseas.54 Dock was already personally involved in the war effort, sending supplies to her nephews in France. Both George Jr. and William, George Dock’s youngest son, had volunteered early during the conflict, driving ambulances for the French military. After U.S. entry into the war, George Jr. attended the Lafayette Espadrilles Training School. Both young men fought at Verdun { 113 }

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and were awarded the Croix de Guerre. Dock was concerned, however, about the welfare of her former students as well as her nephews. With fellow GFWC Conservation Committee member Adelaide Godding of New Hampshire, Dock convinced the federation to “adopt” the 10th and 20th Engineers. After initial difficulty securing information from the Army concerning the regiments’ needs, Dock and other clubwomen swept into action, creating a Forest Regiments Relief Committee to supply the troops with items the military might not have available. Dock handled all correspondence concerning the project while Godding shipped overseas “comforts, necessities, reading material, and other supplies.” In 1917, this Forest Regiments Relief Committee sent to the units 112 Christmas boxes and knitted goods worth $1,857.09. Dock personally addressed a greeting card and sent a gift to every forest academy graduate in these regiments as well as Mont Alto men serving in other capacities. The committee continued to knit for the engineers and supplied goods from the home front through 1919, when the regiments finally demobilized. If war work put Mira into conflict with Lavinia, a well-known pacifist, the older sister never mentioned the fact in either her correspondence or her diaries.55 During World War I, Dock continued to work on a project the GFWC had begun prior to 1917, planting native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers along the Lincoln Highway, originally conceived in 1910, when Henry Joy, the president of Packard Motor Company, and Indianapolis Speedway owner Carl Fisher joined forces to expand a proposed Washington, D.C., to Gettysburg road into a transcontinental highway. Businessmen, from car dealers to cement manufacturers, interested in promoting automobiles, road building, and the interstate travel business, formed a Lincoln Highway Association in 1913. The GFWC, concerned about haphazard highway building and rampant commercialization along expanding road systems, organized a meeting concerning the Lincoln Highway Project in 1914. The federation called for both comprehensive interstate road building and highway beautification plans. Clubwomen feared, as Dock wrote to Sherman in 1916, “how entirely trivial the scenic part of the Highway appears to the Road-builders.” Under pressure from the Daughters of the American Revolution and the ACA as well as the GFWC, the national government took action. With federal prodding, the American Institute of Architects developed a Comprehensive Plan Commission. Landscape architect Jens Jensen coordinated the highway’s planting arrangements.56 Each state federation affiliated with the GFWC agreed to landscape its section of the highway to feature trees, shrubs, and flowers associated with its { 114 }

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region. Adela Parker Kendall, the GFWC’s Lincoln Highway chair and a Dock correspondent, believed this project would both “make for prosperity” and “inspire love of country and a patriotic desire to see America first.” Even during the preparedness drive and wartime mobilization, state federations from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, and California participated in the Lincoln Highway planting.57 Dock supported the Lincoln Highway plan, as she had supported municipal improvements. She believed comprehensive road planning and roadside beautification would both protect native flora and prevent the haphazard growth that had disfigured nineteenth-century cities. As her fellow Pennsylvanians bought cars and explored the countryside, Dock feared the impact of road building on conservation. She adopted the opinion that the Commonwealth should pass “a state law prohibiting the cutting of any tree 15 feet from the center line of any road.” Shortly before U.S. entry into World War I, Dock wrote to fellow clubwoman Mary Blakiston about the increase in rural automobile traffic and predicted, “Just as surely as our towns and cities are now paying dear for their earlier lack of plan, so surely will our countryside be defaced by ill-considered buildings, by indiscriminate dumping, by aggregation of glaring Billboards, and all other slovenly results of planless growth.” During the 1920s, Dock continued to complain about “anarchists in automobiles” who stripped roadsides of their shrubs and wildflowers. To educate motorists, she worked not only with women’s clubs but also with the Wildflower Preservation Society of America, the Society of Farm Women of Pennsylvania, and the Automobile Association of America.58 As the Lincoln Highway plan gathered speed, Dock enthusiastically promoted clubwomen’s involvement. In 1914, while lecturing for the Chambersburg Civic Club, she extracted a promise from the members to plant mountain laurel along the Franklin County portion of the route. Triumphantly, she sent to McFarland a newspaper clipping about her speech with a hand-penciled comment, “We might be known as the Laurel route!” Prior to a Lincoln Highway conference in March 1917, Dock approved the state federation’s planting design and suggested that the Pennsylvania clubs publish a booklet noting the highway’s “salient features, Historic, Industrial, and Scenic.” During the 1920s, Dock continued to lecture women’s clubs in Adams and Franklin Counties about the need to preserve native Pennsylvania plants along the highway. Male-dominated organizations, such as the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, assisted the women’s clubs with this task. McFarland, who claimed he didn’t have time to work on “roadside beauty,” nevertheless responded to his friend’s requests for help. In 1920, he took time out from his { 115 }

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public lectures, his ACA presidential duties, and his new position on the Pennsylvania Fine Arts Commission to photograph Lincoln Highway scenery and lobby Pennsylvania governor Sproul for his support of the beautification project.59 By the 1920s, Dock and her fellow clubwomen in Pennsylvania and across the wider nation had many successes to their credit. The GFWC and its affiliates, in the words of historian Anne Firor Scott, “lay at the very heart of American social development.” Clubwomen both “served as the early warning systems” for emerging social problems and built community institutions such as playground associations and village improvement societies. In terms of forestry, the GFWC, by the early 1920s, was responsible for helping to establish the 800,000 acres of preserved federal land east of the Mississippi River. The State Federation of Pennsylvania Women had aided in the protection of 984,000 acres of forest. Clubwomen at the local, state, and national levels had preserved the Palisades, Niagara Falls, and the Calaveras Grove. They had also helped create thirty-four state forestry commissions and twentyone schools of forestry. Foresters as renowned as Enos Mills and Joseph Rothrock acknowledged women’s contributions to the conservation movement, even as male-dominated groups such as the American Forestry Association marginalized female supporters. Pinchot had applauded clubwomen’s work in The Fight for Conservation, while subsequently distancing himself from the preservationists who opposed his Hetch Hetchy policies.60 Much of this success occurred because of Dock’s work as a bridge leader. With ties to both the professional, scientific, conservation world and the grassroots network of women’s clubs, she proved able to coordinate the work of both groups. As an officer in both the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women and the GFWC, she ensured that clubwomen’s work was grounded in scientific conservation practices rather than sentimentalism and maternalist language, so that male conservationists would take the women seriously. This often meant that she herself had to educate females on scientific and utilitarian conservation, and help clubwomen network with the professional foresters, city planners, and Progressive politicians in their own communities and states. Moreover, she organized GFWC lobbying efforts and mobilized clubs to work on the behalf of nationally known conservationists like Pinchot and McFarland. She enlisted professional expertise and political support for the work women’s clubs found most useful in their own communities and states, whether it be educating Connecticut public utilities on tree conservation, preserving forests and mountains in New Hampshire, or reforming lumbering practices in Minnesota. { 116 }

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Not surprisingly, Dock also labored for other issues in addition to municipal improvements, forestry, the forest regiments project, and highway beautification. As was true of other clubwomen, civic work helped her to redefine the place of women in American society.61 For Dock, this effort took the form of a quest to broaden female educational opportunities, help women obtain professional employment, and secure their suffrage.

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In her 1993 work Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History, Anne Firor Scott argues that voluntary associations have had far-reaching implications beyond the causes women have championed. Associational work, according to Scott, has enabled women to redefine their roles and win new rights, and grassroots activism has taught women business, organizational, and political skills; contributed to the growth of their self-confidence; and made “woman suffrage inevitable.” Groups such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, missionary societies, the National Association of Colored Women, and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs all contributed to expanding the possibilities available to Progressive Era women.1 Through conservation, Mira Lloyd Dock and her allies also promoted the cause of women’s rights. Female conservationists used their movement and organizations to promote new educational and employment opportunities for women. They were certainly not the first, or only, group to employ this strategy. Female college graduates, particularly those who never married, entered careers in newly professionalized fields such as anthropology, economics, journalism, and social work. Others worked in such traditionally female professions as teaching. Women sometimes used maternalist rhetoric to carve out niches for themselves. As scholar Robyn Muncy has found, early twentiethcentury settlement house workers promoted child welfare as a “female dominion” and established strongholds for women in agencies such as the federal Children’s Bureau.2 Like the Henry Street Settlement’s Lillian Wald and Hull House’s Florence Kelley, Dock worked to professionalize some of the tasks women already

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performed. Throughout her public life, she argued that with professional education females could support themselves through their work in parks, greenhouses, barnyards, and kitchen gardens. She lobbied for women’s inclusion in agricultural and horticultural programs. When these efforts failed, Dock helped found a school where women could receive the requisite training. Dock promoted women’s right to vote by making suffrage speeches, donating money to the cause, and organizing meetings and rallies. She was heavily involved in the state-level organizations that labored for a Pennsylvania women’s suffrage law. At the national level, Mira supported her sister Lavinia’s affiliation with the Congressional Union, even when Vinnie’s pro-suffragist work with the radical organization, which involved picketing the White House and engaging in a hunger strike, might have proven embarrassing. Labeling Mira Dock a feminist, however, proves problematic. As Nancy F. Cott observed in a groundbreaking 1989 essay, feminists believe that gender roles are socially constructed, rather than the result of biological differences between the sexes. While Dock certainly contested the economic, social, and political limits on American women, she also believed that biology placed some constraints on what females could undertake. She firmly believed that females should enjoy the same equal political, legal, and economic rights as men. She also believed, however, that women were the physically weaker sex and should therefore not attempt everything within the male domain. Yet what scholar Jack Davis has written about Florida activist Marjory Stoneman Douglas also holds true for Dock, who believed suffrage was key to achieving larger objectives in the fight for women’s rights. She, too, believed that the ballot was a fundamental right of American citizenship, a safeguard for female property owners, and one more useful strategy for women involved in civic life.3 Dock’s work on behalf of professional women and their rights had begun during her 1899 trip to the International Congress of Women, at which London meeting female delegates from North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa met to discuss the condition of women and devise strategies for their empowerment. During the congress, female farmers and gardeners invited to the congress by Fanny Wilkinson met and heard papers on subjects as diverse as ostrich farming and tulip bulb culture. Female horticulturalists and agriculturalists appreciated this opportunity for professional development, and they enjoyed meeting like-minded women from other nations. Social activities, such as trips to London’s public gardens and the Swanley Agricultural College, the women’s school in Kent that Dock too had visited with its new principal Wilkinson in 1899, strengthened the bonds among congress attendees. On 5 July 1899, a group of these women hosted by the GFWC’s Emma { 119 }

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Shafter Howard, of Oakland, met at the Hotel Cecil to discuss affiliation. Nine days later, the group met again and formed a steering committee. This committee of twenty-two women formally established the Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural International Union on 18 October 1899, with Dock serving as a member of the first executive council.4 The union had both educational and advocacy functions. Officers circulated information about up-to-date techniques, gave advice on farm and garden training, and published articles on comparative methodology in the Monthly Leaflet. The union ran an employment bureau, developed standardized examinations in horticulture and poultry management, and held an annual show in London where members displayed their work. The organization attempted to secure adequate prices and wages for female farmers and gardeners, a difficult feat to accomplish across continents. As befitted an international union, members came from Canada, the United States, the British Isles, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Individuals, institutions, and voluntary associations all held membership. As late as 1913, however, Dock admitted that the union had failed to organize strong state and national branches. She did not elaborate on the “many reasons.” Perhaps language barriers impeded recruitment, as the union’s leaflets were printed only in English and French. Perhaps members, already involved in numerous associations in their home countries, had little extra time or effort to spare for international matters. Dock, for example, declined the union’s vice presidential nomination in 1910 because her responsibilities on the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission and her work with the GFWC kept her too busy to take on another executive position. Financial difficulties plagued the association from its infancy. In 1901, T. W. Powell, the honorary secretary, wrote to the executive council, urging its members to raise funds by selling copies of its Quarterly Leaflet. Dock tried to support the organization by recruiting members and donating funds throughout the 1910s.5 Despite these difficulties, the union survived. It continued to hold international meetings and exhibits and enjoyed its greatest successes during the World Wars. In 1915, the English branch of the union organized a Women’s National Land Service Corps, which, in 1917, affiliated with the Government Land Army, a government bureau designed to coordinate wartime agricultural production. By the spring of 1917, 16,000 British women performed agricultural work full time, and another 200,000 worked on farms on a parttime basis. The American affiliate, of which Dock served as vice president during the war, also worked closely with the U.S. Women’s Land Army (WLA). In the summer and fall of 1918, the WLA organized and supervised more { 120 }

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than fifteen thousand volunteers in twenty-three states. Pennsylvania itself had 912 farm workers at twenty-two sites in 1919. In this capacity, the union recruited female replacements for male farmworkers serving in the military. During World War II, the union, now known as the Women’s Farm and Garden Association, played a vital role as well. The U.S. War Food Administration of the Department of Agriculture formed a new Woman’s Land Army in 1943, again hoping to replace potential soldiers with female labor on the home front. The association helped with recruitment and training. Their British counterparts were involved in war work even earlier. On 6 September 1939, Dock received a letter from an English correspondent describing how “the Women’s Farm & Garden Association is hard at work ‘helping to train & work our little land.’” In early 1941, another English friend described a “Dig to Victory” campaign promoting home vegetable gardens. In 1946, Frieda Seeman, a Women’s Farm and Garden Association member, received the Order of the British Empire, a tribute to the war work undertaken by English women on the agricultural home front. Dock herself retained membership in the association into the 1930s, well after her retirement from public life.6 During her years as a Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural International Union member, Dock continued her friendship and correspondence with Fanny Wilkinson at Swanley. Located fifteen miles from London, the Agricultural College of Swanley had first admitted women in 1891 and had employed two women lecturers prior to 1899. According to the college’s 1899 informational brochure, the program trained both men and women “to become land-holders, private & market gardeners, lecturers, stewards, colonists.” By 1905, the college also taught nature-study courses for public school teachers, much as Cornell University’s College of Agriculture was doing in New York. Dock was much impressed with the college, which enrolled sixtyeight women in 1900.7 Like Wilkinson, Dock believed that women and girls should have access to professional education, which should fit them for employment at good wages. She believed such education should begin in public schools. Throughout her life, she lobbied for manual training in fields such as clerical work and nursing as well as domestic economy courses—infant care, hygiene, and cooking— even attending Harrisburg school board meetings when such proposals were discussed. In a 1903 leaflet that she wrote for the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, Dock praised both the National Educational Association and the Pennsylvania State Education Association for recommending that agricultural instruction begin in high schools. Dock also explained why such training was needed. “The menace of overcrowding in great cities can only be { 121 }

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averted by practical training for country living.” According to Dock, agricultural training in their home schools would fit rural children for a life of scientific farming and keep them from migrating to cities in search of employment. In this way, Dock’s concerns echoed those of the Country Life movement advocates who lobbied for nature study in rural public schools, state and federal cooperative extension programs, and aid to rural families through the federal Hatch (1887) and Lever (1914) Acts.8 Dock had acknowledged in 1903 that specialized personnel would need to teach high school agriculture, since already employed teachers were “overburdened . . . and ought not to be asked to add anything else to their present work.” She also admitted that, in some cases, future agricultural and horticultural workers would need more training than high schools could provide. Quoting a letter she’d recently received, she described the following scenario: “A young woman who has shown taste and ability in Garden instruction and Play Ground supervision is assured of a steady position by the Vacant Lots Association if fully fitted for the work. Where can she get Horticultural Training?” Dock proposed that the state government establish and enhance existing collegiate agricultural programs for its women.9 This proposal followed a four-year investigation during which Dock had learned that no women studied agriculture or horticulture at Pennsylvania State College. Penn State faculty alleged that “they [women students] have the same privileges as young men. There is no discrimination.” College president George Atherton theorized that perhaps “the facilities the college offered to women students were not sufficiently known throughout the state.” Yet as Dock herself had discovered at Michigan, male-dominated departments, concerned about feminization and loss of status, often resisted taking female majors. Chemist Ellen Swallow had encountered a similar situation at MIT, when the administration refused to award her the doctorate in chemistry she had rightfully earned. Dock continued to press the issue, challenging Atherton’s conclusions. Dock pointed out that while Penn State had no female students, Cornell’s horticultural program included five or six. Through her correspondence with Cornell’s dean of agriculture, Liberty Hyde Bailey, Dock had acquired a great deal of information about the New York school’s program. Dock knew that Bailey had hired female instructors, who in turn recruited women students. She was also well aware of Bailey’s educational philosophy: “Men and women come to college with equal rights and should have equal opportunities. Men and women alike should profit by the advantages of the institution. I consider it just as much the business of this College of Agriculture to help the women on the farms as to help the men on the { 122 }

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farms.” Dock had also gathered information on the University of Minnesota’s programs, which included women students, while touring the Chippewa reservation with Lydia Phillips Williams in 1900.10 Believing Pennsylvania’s agricultural programs either discriminated against women or did not make females feel welcome, Dock proposed that state normal schools teach agriculture, as was the practice in the U.S. South and West. The Commonwealth’s teacher education programs enrolled many women, and the institutions were located in rural, agricultural areas. When Dock failed to garner either public or political support for this idea, she attempted to change the status quo at Penn State. Armed with facts about the educational situations in other states and convinced that Pennsylvania was not doing justice by its female students, Dock described having “the temerity to write as I did to various educators at home.”11 As she had done with other issues, Dock enlisted the support of Pennsylvania’s women’s clubs. She lobbied other state federation officers, lectured at club meetings, and disseminated papers on the desirability of college-level agricultural training for women. In one speech, she reminded clubwomen, “Workers must use modern tools if they do not wish to work in vain; and one of the most important matters for us to consider in our own state is whether we are doing all that we ought to enable women to work to the best advantage.” After Penn State’s president Atherton offered to host the state federation annual meeting in 1906, Dock urged her members to attend. There, clubwomen could place subtle pressure for a “great increase of women students and of still greater opportunities in the college itself for the cause of practical education for women.”12 Dock attempted to mobilize the media as well. She forwarded information to newspaper editors, hoping to raise public awareness about Penn State’s programs. She also vetted her educational proposals with her political contacts. In 1905, she wrote to Governor Pennypacker suggesting that the state college develop agricultural extension programs for rural citizens. In 1917, she even contacted her former Harrisburg ally, Vance McCormick, now chairman of the Democratic National Committee, to enlist his support for women’s professional education.13 An alternative project, however, came to Dock in 1909 when she received a letter from Jane B. Haines. Haines held both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Bryn Mawr College and currently served as the president of the Chestnut Hill Garden Club in Philadelphia. While admitting that she had “no particular qualifications” to do so, Haines proposed to establish a single-sex agricultural and horticultural school in the Philadelphia suburbs. { 123 }

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Modeled after Swanley, the school would offer a two-year program and combine theoretical and practical training in subjects necessary for employment in farming and gardening. Dock agreed to help Haines develop this school after Haines revealed that she had found seventy acres on which to locate the campus and had already secured four hundred dollars in pledges.14 Plans for the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (PSHW) proceeded apace during 1910. By February, Haines had rented the property, secured more pledges, and recruited a board of directors. At Dock’s suggestion, Haines contacted Adelaide Nutting, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and a friend of Lavinia’s, to ask for advice on hiring a principal. At its June meeting, the board adopted a charter and completed the application for state incorporation. Dock outlined the advantages of the charter: “It will enable the School to take title to the property and to make necessary changes with a free hand and on a firmer basis than if the place is held on rental. Also, the School ownership should reduce taxes, as educational institutions are exempt, or partially exempt from taxation.”15 In September, the board agreed to secure mortgages, rather than waiting until it had raised the purchase price of eleven thousand dollars. As Dock explained, “It is perfectly possible for the school to take the property by placing a first mortgage of five thousand dollars on the farm, and two members of the Board are willing to take a second mortgage for the remainder.” In the meantime, Haines oversaw renovations to the grounds and house, installing a “small pond for aquatic plants,” “a green-house on the hillside,” and a “new apple and a new peach orchard.” Haines also bought farm and nursery stock, interviewed potential employees, worked at fund-raising, and hired Mary O. Collins as principal. Collins had graduated from a Michigan college of agriculture and Cornell, and she had taught agriculture and managed farms in Connecticut and Georgia. Because the school was short of money to employ personnel, Collins was hired not only to organize the school and do “much of the teaching” but also to “attend to the housekeeping.” Board members such as Dock “hoped soon to be able to relieve her of it . . . as the last named duty does not in any way belong to the Principal.”16 While Haines renovated, hired, and raised money, and Collins prepared to assume responsibility for curriculum, instruction, and housekeeping, Dock herself was at work on the school’s behalf. She sent letters to potential donors, escorted visiting clubwomen around the grounds, and donated books from her own collection to the PSHW library. She faithfully attended board meetings and, on 6 May 1910, after “a committee meeting in the morning and a PHSW meeting in the afternoon,” she wrote the school’s constitution.17 { 124 }

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The PSHW joined the Lowthorpe School in Groton, Massachusetts, and the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Design for Women, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as one of the nation’s only single-sex agriculture and horticulture colleges. The school’s board of directors included, in addition to Haines and Dock, her friends and women’s club associates Elizabeth Leighton Lee and Emma Blakiston, and greenhouse proprietor Ann Dorrance. Mindful of the need for public approval, the directors utilized an advisory committee of four men, including a Provost Harrison, “a thoroughly practical horticulturist” with “wide experience in this country as well as in England, where he was trained.”18 According to the school’s catalog and publicity materials, the PSHW offered “practical training in the art of horticulture and gardening where women should be taught by lectures and by practical work.” The two-year curriculum included horticulture, surveying and garden design, botany, chemistry, fruit and vegetable preservation, beekeeping, poultry raising, and livestock care. Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture staff supplemented the regular curriculum by giving lectures and demonstrations in orchard work. The faculty also taught marketing, bookkeeping, business correspondence, and garden carpentry because “the successful grower for profit must know also proper business methods, correspondence, etc.” To enroll, students needed to be at least eighteen years of age with a high school diploma or its equivalent. The school charged tuition rates of $125 per year and $300 for room and board.19 The PSHW opened its doors in February 1911 with five students, two faculty members, a bank account of three thousand dollars, and high hopes. Two years. later the school enrolled sixteen students and employed four teachers. The fields had been planted in asparagus and strawberries; the orchard contained apple, pear, and nut trees; and the vineyard boasted 250 vines. Eight colonies of bees produced two hundred pounds of honey annually, and ninety hens laid an average of eighty eggs per day. Full of plans for the future, the board discussed building a new dormitory to ease overcrowding in the farmhouse and cottages for male field workers as well as modernizing the farmhouse’s plumbing, sewage, and heating systems. The board also authorized new roads and drainage systems, cold frames, greenhouses, and nursery stock. In 1913, a new principal, M. Catherine Strait, organized a conference for women gardeners.20 Outreach work with surrounding communities consumed much of the faculty and students’ time. In part, this work helped garner support for women’s education and professional employment. Public outreach, however, also provided services to the local community. As the school’s resources grew and the { 125 }

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students acquired skills, the PSHW sold produce and chickens, which supplemented the school’s income and provided fresh, wholesome food to city dwellers. A newspaper advertisement, for example, informed Philadelphians that “summer hampers of fresh vegetables from school gardens will be picked in the morning and delivered via the Reading and Main Line railroads for the evening meal. Orders are being taken now for fall and winter delivery of grape, apple and currant jelly, canned tomatoes, asparagus and rhubarb, sweet pickles, bottled grape juice.” Much of this outreach work was educational. As early as 1912, Strait reported that she received “constant requests” and “inquiries from all over the country” for advice. Before the first school term ended, the faculty had already given six public lectures and demonstrations. In 1913, the school taught a six-week summer course in practical gardening for women who could not afford the time or money to enroll during the regular school year.21 During World War I, the school engaged in defense work, joining with the National Food Administration to raise domestic production and teach food conservation. During the 1916–17 term, faculty taught extension courses in canning to community groups for a five-dollar fee. This course was in such high demand that the Canning Department made a profit of $48.16. After U.S. entry into the war, the school sent pear butter to troops in France as well as to local women’s clubs that entertained soldiers and sailors. During 1918, the PSHW gave instruction on vegetable gardening as well as canning, in collaboration with the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia. PSHW students— like those at Vassar, Bryn Mawr, and Mount Holyoke Colleges—contributed their own labor to the war effort by farming the school’s acreage, thus freeing male laborers for military service and creating food surpluses for American cities, U.S. troops, and European relief.22 Despite its good work with students and the larger community, the school experienced many problems. Potential supporters, fearful of competition with Penn State, backed away from the PSHW. Even the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women declined to endorse the school, although its board gave Dock permission to canvass local clubs. Some of the problems were internal, such as personality clashes among board members. After one particularly stressful meeting, Haines wrote to Dock to complain about a contentious board member: “hope she will resign but it isn’t likely.” Even before the school’s opening, the board had concerns about the principal, Mary Collins. One member wrote to Dock, “I do not feel that we have quite the right staff at present.” By 1912, Collins had resigned and Haines had hired Strait. Still, according to a Philadelphia clubwoman who was a friend of Dock’s and a { 126 }

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PSHW benefactor, “There is great discontent and dissatisfaction at the Horticultural School. Miss [board member Elizabeth Leighton] Lee has interviewed the students and teachers.” The correspondent hoped Dock could soon visit the school and help resolve the issues.23 Some of these personnel problems may have stemmed from resentment over the faculty’s myriad duties, such as Collins’s housekeeping responsibilities, as well as the low salaries paid by the board. The school experienced rapid turnover as faculty left for more remunerative employment. Three different women held the position of principal between 1911 and 1913. In 1921, John Doan, the horticulture teacher, decided to leave PSHW and asked Dock for a letter of recommendation. He complained that his salary was “not adequate to provide for the future, nor does it compare favorable [sic] with that received by nursery men of my age.” Doan, who held degrees from Earlham College and Cornell and had twelve years’ teaching experience, could presumably have worked anywhere.24 Salaries stayed uncompetitive, since financial problems constantly plagued the PSHW. The board struggled not only to compensate faculty but also to acquire livestock and make upgrades to the physical plant. In one report, Dock noted, “We need, at least, four cows . . . we also need the gift of a good driving horse . . . the estimated cost of improvements [plumbing/sewage, heating] is $3,000.” While Haines experienced great success in “getting lots of small donations,” she never seemed able to acquire any “Thousand Dollar windfalls.” The directors frequently discussed the school’s financial difficulties at board meetings and through their personal correspondence. In 1917, Dock wrote to Charles Lathrope Pack, president of the American Forestry Association, hoping he might suggest a donor who could endow the school. Even after World War I and the PSHW’s successful food conservation work, the school reported financial deficits. Dock, busy with state and national women’s club work and frustrated by the school’s continuing problems, resigned from the board in 1919.25 Despite its difficulties, Dock remained a lifelong supporter of the PSHW. Well after 1919, she kept abreast of developments at the school and corresponded with faculty and alumni. She clearly took pride in the opportunities the PSHW afforded young women, and the ways in which professional education empowered women workers. As she asserted in one PSHW brochure, “Graduates are filling responsible positions in private and public gardens, in managing their own business, or as consulting horticulturalists or lecturers.” As was true of women at single-sex colleges and medical schools, PSHW students received professional education in a supportive climate where they { 127 }

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were taught and mentored by other women. Students likewise had the opportunity to develop friendships and professional networks with peers who had the same interests and goals. Faculty members also received a benefit from the school’s existence—the chance to hold respected, paid positions of employment in a society that often discriminated against the woman professional.26 Dock believed training in horticulture might even enable females to combine marriage and children with their careers. Work in one’s own orchard, dairy, or poultry yard seemed compatible, in her eyes, with child rearing and housekeeping. She also believed that agriculture and horticulture offered better opportunities for women than overcrowded, feminized fields like nursing and teaching. In the school’s catalog, which Dock wrote, she advised prospective students, “A Special School of Horticulture for women is needed for the large and increasing number of women who wish to be able to combine their occupation and their home life, and for those who are looking for newer, wider fields of remunerative activity. . . . True the idea is somewhat new in this country, but so were a great number of other occupations and professions a few years ago which now count their women workers by the thousands.”27 In a 1910 speech, Dock emphasized that the PSHW offered practical training to women workers “who do not necessarily want or need a college degree.” She constantly challenged her fellow directors to consider the ways in which the school might better meet the needs of its students. As the board considered curriculum in 1910, Dock argued for course work in poultry management, noting, “It can be begun upon restricted home grounds with a very small outlay; it brings the quickest & most regular return of any branch of rural work.”28 Dock’s writings and speeches on female education and employment lacked the gendered, maternalist rhetoric used by so many of her contemporaries. This is particularly striking, given the gendered division of the early twentiethcentury workforce, even in the natural sciences. Typically, women studied botany while men worked in fields such as geology and zoology. Male botanists asserted their masculinity by choosing research specialties in areas such as forestry and engaging in vigorous and athletic specimen collection forays. Women who researched animals tended to be the wives of fellow scientists.29 Yet Dock drew the line at what women should attempt. She never challenged the concept of a gendered labor force. Firefighting and police work, she believed, were “inadvisable for women.” Like other turn-of-the-century Americans, Dock perceived firemen as athletic, courageous professionals who operated increasingly technical equipment and saved helpless women and { 128 }

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children. Because forestry also required physical strength, knowledge of heavy equipment, and manly courage, Dock never advocated that women become foresters. In a 1934 essay, “The Profession of Forestry,” she stated, “In its full practice it has always been, probably will remain a man’s occupation.” She believed women were too small in stature and musculature to handle workhorses, lumbering machinery, and sawmill equipment. She feared that male employees would resent female foresters and that women would feel uncomfortable in the rough and dangerous atmospheres of logging camps. She did suggest, however, that women with an affinity for the outdoors could work in entomology, dendrology, mycology, and horticulture. These views were not new, nor had Dock made any effort to conceal her opinions. She had, in fact, expressed her beliefs about women in forestry as early as 1902. While a Pennsylvania State Forest commissioner, Dock always referred to herself as a botanist and never as a forester.30 Dock, however, held no reservations about women’s political rights. Having attended her first suffrage meetings in 1899, during the International Congress of Women, she from then on visibly supported the movement. In a 1910 speech entitled “This Is Why I Believe in Suffrage” and delivered at the Pennsylvania State Suffrage Association’s forty-second annual convention, in Harrisburg, she outlined her women’s rights philosophy. Primarily, Dock believed American citizenship entitled adult women to vote. Women’s suffrage “seems to be in accord with the professed spirit of our National institutions which are supposedly based on justice to all citizens.” As a property owner, she resented taxation without representation. “It seems to me also an absurdity that women are subject to taxation . . . yet cannot express a direct opinion . . . by the ballot.” In response to antisuffragists who claimed enfranchising women would lead to wholesale social disorder, Dock responded, “It seems to me reasonable, just, and natural, in our country that women should have the suffrage and that we might have elections conducted in just as orderly a manner as is lecture attendance, church going, and other matters in which both men and women take part.” Dock also articulated a maternalist perspective, proposing that the ballot would promote women’s work as protector of the weak and defenseless. “I hope that we may yet see women of our State Board of Charities and Corrections, and on every other Board where women and children form part of the great human mass of misery and neglect that reflect discreditably on our civilization.”31 Dock stated as well that women had already proven their ability to use the ballot wisely through their local, state, and national civic and charitable work. “It seems incredible to me that when women are continuously besought by { 129 }

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the church, by the press, and by men in public life to lend their influence, their aid, and to work personally to promote the success of any given movement, that those same persons could be changed into undesirable or dangerous citizens by an opportunity to really show their influence.”32 With this argument, Dock buttressed fellow Progressives, like Jane Addams and Florence Kelley of Hull House, who maintained that women’s suffrage was a necessary component of urban reform. From their perspectives, responsible and altruistic female voters would elect efficient candidates and eliminate corrupt practices like pork-barreling. Men as well as women used this argument. Pinchot stated so when he publicly endorsed women’s suffrage in 1912. Four years later, as the Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, Theodore Roosevelt did the same. McFarland was among the most vocal proponents of this “municipal housekeeping” line of reasoning. In his 1917 address to the American Civic Association, he referred to voting women citizens as a “second Liberty Army” who would enact Prohibition as well as institute good government measures. Dock also believed female voters would clean up dishonest and incompetent governments. In a 1914 letter to McFarland, she complained about corruption in Harrisburg city politics and observed, “This is one of the kind of things that has driven women into suffrage.”33 As she did in other areas of her life, Dock used a multipronged approach in her suffrage work. She asked media outlets such as the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science for coverage of the issue. She donated money to both the Pennsylvania Suffrage Association and regional women’s suffrage groups. For a time, she chaired the Central Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, using her superb organizational skills to publicize the cause and mobilize supporters. In one circular letter, written in early January, she outlined the year’s work. She proposed “regular meetings of the Association in Harrisburg, regular correspondence with members living at other towns in the Central District, literature for purchase and distribution, and lectures and addresses by well-known speakers or informal talks and discussions free alike to members and to the general public.” She also solicited “contributions or pledges,” reminding suffragists “this Association is dependent upon the generosity of its members and friends.” In addition to speaking at the Pennsylvania Suffrage Association conference, she wrote at least one pro-suffrage letter to the Harrisburg Patriot.34 Dock avoided the confrontational tactics used by Lavinia and her fellow members of the Congressional Union during World War I. Along with Alice Paul and other CU members, Lavinia had picketed the White House during 1917 and 1918. Hoping to embarrass Woodrow Wilson into supporting { 130 }

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suffrage, the CU protested the “war for democracy” at a time when one-half of American adults still lacked the right to vote. District of Columbia police arrested Lavinia Dock three times—on 25 June and 17 August 1917, and again on 6 August 1918. Because she refused to pay the requisite fines, Lavinia served jail time. During Vinnie’s 1917 confinement in the notorious Occoquan, Virginia, workhouse, Mira visited her sister. Appalled by the unsanitary and inhumane conditions there, the older Dock spoke out against the victimization of women she referred to as “political prisoners.” Mira’s appeals, along with public indignation, won fifty-nine-year-old Vinnie an early release.35 While Congressional Union members picketed the White House and staged jailhouse hunger strikes, the GFWC more cautiously considered votes for women. The federation had become increasingly pro-suffrage as its members shifted their focus from literary studies to civic work. For the 1910 biennial, the federation scheduled Kate N. Gordon, vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, to speak on the issue. The GFWC formally endorsed women’s suffrage four years later. Individual members of the federation spoke out in favor of suffrage even earlier. Clubwomen who attended National Conservation Congresses raised the subject, arguing that if women possessed the franchise they could better promote conservation on the state and federal levels.36 Unlike the work of her sister Vinnie, who labored primarily for a national suffrage amendment, much of Mira Dock’s activity occurred at the state level. Pennsylvania women faced a daunting battle. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Senator Boise Penrose’s Republican political machine controlled the state’s politics. Penrose, the recipient of campaign contributions from liquor interests, feared that women voters might help pass a federal prohibition amendment. Other Republican Party officials associated women’s suffrage with Progressivism, and disliked the movement’s attacks on political corruption. Pennsylvania’s lawmakers, therefore, were not disposed to support enfranchisement at either the state or national level.37 The Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, which Mira supported, organized in 1910 with the objective “to secure for women the exercise of the right suffrage, and to effect such changes in the laws as shall recognize the equal rights of women with men.” The association opened a state headquarters in Philadelphia in 1910 and held its first open-air meeting a few months later, in 1911. Prominent women, such as Pinchot’s wife and Dock’s correspondent Cornelia Bryce Pinchot, canvassed door-to-door for the group. In 1915, the association’s president, Jennie Bradley Roessing of Pittsburgh, { 131 }

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conducted a five-thousand-mile automobile campaign that featured a traveling replica of the Liberty Bell, its clapper held by chains. The Pennsylvania association—like Dock’s central Pennsylvania affiliate—held meetings, hired speakers, and distributed “hundreds of thousands of fliers and leaflets” across the Commonwealth.38 Pennsylvania suffragists worked closely with the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women and local woman’s clubs. Individual clubwomen women signed suffrage petitions, contributed funds to the movement, and worked on county-level women’s rights committees. In some cases, entire clubs rallied to the cause by hosting suffrage club speakers, sponsoring public meetings, and distributing literature. Not all women’s clubs, however, supported female enfranchisement. State suffrage organizer Liliane Stevens Howard wrote in a 1910-era field report from Butler County, “The question was brought up in three of the more important clubs last year and met with little response.” Like Dock, many women came to suffrage after gaining confidence through their reform activities and becoming frustrated with their political powerlessness. Lucretia Blankenburg, a Philadelphian who headed the state-level suffrage association, confided such feelings to Dock after a particularly tiring 1905 reform campaign: “I had a very instructive experience & think this touch of real politics was proper for one who believes that sex should not be a barrier to any duty or opportunity.”39 Thus empowered and enlightened, Pennsylvania women worked for political change. Club members in Doylestown lobbied for women’s suffrage along with child labor and civil service reform laws. While its women’s club remained officially neutral on the subject, some Sewickley Valley clubwomen opened a Suffrage House in 1915. Here, they sold lunches and suffrage novelties to raise funds and publicize the movement. Pittsburgh Woman’s Club member Grayce D. Loftus recalled suffrage parades in which “we marched up and down, up and down the city streets carrying banners for the Rights of Women to Vote, and also Clean Streets.” Philadelphia’s New Century Club loaned headquarters space to the county Woman Suffrage Society.40 During her term as a State Federation of Pennsylvania Women vice president, Dock hit upon a novel way of promoting suffrage; showcasing prominent Pennsylvania women. Dock believed that publicizing women’s abilities and contributions to the state might blunt opposition to extension of the franchise by critics who argued that female voters would be “illiterate and degraded.” During a February 1909 state federation board meeting, she recommended that the federation officially recognize “Pennsylvania women, who have gained prominence in their respective professions.”41 The motion carried, and Dock began to plan the event. In a circular letter dated 3 November 1909, Dock informed local club presidents of a reception to be held on 12 November in the { 132 }

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state capitol. Here, the federation would honor the achievements of native and adopted daughters of the state, such as Violet Oakley. Oakley, an artist and Philadelphia clubwoman, had painted the murals in the Governor’s Reception Room in the newly remodeled state capitol between 1902 and 1906. Her commission had been the most prestigious and highly paid artistic project awarded to an American woman to date. Although there is no evidence that this 1909 event actually occurred, the idea of promoting suffrage by celebrating the accomplishments of Pennsylvania women had lasting appeal. A year after Dock’s proposal, state federation president Gertrude Biddle suggested holding a “distinguished daughters session” at the association’s 1910 annual meeting.42 Pennsylvania’s politicians defeated countless suffrage proposals, and by a margin of 46 to 54 percent state voters rejected women’s suffrage in a 1915 referendum. Pennsylvania’s U.S. senators also voted against national suffrage when a bill came before Congress in 1918. In 1919, however, after the Prohibition Amendment had passed Congress and been ratified by the states, Penrose dropped his opposition to women’s suffrage. The Pennsylvania General Assembly ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on 24 June 1919.43 The Dock sisters were certainly pleased to be enfranchised; yet Mira never saw suffrage as either the wellspring of women’s rights or the ultimate goal. For her, equality in professional education and lucrative employment served as the foundations of equality. The ballot, as she stated in her 1910 suffrage speech, was one more tool that women could use to perform their civic duties and, in the case of property owners, protect their economic interests. She recognized that suffrage had not erased all of the barriers hindering women. In a 1934 essay for the Women’s Farm and Garden Association, she lamented the fact that females still faced obstacles to entering the fields of agriculture and horticulture, blaming women’s lack of access to capital. She believed the association’s plans to professionalize women’s farm and gardening work by establishing more schools and developing agricultural and horticultural standards “will fail unless some satisfactory system of credit is devised by which women can with safety enter upon rural occupations.”44 Dock also expressed impatience with those who had ignored the historical record and important pre-suffrage gains. She wrote to a friend in 1934, “Now I have made a record on a Catalogue card ‘Women Appointees to State Commissions, prior to granting of Suffrage,’ which will be an eye opener for some persons I know, who think it is only since the World War that women have had a chance in important work.”45 Political rights, however, did give her some new opportunities as she pursued completion of longtime objectives as a conservation activist and woman’s club leader. { 133 }

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By 1920, Dock, in her sixty-seventh year, found herself increasingly unable to maintain the energy and focus that had characterized her work during the Progressive Era. Ill health and old age, that of both Mira and her sisters, made it increasingly impossible for Mira to devote long hours and long-distance travel to conservation matters. Yet even after her retirement, she refused to withdraw entirely from public life. Letters and visits from family members, friends, and former associates delighted her, as her frailty increased during the late 1930s and early 1940s. She sustained interest in organizations she’d previously served, particularly the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission. She also engaged in new activities, such as political campaigning for her old friend Gifford Pinchot and lobbying for Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) projects in Pennsylvania. Her activities during the 1920s and ’30s are representative of the public work that women and their organizations engaged in after World War I. These activities are important in light of historical scholarship that posits the 1920s as a political doldrums for women and a time in which women prioritized professional concerns over social issues.1 Prior to retirement, Dock took on one more major conservation project— the preservation of south-central Pennsylvania’s stone arch bridges. In 1917, while surveying the state’s forest acreage and wildflowers, Dock had happened upon a number of the unique stone arch bridges. Adams, Franklin, and Lancaster Counties in particular featured a number of the structures. Concerned that highway development jeopardized these beautiful and historic features, Dock sent copies of her report to Rothrock, to the state librarian, and to the state highway commissioner. She likewise reported her findings to women’s

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clubs and the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women. United States entry into World War I and the GFWC’s involvement in the war effort prevented both Dock and the state federation from doing much conservation work in 1917 and 1918. In 1919, however, Dock initiated a full-scale bridge preservation campaign.2 In the bridge preservation campaign Dock once again played the role of bridge leader, bringing together male professionals and national reformers with local, grassroots conservation workers. Her plan of action to preserve southern Pennsylvania bridges closely resembled those she’d used in earlier operations such as the Harrisburg Beautiful campaign, the drives to open the forest academy and the Mont Alto Sanatorium, and the movement to pass a National Parks Bill. First, Dock found a professional who could use his expertise to help her garner public support and lend credibility to the effort. In October 1919, at Dock’s instigation, Boston architect Ralph Adams Cram lectured on Franklin County’s historic bridges at Wilson College, to an audience that included the local community as well as faculty and students. Cram had discovered these structures while visiting his friend, a Dr. Irvine, in Mercersburg, and was fascinated with the structures. He wrote later that month to McFarland, “I did not know there was such beautiful old architecture in the United States.” Cram furthermore described the bridges as “good art” and likened attempts at dismantlement to “the destruction of French churches by the Huns.”3 Cram clearly conveyed his passion for these Pennsylvania structures during his Wilson College lecture, including in his advice to his audience the directive, “If any man threatens to lay hand on one of these stone bridges, shoot him on the spot.” Cram’s recommendations enabled Dock to undertake the second part of her plan—mobilizing pertinent local organizations representing both the women and men of south-central Pennsylvania. After Cram’s lecture, Adelaide Bird, president of the Cumberland Valley League of Clubs, and David Riddle, secretary of the Franklin County Historical Society, invited Dock to address their organizations at a joint meeting on 21 November. Members of both groups as well as the Franklin County Daughters of the American Revolution chapter promptly agreed to support and work for stone bridge preservation. Gertrude Biddle, Pennsylvania State Federation of Women president and a Carlisle resident, commented on the bridge preservation project in her newsletter column and solicited support from her Pennsylvania contacts in the American Civic Association. The Cumberland Valley League, a regional federation of women’s clubs from Harrisburg to Hagerstown, proved particularly helpful by documenting and photographing the bridges in their local communities. The league also appointed a committee of clubwomen, { 135 }

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including Dock, to educate the public about the issue and discuss it with professional engineers and state-level administrators from the Pennsylvania Highway Department.4 The Dock sisters had already established a positive working relationship with the Pennsylvania highway authorities. During the widening of Route 43, which bordered Dock’s tree plantation near Mont Alto, she noted “a grave danger of our water supply being affected by the changes.” At the Docks’ suggestion, highway department personnel redesigned the original engineering plan in a way that protected the spring that supplied the family’s water. Then, the agency “went further and instead of a concrete wall, which I had been told was their original idea, they consented, at our request, to make the wall of stone, and we offered to provide the stone free of charge if they would do the hauling.” Mira Dock considered her experience with the highway department “most pleasant,” and she believed further cooperation was possible, provided “individuals and communities may be awakened to see the great value of our unique and oftentimes famous stone bridges, and try to promote their preservation.”5 Dock enlisted former conservation allies in this campaign. In late 1919, she wrote to Pinchot, now conservation chairman of the Pennsylvania State Grange, asking the “Southern-tier County Grange to help us procure information on bridge locations and send us photos or postcards.” She recruited McFarland and the ACA for this one last campaign, grateful to have her old friend lend his reputation and expertise to the project. It was McFarland’s suggestion that clubwomen photograph and document bridges’ locations and conditions. McFarland also advised Dock to keep the pressure on a governor who was busy with a contentious coal strike. Ralph Adams Cram, at the urging of both Dock and McFarland, also forwarded his impressions of Pennsylvania’s stone arch bridges to Governor Sproul. Once again, Dock and her allies achieved success. The Pennsylvania Highway Department agreed to utilize existing bridges wherever possible when constructing or improving roads. As they had done on the Dock property, the department also promised to replace those bridges that couldn’t withstand modern traffic with stone, rather than concrete or steel structures.6 Dock’s stone bridge preservation campaign, along with projects initiated by other women, proves that conservation remained a priority for many Americans, even during the cultural excesses and political conservatism of the 1920s. During 1923, for example, the six hundred clubs that belonged to the Indiana Federation of Women’s Clubs secured precious lakeshore acres as Indiana Dunes State Park. In 1925, the New Hampshire Federation of Women’s { 136 }

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Clubs was instrumental in garnering state appropriations for the preservation of Franconia Notch, in the White Mountains. Two years later, the NHFWC took charge of the campaign to save one of the state’s premier geographic features, the massive granite formation called “Old Man of the Mountain.” Working with other New England federations, the New Hampshire state forester, the Society for the Preservation of the White Mountains, and other groups, thirteen thousand NHFWC members raised sixty-five thousand dollars. Not to be outdone by its affiliates, the GFWC wrote nature curricula that could be used by public schools and other institutions serving children. During the early 1920s, women’s clubs continued to beautify nearby sections of the Lincoln Highway with native trees and shrubs.7 The stone bridge preservation campaign as well as the Lincoln Highway beautification project fatigued Dock. In a 1921 letter, she complained about being “old and tired.” She no longer wrote professionally, she said. “My writing would not have the pep that a younger woman would throw into it.” She now declined most lecture invitations, stating, “I would rather be disobliging than dull if I knew I was dull [Dock’s emphasis].” The symptoms Dock described as rheumatism, likewise, made it increasingly difficult for her to both write and travel.8 In January 1922, Margaret, who was vacationing at her winter home in the Florida Keys, took ill. Lavinia retired from her position as secretary of the International Council of Nurses and traveled south to nurse her sister. Although Margaret did recover, she never fully regained good health. Another sister, either Laura or Emily, also fell ill in 1922, and the task of nursing this sibling fell to Mira. A week after informing McFarland of Margaret’s illness, Mira complained to him about “two invalids in our family this winter, one in Florida, the other at home.” In October, the sisters were still recuperating. As late as 1924, Mira’s Brook Hall School chum Frances Wright commiserated about Margaret’s “prolonged period of suffering.” Yet despite her caretaking duties, Mira found the time and motivation in 1922 to lecture occasionally. That year, she spoke on roadside beautification to the Society of Pennsylvania Farm Women and on Caledonia State Park for the Kittochtinny Historical Society. She continued to work in her tree nursery, “giving away trees to friends and selling others to nurseries or individuals.” Mira still took occasional vacations, spending so much time in Florida during the winter and spring of 1926 that, she wrote, “my main transplanting [of tree seedlings] had to be postponed to fall.”9 During the early 1920s, as Dock transitioned into retirement, she selectively wrote professional letters, crafted speeches, and attended public meetings. { 137 }

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She did this in situations where she felt her presence or opinion might tip the balance in conservation’s favor. At McFarland’s request, she wrote to the Harrisburg Parks commissioner in 1920, asking that he retain a competent employee instead of replacing the man with a local politician’s crony. In 1922, when her sister’s illness kept Dock at home, McFarland represented her in Harrisburg and delivered her lecture entitled “Helping to Keep Pennsylvania Profitably Beautiful.” Five months later, Dock found the time to attend a meeting in Harrisburg and prevent the destruction of a large red maple tree that had previously been slated for demolition to make room for a gas station. At the request of the Pennsylvania State Conservation Council, Dock lobbied for a new Forest Bond Bill in 1925.10 Dock also continued to advise both professional and amateur foresters. In 1920, she corresponded with North Carolina state forester J. S. Holmes concerning the second Southern Forestry Congress. She sent frequent letters to her friend and Pennsylvania Forestry Association member Florence Keen, who was concerned about the management of Philadelphia’s watershed. When Keen expressed interest in purchasing, preserving, and reforesting woodland acreage, Dock found her a 110-acre property in Perry County and gave advice on replanting and management. As late as 1930, Dock sent photographs of spruce and fir trees to Charles Lathrop Pack, president of the American Tree Association.11 Most of Dock’s associational correspondence during the 1920s and ’30s concerned the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission. She continued to offer advice to the foresters she’d known as students at Mont Alto. In 1925, she attempted to interest her former student and now district forester, William Byers, in constructing a walking trail between Tuscarora and Cove Mountains. She likewise communicated with Rothrock and Conklin on both professional and personal matters. She mourned Rothrock’s death in 1923 and contributed to his memorial fund, and she sent flowers to Conklin’s son’s funeral in 1929.12 Big changes occurred within the Pennsylvania Forestry Commission in 1920 when Governor Sproul appointed Gifford Pinchot state commissioner of forestry amid charges that Conklin had mismanaged the department. Pinchot, uncomfortable with the fact that Conklin had no formal forestry training, had clearly campaigned for the appointment. Despite her distress at Sproul’s treatment of Conklin, Dock proved supportive of Pinchot and wrote him frequent letters of advice. Shortly after his appointment, she sent him material on fire prevention and urged him to replant Pennsylvania’s forests with “valuable { 138 }

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species.” Two years later, she asked him to protect a tree nursery near the Graeffensburg Inn planted by “the little Conklin boys” and to prohibit camping near Caledonia’s Rhododendron Walk. She also wrote to other forest commission employees as well as politicians on forestry matters. When Pinchot resigned in 1922 to run for governor, Dock continued her campaign for wildflower and shrubbery protection with his successor, Robert Y. Stuart. She also complained about “the present game-laws,” which she felt protected deer at the expense of agriculture, in one letter protesting, “In certain parts of Pennsylvania farmers and orchardists are in much the same position that the French peasants were prior to the Revolution. The peasants were not allowed to erect any barriers to keep out the game animals in search of food.”13 When Conklin left the forest commission in 1920, Dock agreed with Rothrock that their former colleague had managed the agency efficiently. In response to a critical letter written by the Pennsylvania Lumberman’s Association and published in the Philadelphia Ledger, she wrote a biting missive to the present Pennsylvania State Forest Commission. Citing both her own commission experience and statistics she’d collected for the GFWC, she asserted that “there was more practical forestal work done in Pennsylvania than in any one other state [emphases Dock’s].” Whether Rothrock and Dock, or Conklin’s opponents, were correct, the new Department of Forests and Waters, reorganized by Pinchot during his first term as governor, made great strides. In 1923, Pennsylvania led the nation in wood distillation and charcoal manufacture, reflecting the ways in which conservation had successfully preserved the state’s forest resources. Income from the state forests that year totaled $113,094. In 1924, Pennsylvania’s foresters gathered 452 bushels of white pine cones, producing 467 pounds of seed, which was used for reforestation purposes. The tree nurseries and plantations established by the first forest commission also paid off in the mid-1920s. In 1925 and 1926, state nurseries distributed 8.6 million and 7.7 million trees, respectively, to public institutions, municipalities, utility companies, and private citizens. Emma Guffey Miller, a Democratic Party official, planted almost twenty thousand conifers on her Delaware County property in 1925. The fees charged for these trees, as well as lumber sales and camping permits, brought over one hundred thousand dollars annually into Pennsylvania’s treasury.14 Pennsylvania’s state forests shone in other ways as well. By the 1920s, the Commonwealth protected eleven unique historical, geological, and botanical sites as forest monuments. These included the birthplace of James Buchanan, Pennsylvania’s only president. The Department of Forests and Waters also { 139 }

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owned fifty state forest public camps that leased 1,277 campsites annually in nineteen public forest districts. State forests, such as one abandoned Lycoming County lumber camp, now boasted two thousand trees per acre, with average heights of seven to sixteen feet. Moreover, Chambersburg’s watershed, which lay entirely within Michaux State Forest, was “one of the finest watersheds” engineer Crosby Tappan had ever surveyed.15 More significantly perhaps was the change in public attitudes toward forestry. Newspapers, important local public opinion makers, now largely endorsed the state’s forest policies. Businesses such as coal companies and railroads cooperated in forest-fire prevention and firefighting. Farmers and sportsmen abided by reserve rules, instead of threatening state personnel with violence. Foresters and rangers, who had complained about local opposition to forest commission policies in the first decade of the twentieth century, now enjoyed greater support. As Carl Kirk, the forester at Penfield, wrote to Conklin, “Every community seems to have one or two persons in it who are not in favor of the operations of the Department of Forestry, but I assure you the majority of the people are heartily in favor of our work.”16 These changes in attitudes occurred, in part, because of the educational work of women’s clubs. Pennsylvania clubwomen continued to work on forestry during the postwar years. In 1921, western Pennsylvania clubs lobbied for the creation of a state forest in the Ohio River watershed. The Civic Club of Pittsburgh continued to arrange for tree planting at city schools and to support the reforestation of areas like Mount Washington. The national federation supported such work, as the GFWC lobbied for the planting and protection of water supply areas, tree protection along roadsides, and soil conservation.17 The GFWC’s conservation work mirrors the wide range of reform activities that engaged contemporary women. During the 1920s, women lobbied for passage of the Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act, worked for labor legislation and prison reform, and served on state-level commissions on interracial cooperation. In Toledo, Ohio, the YWCA organized a women’s dormitory and social activities for working-class schoolgirls. Members of Chicago’s Woman’s City Club investigated and publicized environmental, health, and child welfare problems. In Florida, clubwomen worked for cross-cultural understanding through the Tampa League of Women’s Clubs, which included both Anglo and Latina officers. As members of the city’s Urban League, white and black Tampa women built a home for juvenile delinquents, made improvements to the city schools, and pressured the city into hiring African-American police officers.18 { 140 }

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Women’s activities during the 1920s prove that Progressive thinking and reform continued after World War I, rather than disappearing from the political and social landscape. In Pennsylvania during the decade, the state’s Department of Forests and Waters continued to manage the forest academy, now officially known as the State Forest School. In 1925, the school moved to a four- rather than three-year course of study and began to award baccalaureate degrees. As the school modernized its program, Dock continued to be involved its affairs. In 1925, she donated eight species of trees for the arboretum. She delivered the greetings of former forest commissioners at the cornerstonelaying ceremony for a new school building in 1926. She did, however, refuse to allow the State Forest School Alumni Committee to erect a park shelter at Caledonia in her honor during the 1930s. Despite the pleas of former students who remembered her as the “Mother of Forestry in Pennsylvania,” Dock stood firm. Referring to the way that Pinchot had criticized Conklin’s administration, Dock wrote to the Caledonia district forester, explaining, “The two [forest commission employees] who were most closely connected with the project of a Wayside Lodge were both dismissed in what seemed to me a very brutal manner and I have told them [the Alumni Committee] that I cannot take any pride, or pleasure in the project.” Eventually, “Miss Dock’s boys” understood her point. They extended their thanks for her continued “interest in their welfare as per your telegrams” and her encouraging letters when their work received positive publicity in forest commission literature. Former Mont Alto students continued to send Dock letters and family photographs and to solicit her opinions for the agency’s service letter.19 By the 1920s, Dock’s contacts with her “boys” included letters and visits with her brother George’s two sons, George Jr. and William, or “Billy,” who in 1920 were ages twenty-four and twenty-one, respectively. Aunt Mira had hosted their summer vacation visits since the boys’ childhoods. Mira had started writing to George Jr. during his college years at Dartmouth in the 1910s and continued during his war service and the 1920s. She began a correspondence with Billy after the war, when he returned home from France and enrolled in Rush Medical College in Chicago.20 During the 1920s and ’30s, Dock avidly followed her nephews’ careers and personal lives. After World War I, George Jr. moved to St. Louis and got a job in banking. By 1924, he had relocated to New York City with his wife, Mildred. George now worked in the investment industry but dabbled in journalism, writing articles primarily about banking. In January 1928, he proudly wrote to his aunt describing a story recently accepted by the New Yorker. By August, Mildred and George were the parents of their only child, Donald, { 141 }

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and anticipating a visit from Mira. In a career move that would quickly prove to be problematic, George accepted a position as the advertising manager for a New York firm in 1929.21 Bill Dock, in the meantime, graduated from medical school in 1922 and became a “house officer” at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. Here, the medical staff was familiar with Bill’s medical pedigree, and “Aunt Vin” was invited to give the commencement speech at a nursing school graduation. In 1924, Bill married Eugenie “Genie” Maillard, a Frenchwoman he met in Boston, in a ceremony attended by the Calvin Coolidges and the Henry Cabots. The young couple moved to San Francisco, where Bill engaged in cardiology research at Stanford University Medical School and Genie studied violin. She also gave birth to their first son, George III. By 1932, the Docks had a second son, Christopher. William Dock became a renowned cardiologist and medical researcher who taught medicine and later directed the New York State Hospital and Medical Center in Brooklyn. After Genie Dock died tragically in a car accident, Bill married her younger sister, Marie.22 Mira corresponded with her brother as well as his sons. George Dock Sr. had retired from the University of Michigan Medical School and moved to Pasadena, California. His letters to his oldest sister described his visits to western national parks, reminisced about his medical career, and worried about the state of the economy. Mira also communicated with her cousin, Mildred Howells, just as she had with Mildred’s father, W.D. When Mildred bought a summer cottage in Maine and wanted advice on landscaping, Mira sent three fir trees for the property. Over the next few years, Mildred sent Mira updates on the trees’ condition, reporting happily in 1923, “One of the Vallombrasian pines died, but the other two go flourishing on.” During her retirement, Mira also began a correspondence with Florence Harmon Dock, the wife of her cousin, George. Florence Dock, a former suffragist, met her husband while making political speeches in New York City. The Docks now lived in Mexico, where the climate helped George’s chronic bronchitis. Florence entertained Mira with her stories of life in Mexico and political commentary, noting, “Tell Miss Lavinia that I get Equal Rights [the National Woman’s Party newsletter] every week and so know all the news.”23 Mira’s nonfamily correspondents during these years included both old friends and new acquaintances. McFarland wrote often to bemoan political patronage and “deviltry” in the Harrisburg Parks Department. Metropolitan Opera Company singer Philip Crispano, who had visited the Dock family in Fayetteville, sent photographs in 1931. Dock continued to mentor young female professionals, such as landscape designers Emily Exley and Frances { 142 }

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Kite of Philadelphia, and Mrs. LeBeau, a Wilson College botany professor. She also continued to advocate for tuberculosis patients at Mont Alto. In a 1922 letter, written to a fellow clubwoman whose son was an American Legion commander, Dock described the plight of a World War I veteran who had served in a forest regiment. “His claim for compensation has been disallowed. What can be done to help him in such a case? I am most anxious to do anything I can to help him recover (if it is possible) his health, and am sure that freedom from this long anxiety will be his best medicine.”24 After World War I, Dock also continued to correspond with her German friends. When Katherine Brandis, Sir Dietrich’s widow, suffered a bad fall in 1919, Dock sent a generous Christmas sum, which the financially struggling Brandis used to convalesce in the countryside. Throughout the 1920s, their letters crossed the Atlantic. They commiserated on the illnesses and deaths that plagued both families. During these years, Dock wrote as well to G. R. Yeager, one of the foresters she’d met during her 1899 tour of the Black Forest. Dock sent Yeager copies of American forestry and historical literature, and she listened to Yeager’s concerns about the state of German forestry in the nation’s struggling postwar economy. As she had done with Brandis, Dock made financial gifts to the Yeager family.25 While no Dock children died in World War I, as Brandis’s son did, and the Docks did not suffer financial adversity during the 1920s, they nevertheless had their share of tragedy. George Sr.’s wife, Laura, died in 1925. Despite therapeutic trips to her Florida winter retreat with Mira and Emily, Margaret Dock’s health continued to deteriorate. Margaret died at home on 2 April 1938. Although the older Docks weathered the Great Depression intact, George Jr. lost his advertising job and, for a time, lived with his wife and son in his aunt Mira’s home.26 Although Mira complained of illness herself during the 1920s, including a “deep settled nervous depression,” she nevertheless took on a new role, that of political campaigner. After ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, she proved eager not only to vote but to canvass for her favorite candidates. Her first foray into partisan politics occurred in 1922, when Pinchot ran for governor of Pennsylvania. He won, in part because his chief political enemy, Boise Penrose, had died the year before. Dock campaigned enthusiastically for her friend and ally. In April 1922, she met at her home with Katherine Bell, a representative from Pinchot headquarters in Philadelphia, presumably to discuss south-central Pennsylvania electoral strategy. Esther Everett Lape, another campaign official, urged Dock to contact headquarters when she needed more literature and to inform campaign staff of how they might “be { 143 }

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of greater service.” Five weeks later, Pinchot himself wrote to thank Dock for her help. Dock felt hopeful about her friend’s chances, even when pundits claimed that Pinchot was behind his opponent. She cheerfully informed her friend and Pinchot relative, Mary Mumford, that even conservative Adams County “gave unexpectedly large returns” to the reformist Pinchot during the primary election. Confidently, Dock predicted to Mumford, “Your kinsman will win in the further struggle.”27 Dock campaigned again for Pinchot in 1930. From 1931 to 1935, during his second term as governor, Pinchot kept Dock abreast of state political issues and controversies, sometimes requesting that she write her legislators on his behalf. Shortly after taking office in 1931, Pinchot complained to Dock about urban political machines and collusion between “the public utility interests and the Philadelphia gang.” Nine weeks later, the governor reported to Dock that a House committee had agreed to investigate “charges that the Public Service [Utility] Commission is cat’s-paw of the corporations.” Pinchot eventually won the battle, appointing Progressives to the state’s Public Service Commission and securing consumer-friendly utility rates. As the Depression deepened, Pinchot discussed with Dock his public works and assistance programs. As early as 1932, the governor had established work camps and public works programs for unemployed Pennsylvanians, but he desperately needed federal money, which Hoover refused to give. Frustrated, Pinchot wrote to Dock, “The richer people ought to take the same share in the State’s adversity that they have taken in its prosperity.”28 Dock’s political work during the 1920s and ’30s was indicative of state and national trends. Reform-minded women flocked to Pinchot, confident that he would enact programs they’d supported as Progressive Era club members. His support of women’s suffrage and the popularity of his Progressive activist wife, Cornelia, added to his cachet. During his 1922 campaign, the Republican Women’s Clubs of Pennsylvania worked on his behalf. Pinchot openly acknowledged female support. Shortly after his election, the New York Times quoted him as saying, “It was due to Mrs. Pinchot and the women she organized, far more than to any other single factor, that we won.” The governor showed his appreciation by appointing seventy-nine women to administrative posts during his first term. These included Dr. Ellen C. Potter, secretary of welfare, Pennsylvania’s first woman cabinet officer.29 Outside of Pennsylvania, newly enfranchised women also used their votes to work for social change. In Chicago, during the 1922 municipal election, women’s clubs and the League of Women Voters (LWV) succeeded in electing Annie Bemis, a leader in juvenile justice and prison reform, as a Cook { 144 }

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County commissioner. The Cook County LWV spent the decade engaging in grassroots organizing and lobbying for such reforms as the SheppardTowner Act, an elected local school board, and smoke abatement ordinances. White and black women worked together in this LWV chapter in “nonpartisan but political action.” Immediately after the Nineteenth Amendment’s ratification, Tampa women involved themselves in a mayoral election, hoping to oust a corrupt administration. Women’s groups conducted registration campaigns and published pamphlets, so that female voters would be well informed. In 1920, women composed 32 percent of all white voters and 60 percent of all black registrants in Tampa. Unfortunately, poll taxes and literacy tests made it virtually impossible for African-American women in Florida and elsewhere to exercise their right to vote. At the national level, both the LWV and the Women’s Joint Congressional Caucus campaigned for Progressive candidates, taught women’s citizenship classes, and lobbied for social welfare legislation and efficient, economical government. Individual women like Cornelia Pinchot also ran for political office. Despite her husband’s support and her popularity with women’s groups and reformers, Pinchot failed in each of her three attempts to become a congresswoman.30 While there is no evidence that Dock worked on any of Cornelia Pinchot’s campaigns, the two women did develop a friendship during the 1920s and ’30s. Like her husband, Mrs. Pinchot wrote thank-you letters to Dock and related information on such matters as Prohibition enforcement, primary election results, and her husband’s relationship with the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Dock, for her part, admired this outspoken and independent First Lady who followed her instincts, even when her actions proved controversial. Dock was particularly supportive of Mrs. Pinchot’s decision to picket with striking New Jersey textile workers in 1926. Her letter to the First Lady stated, “How heartening it was to have such a protest come from one high placed officially.”31 Dock used her political clout with the Progressive Pinchots to lobby the governor on conservation and forestry issues. In 1924, for example, she complained to him once again about the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s “excessive powers” and its “ruinous” policies. Three days later, Pinchot responded by asking for her data on the commission, promising to “look carefully into whatever suggestion you make.”32 During the 1930s, Dock continued to write to public officials, particularly regarding the Civilian Conservation Corps, which established a large presence in Pennsylvania. The Commonwealth had pressing needs that the CCC could fill—a large cadre of unemployed youth and public forests where these { 145 }

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men could work. Furthermore, Pennsylvania provided a model on which the federal program could build. The state had already professionalized its forest service and reforested or preserved large sections of its reserves. Pennsylvania foresters were thus available both to consult with U.S. officials and to supervise CCC work crews. Federally employed workers could continue planting trees, eradicating diseases and pests, and fighting forest fires—work already begun by the state but hamstrung by budget cuts. Potential Pennsylvania citizens had been identified and were ready to commence work, thanks to the efforts of Pinchot’s State Emergency Relief Board. In the words of historian Joseph Speakman, “With the possible exception of California, no other state was as well prepared to effectively utilize CCC labor as was Pennsylvania.”33 Dock closely monitored the work of the CCC, frequently reminding politicians that she had served on the forest commission and was therefore familiar with conservation policies and practices. In 1934, she telegrammed Governor-Elect George H. Earle, asking him “to make no change in that Department [State Forest Commission]” so that “President Roosevelt’s CCC projects may be unbroken.” Later, she wrote to both President Roosevelt and Governor Earle, commending the current State Forest Commission for its efficient cooperation with the federal agency. Dock often wrote to officials in the Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters, reminding them that she was “the oldest surviving member of the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry” and “sending invitations in case you should find yourselves in my neighborhood.”34 Pennsylvanians had good reason to be proud of forest commission–CCC results. Between 1933 and 1942, the state funded an average of seventy-eight camps annually in forty-eight counties. By the close of the program, CCC workers had strung 791 miles of telephone lines, constructed 3,385 miles of roads, planted more than 61 million trees, and built 102 dams. In 1936, during heavy flooding, 7,000 men from the CCC performed rescue, relief, and cleanup work. Pennsylvania state foresters designed the projects, purchased the equipment, and inspected the work performed by CCC enrollees.35 As a longtime Progressive, Dock applauded the CCC’s conservation work. She also favored reform-minded Republican candidates like Pinchot. Dock, however, was not a strictly partisan voter. In 1928, she told Pinchot that she planned to vote for Al Smith for president and suggested to her nephew, George, that he do the same. He replied that he had voted for Herbert Hoover, “damn me as you will,” but was sympathetic to both Smith and Socialist { 146 }

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candidate Norman Thomas. In 1936, Dock tactfully ignored Pinchot’s letter urging her to vote for Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon.36 In 1936, three months after her eighty-third birthday, Dock wrote to McFarland, “I never go anywhere anymore, not since 1932.” Dock mentioned, however, that she still had many “projects.” She closely followed developments in Harrisburg city parks, complaining that incompetent employees had removed dead trees needed by nesting flickers. In 1940, she still felt well enough to entertain C. F. Korstian, a dean at Duke University and friend of George Wirt’s. During the early 1940s, Dock corresponded with the Harrisburg Municipal League and donated books to the University of Pennsylvania’s Botanical Library. She continued her interest in the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, receiving information on the school’s curricula and its public outreach programs. As late as 1944, Dock still purchased and planted rhododendrons and azaleas.37 Dock also continued to correspond with her “boys” from the State Forest Commission. George Perry and John Witherow kept Dock abreast of their work with the Tennessee Valley Authority and the National Park Service. In 1943, Robert Conklin’s son, Gard Conklin, thanked her for the wreath she’d sent for his father’s grave. Letters from nephews and great-nephews also entertained her. During the early 1940s, Bill married his second wife, Marie, and supervised the medical labs at a New York City hospital. In 1941 and 1942, George Jr. and his son, Donald, regaled Aunt Mira with stories about the injured birds they nursed for the White Plains, New York, game warden. These birds included a broad-winged hawk and a barred owl. In 1941, Conservation Magazine published George’s article on bird migration. His expertise on avian subjects led publishing firm Howel, Soskins to approach him about writing a children’s book on birds in 1944. A few months later, Dock was at sea, once again engaged in wartime military service. The U.S. Army had already drafted Bill in 1943 and sent him to staff school at Camp Young Desert Training Center, in California.38 A relieved Dock celebrated V-E Day, but she did not live to see the end of World War II. In early 1945, she was diagnosed with spindle-cell carcinoma, a rapidly growing, highly malignant tumor that quickly metastasized into her liver and kidneys. Neither X-ray treatments nor surgery were indicated under the circumstances, and she died at home on 11 July 1945 at ninetyone. Death gradually felled her remaining siblings in the coming dozen years. George Dock Sr. died in 1951. Laura passed away sometime in the mid1950s, followed by Lavinia, who perished in 1956 after breaking her hip at { 147 }

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age ninety-eight. Emily, the youngest Dock sibling, died in 1957, survived by George Jr., William, and their sons.39 At Mira Dock’s passing, the media and her former colleagues lauded her accomplishments; the Evening News noted that Dock was “generally credited with having been the inspiration for the beginning of the city’s public improvement era in 1902.” It also noted her service on the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission and her memberships in the Pennsylvania Forestry Association and the American Civic Association. Gifford Pinchot commented that Dock was as great a Pennsylvanian as “Molly Pitcher or Jane Grey Swisshelm.” Lavinia and Laura received notes of condolence from their sister’s former students and colleagues, including Lynn Emerick, director of the State Bureau of Forests, and George Wirt, now Pennsylvania’s chief forest fire warden. Letters came as well from Dr. Henry Rothrock, J. T.’s son, and the Civic Club of Philadelphia.40 The family held a private funeral at the home and experimental tree plantation where Dock had spent so much of her career. Then, her siblings buried Dock at the family’s Harrisburg Cemetery plot, in the city she had loved so well. Her surviving sisters spent the next months honoring Mira’s bequests. Laura sent books to Henry Rothrock, while Lavinia sorted and organized their sister’s papers. All written forestry materials were sent to the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry, with other materials scattered among various archives. Mont Alto received Dock’s glass lantern slides. Lavinia sent personal and professional correspondence to the Library of Congress and miscellaneous papers to the Dauphin County and Kittochtinny Historical Societies. Mira Lloyd Dock’s legacy, however, lived on in more than just her letters, manuscripts, and botanical slides.41

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Mira Dock’s legacy of conservation and cleanup survived well past her retirement, both inside and outside of Pennsylvania. In 1934, socialite and suffragist Rosalie Edge founded the Hawk Mountain bird sanctuary in Berks County, fifty miles northeast of Harrisburg. During the 1930s, the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs donated land and lobbied for the establishment of Everglades National Park in the southern Florida peninsula. A decade later, a fellow Floridian, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, researched the same area for her best-selling book, Everglades: River of Grass (1947). Women’s conservation work continued into the post–World War II era as well. During these decades, professional women, along with numerous volunteer activists, continued to battle profit-minded business interests, apathetic governments, and indifferent citizens. During the 1950s and ’60s, biologist Rachel Carson alerted Americans to the dangers of oceanic degradation and synthetic pesticides. Her books The Sea Around Us (1951) and Silent Spring (1962) became best sellers. Urban citizens, concerned about the quality of their surroundings, linked modern sanitation problems to a broader, modern environmental movement. A new generation of female activists, like Pittsburgh GASP members, worked to eradicate urban air pollution. According to historian Robert Gottlieb, the first Earth Day celebration in 1970 was, in part, a culmination of female reformers’ efforts. At the same time, the federal government embarked on a new round of reforms. Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964, which barred most forms of development in national wilderness areas. As United States President, Lyndon Johnson spent $12 billion on the environment, added acreage

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to the National Park Service and the Wilderness Preservation System, and signed numerous conservation, antipollution, and preservation bills.1 In more recent decades, environmental perspectives, activities, and actors have both become more diverse and moved well beyond the concerns of Progressive Era conservationists. During the 1970s, feminist environmentalists combined their critique of gender roles and relationships with their concern for the natural world, creating the ecological feminist movement. Ecofeminists believed there were important connections between the treatment of women, people of color, and the underclass, on one hand, and the treatment of the nonhuman natural world on the other. Postmodernist scholars point to language that both animalizes women (foxes, chicks, bitches) and feminizes the environment (Mother Nature, virgin timber) as one example of this thesis. Ecofeminists have been particularly critical of “orthodox forestry,” arguing that the profession privileges trained males at the expense of indigenous communities and ruins native ecosystems by replacing mixed forests with commercial monoculture. Ecofeminists have called for a nonhierarchical world in which humans protect the rights of other species and rely upon nonpolluting and renewable energy sources. In the words of ecofeminist and German Green Party founder Petra Kelly, ecofeminism means “respecting all living things and knowing about the interrelatedness and interconnectedness of all living things.”2 At the same time, according to Dorcetta Taylor, Kimberly K. Smith, and Jenny Price, other new environmental paradigms severely critiqued and offered “radical alternatives” to the white, middle-class, male-dominated conservation movement that Dock had known. The environmentalists who articulated these alternative beliefs were often women, the poor, and/or people of color. They argued that the mainstream contemporary movement was linked too closely to industry, alienated from grassroots constituencies, too bureaucratic, and too narrowly focused on wildlife, wilderness, and waterway protection. Galvanized by issues such as the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island and the contamination of Love Canal, working-class environmentalists formed groups to clean up toxic waste and halt unwanted uses of local lands. Within workplaces, employees negotiated and litigated over health and safety issues such as asbestos-related illnesses and pesticides that threatened farm laborers. In the twenty-first century, when, as Jenny Price attests, “environmentalism goes mainstream like never before,” environmentalists and social justice activists debate and experiment with the best ways of both preserving nature and building sustainable communities. The revitalization of the Los Angeles River—with its emphasis on controlling floods, cleaning { 150 }

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urban air and water, building neighborhood parks, and restoring wildlife habitat—is one example of an environmental–social justice coalition.3 “Radical” environmental movements are not confined to the United States. Women throughout the world have initiated hundreds of grassroots environmental organizations and projects. In 1974, twenty-seven women in Reni, India, stopped commercial tree felling around their village by literally hugging the trees, making it impossible for lumbermen to reach their quarry. The rise of Green political parties in both Western and Eastern Europe is another way in which citizens have used grassroots action to deal with environmental degradation.4 Increasingly, international activists framed their environmental arguments in terms of social justice and human security. In Germany, Green Party leaders and activists simultaneously championed such causes as unilateral disarmament, withdrawal from NATO, and women’s equality. Concerned with human rights violations among Soviet bloc countries, Petra Kelly contacted East German dissidents and publicized their plight. For such feminist and social justice–oriented activists, all structures of domination and oppression were related symptoms of patriarchy. As Petra Kelly stated, “Patriarchal power brought us acid rain, global warming, military states, and countless cases of private suffering.” For these environmentalists, repairing the existing capitalist, patriarchal system will not bring about the changes needed to save the world. Instead, decentralized decision-making institutions within free and nonviolent communities, grassroots action, “soft” technologies and energies, and guaranteeing people’s access to resources such as water must replace existing structures and policies. Social justice environmentalists, with their emphasis on nonviolence and exploitation, are more closely aligned to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. than to Pinchot and Dock.5 Yet despite their apt criticisms of early conservationists and their broader and more diverse goals, these modern-day environmental activists both in the United States and elsewhere owe much to the legacy of Dock and her female contemporaries. Dock—along with clubwomen, college professors, and landscape architects—was troubled not only by the irresponsible use of natural resources but also by the impact environmental degradation had on human beings. Dock and her allies worked to reclaim barren lands, preserve trees, and protect wilderness areas throughout the United States because they believed such policies served the needs of American citizens and communities. Pressure from concerned women, not yet enfranchised, helped create institutions like the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission and the National Park Service to protect the public health and welfare. Troubled by { 151 }

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the foul water, dirty air, and lack of decent recreation available for the poor in their communities, professionals and laywomen were also at the forefront of municipal improvement. In the process of conserving and preserving their society, Progressive Era women went far beyond narrow definitions of nature, embracing fellow citizens as “resources” in need of protection and opportunity. And as Progressive Era conservationists Gifford Pinchot, J. Horace McFarland, and Enos Mills contended, women were central to this movement’s success.6 Female reformers certainly, in both rhetoric and deeds, reflected white middle-class values about appropriate behaviors and projected fears about immigrants, people of color, and the working class. Yet in the process of Americanizing the foreign-born and socializing the poor, these women performed invaluable work. They restored degraded neighborhoods, pressured governments into providing needed municipal services, and furnished health, educational, and recreational programs for adults and children of limited financial means. Finally, while working for communities and less fortunate citizens, women also agitated for their own rights. Dock’s life and work clearly provide many insights into Progressive Era conservation. The movement was not located solely in the western United States. Eastern citizens—in big cities, medium-sized communities, and rural areas alike—had good reasons to support conservation. In Pennsylvania, a state that was both a manufacturing powerhouse and a major provider of raw materials, citizens of both genders became concerned about industrial pollution and environmental degradation. In Harrisburg, both businessmen and clubwomen, inspired by Dock, agitated for the 1901 bond issue that funded street paving, flood control, water filtration, and an expanded park system. The organizations that Dock worked with, such as the “leading men and women of Pittsburgh” in the Allegheny County Civic Club, lobbied their local governments for improved fire protection, established public baths in poor neighborhoods, and campaigned against ugly billboards.7 In rural Pennsylvania communities, matrons, clergy, and businessmen who attended Dock’s lectures solved problems ranging from waste collection to unsafe school buildings and grounds. As told in the countless GFWC Conservation Committee reports written by Dock, citizens of eastern states like Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland likewise worked to clean, preserve, and beautify their environments. East Coast Progressives like Dock saw forestry as essential to the welfare of their cities and towns. By the 1890s, reformers understood the connection between denuded hillsides, soil erosion, and fouled water supplies. { 152 }

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One hundred years before the current debate on global warming and rainforest decimation, Progressives argued that “forestry affects human health, rainfall, and climate.”8 Moreover, many middle-class Americans believed, as did Dock, that forests provided wholesome recreational opportunities. As Dock had seen in Europe, forest parks could serve as a balm for working-class citizens pressed into increasingly overcrowded neighborhoods within industrialized communities. While western conservationists battled, with the support of national groups, to preserve giant trees and monumental landscapes, easterners like Dock had their own brand of forestry. Their goals included land reclamation, reforestation, and the establishment of more modest wilderness preserves. These forests, like Caledonia State Park, were often only a trolley ride away from congested urban neighborhoods in places like Harrisburg and Chambersburg. The Mont Alto forest preserve provided tuberculosis patients, often poor and working-class Pennsylvanians, a place of recuperation and restoration. Despite attempts by some men to marginalize women in the conservation movement, females and males worked together on a variety of conservation projects. Both women and men joined the Civic Club of Allegheny County, the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, and the American Civic Association. They drafted and secured appropriate local, state, and federal legislation; created institutions like zoning boards, public baths, and playgrounds; and improved public health, the quality of urban life, and the physical environment. Within these organizations, women served not only as rank-and-file members but also as presidents, vice presidents, and members of executive boards. Dock, for one, advised both the Pennsylvania and U.S. Forestry Associations and served as a delegate for several National Conservation Conferences.9 Even when females labored under the auspices of single-sex organizations like women’s clubs and their corresponding state and national federations, they still worked collaboratively with men. While in Harrisburg Dock’s civic club, along with the board of trade and the municipal league, provided the impetus for the city’s 1901 improvement campaign, throughout the Commonwealth Dock and her fellow clubwomen worked with male political officials, business leaders, and professionals on their communites’ behalf. This work established new municipal agencies, improved blighted areas, and provided health and recreational opportunities for urban residents, particularly women and children. At the national level, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and its Conservation Department, under Dock’s auspices, worked with groups such as the American Civic Association, the American Institute of Architects, and reform-minded members of Congress. This collaboration { 153 }

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resulted in, among other things, improved U.S. cities, a landscaped Lincoln Highway, and the creation of the National Park Service. In the area of forestry, laywomen’s contributions were virtually identical to those of laymen. As described in this study, Pennsylvania clubwomen both organized and participated in policymaking within the state’s forestry association. At Dock’s urging, women’s clubs joined with male-dominated trade groups to lobby for the establishment of the State Forest Commission. After accomplishing this objective, Dock counted on support from both female and male allies to secure adequate funding for forestry and to create a professional school and a tuberculosis sanatorium within the state’s forest preserves. Prodded by Progressive citizenry and led by able commission members like Dock, Pennsylvania’s forestry program became a model for those of other northeastern states. At the local level, Dock mobilized women, with the support of their municipal governments and Pennsylvania’s state-employed foresters, to plant and preserve trees. Dock and Pennsylvania’s clubwomen also collaborated with public school superintendents to educate teachers and children about forestry as well as support the reforestation and preservation work of the Commonwealth’s foresters and rangers. As Dock’s correspondence and publications show, clubwomen in other states also collaborated with men on forestry. The New Hampshire Federation of Women—along with the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, the Appalachian Mountain Club, and the New Hampshire State Forest Commission—preserved the White Mountains. The Minnesota Federation worked closely with professional foresters, C.F. Schenck and Herman Chapmann, as it called public attention to logging abuses on the Chippewa reservation.10 The GFWC adopted a forestry resolution at its 1896 biennial and thereafter promoted tree preservation and woodland reclamation through its Forestry Committee and Conservation Department. Throughout its forestry work, GFWC conservation officers like Dock, Crocker, and Sherman consulted with the U.S. Forest Service, state forestry departments, and university-affiliated experts. Clubwomen, however, were not afraid of conflict and confronted the male establishment when cooperative tactics proved unsuccessful, whether in municipal improvement movements or forestry matters. The Carlisle Civic Club’s campaign to awaken its borough council to the need for clean streets and sidewalks was a case in point. Civic club members attended borough council meetings, lectured businessmen on municipal improvement, and bought the community a street sprinkler when local politicians declined to do so. The { 154 }

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women of Philadelphia’s civic club, frustrated over corrupt and unresponsive city governments, publicized administrative ineptness and monitored local elections in attempts to both document and prevent fraud. Dock, at various times in her career, wrote forceful letters decrying corruption, incompetence, and wrongheaded policies to Harrisburg city officials, state government agencies, and colleagues. Women’s clubs did not hesitate to denounce professional foresters and Wilson administration conservationists who favored damming both the Hetch Hetchy watershed and the Roanoke River. Because Dock herself disapproved of these measures she found herself in opposition to her friend and ally Pinchot. In this struggle to clean the nation’s communities and preserve its wildlands, Americans found the contributions of professional women like Dock to be essential. On numerous occasions, as this study has shown, she served as a bridge between women and men. Through her various civic and political affiliations, she had footholds in the worlds of both volunteer activism and science. She understood the motives and objectives both of clubwomen experimenting with new social roles and of trained male conservationists groping to find the intersection of professionalism and community welfare. She was aware that these groups shared a desire for reform but approached political and social problems from diverse perspectives, educational backgrounds, and personal experiences. She was no doubt aware that conservation-minded men feared the movement’s feminization and were willing to marginalize women to shore up the cause and their own masculinity. Through her public lectures, state government work, and club-related activities, Dock frequently mediated among these groups. Dock’s formal course work at the University of Michigan and informal, independent study in Germany’s Black Forest shaped her conservation philosophy as a utilitarian conservationist, primarily concerned with the usefulness of natural resources, rather than the beauty per se of unspoiled wilderness. Her outlook, therefore, was similar to that of Pinchot’s and Rothrock’s— pragmatic rather than romantic. Although appreciative of nature’s beauty and aware of the health benefits forests provided, Dock firmly believed that “forestry begins with the axe.” Like the majority of Progressive conservationists, she supported a resource policy that produced the “greatest good, for the greatest number, for the longest run.” As a Pennsylvania State Forest commissioner, she worked hard to develop the commercial possibilities of the Commonwealth’s forests as well as to reforest and preserve. Dock had no patience with allies such as McFarland, whose aesthetic impulses she believed { 155 }

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hindered scientific forestry. With both the general public and state foresters, she emphasized the need to “cut the worthless stuff” and plant commercially valuable species. When working with clubwomen and businessmen, she insisted that organizational policies—be they GFWC, state federation, local club, or board of trade—show consistency with the philosophies of trained foresters and professional botanists. Likewise, in her municipal improvement work, she consulted engineers, architects, and park designers and disseminated their opinions to government officials, reform organizations, and community members. In this way, she functioned much like Ellen Swallow Richards in Boston and Dr. Alice Hamilton in Chicago and Washington, D.C., translating scientific conservation for both laymen and women.11 Male journalists and government officials praised Dock’s scientific credentials and her lack of sentimentality. At the same time, she conducted herself in an appropriately feminine manner, carefully framing her arguments in ways that soothed rather than alienated her constituents. In countless communities, among mixed-gender audiences, Dock stressed the economic value of municipal improvement and tree preservation. When promoting women’s roles in reform movements, she sometimes resorted to the same types of maternalist rhetoric used by the GFWC at its 1898 biennial. Thus, conservation could be seen as “housekeeping out of doors,” undertaken by “Aunt Sam.”12 In addresses, articles, and letters to other clubwomen and female professionals, however, Dock changed her message. To these groups, she defined conservation work as primarily a function of good citizenship. Dock thus swung back and forth on what Caroline Merchant describes as a gendered dialectic. While Dock preferred to speak about conservation in scientific and civic terms, she used maternalism when and where she felt it justified and supported women’s public work. In choosing her words, Dock analyzed her audiences carefully and selected the message best designed to achieve her objectives. Dock was likewise careful in the way she promoted women’s professional work within conservation, agriculture, and horticulture. As noted, early in her career she disguised her gender by using initials, rather than her first name on professional letterhead and correspondence. She always referred to herself as a botanist rather than a forester. This was largely an effort to be scrupulously honest, but she perhaps also meant to avoid offending key male allies. She promoted college education for female farmers as a means of “helping women work to best advantage,” a message likely to score points with efficiencyminded Progressives.13 Yet she also saw great opportunities for women in { 156 }

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these fields. Although unmarried and childless herself, she raised five younger siblings, nursed her father and sisters, and nurtured several nephews. She sacrificed professional opportunities because of family obligations, and she understood the needs of women who wished to combine remunerative employment with domestic life. This desire to help other women fulfill their potentials led to her involvement with the Women’s International Agricultural and Horticultural Union and the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women. Dock’s involvement with women’s rights transcended her work for equitable education and employment. She donated money and spoke publicly for women’s suffrage. Her motives for supporting this cause included justice for women themselves as well as the hope that enfranchised females might use their power to protect their social inferiors and clean up corrupt governments. Perhaps, as well, encounters with dismissive or patronizing males experienced during her conservation work convinced her of women’s need for the ballot. After receiving the vote, she used her newfound power to campaign for Progressives like Pinchot and vote for reform-minded candidates like Franklin Roosevelt. In the twenty-five-year period between ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and her death, Dock took pleasure in lobbying government officials on behalf of conservation issues. She seemed fully aware of her new political leverage. Mira Lloyd Dock’s life and career proves the salience of women’s work in the Progressive Era conservation movement. Her career shows that such work was broad based, encompassing municipal improvement, utilitarian forestry, professional forestry education, and public health as well as the preservation of trees and scenic venues. Male professional and amateur conservationists also engaged in these fields of endeavor. Women, generally amateurs themselves, not only performed the same conservation work as men but also used the same language and arguments to describe their goals, strategies, and activities. Dock’s preferences for a scientific rather than a maternalist rhetoric came from her own university training, fieldwork and Progressive faith in expert management. Her choice of strategy also reveals an understanding that men in conservation would marginalize women if males perceived their female allies as liabilities rather than assets. Branding women reformers as “sentimental” rather than “scientific and rational” had proven successful for conservationist men seeking support from the business and political communities. By insisting that civic associations and GFWC affiliates ground their work in science and collaborate with professionals, Dock hoped to keep { 157 }

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women’s public activities viable. Yet Dock realized even professionals like herself needed public approval from a society not convinced of women’s equality. Therefore, she sometimes participated in “housekeeping out of doors,” tacitly acknowledging the values and fears of her contemporaries. In the process Dock accomplished much, not only “more for forests,” in the words of Enos Mills, but for community welfare and women’s rights.

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epilogue: from pine grove furnace to wildwood lake—and beyond

Mira Lloyd Dock was serving as a Pennsylvania State Forest Commission member when the agency acquired the seventeen-thousand-acre Pine Grove Ironworks in 1913. On 2 September 2007, a friend and I visited the 696acre Pine Grove Furnace State Park, an hour’s drive southwest of Harrisburg. On the former ironworks land, we hiked two miles of wooded trails, admiring the lush summer foliage. After our hike, we relaxed at a picnic table and enjoyed our lunch by Fuller Lake, the smaller of the park’s two swimming areas. Although the beach and adjacent snack bar were closed, we nonetheless had plenty of company. Fellow hikers greeted us on the trails, and several families with small children and dogs picnicked around us. The park’s appearance and the public’s enjoyment of its facilities would have pleased Dock.1 Pine Grove Furnace State Park is one of the 120 state parks owned and managed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The State Forest Commission, known as the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) since 1995, maintains and preserves these parks, and manages 2.2 million acres of state forestland. With a budget of $341.1 million and 3,292 employees, the DCNR fulfills a number of functions. It promotes environmental education, practices scientific forestry, provides outdoor recreation opportunities, conserves natural resources, surveys the state’s topography and geology, and partners with local communities interested in preserving their rivers, greenways, and open spaces.2 Many of the other institutions founded or championed by Mira Lloyd Dock have survived and grown. Dauphin County Parks and Recreation manages

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Wildwood Park, including its newly built Olewine Nature Center. The Harrisburg Department of Parks and Recreation administers twenty-seven parks and playgrounds composed of over 450 acres. The department provides summer programming at seventeen of these sites, supervises two swimming pools and City Island Beach, and produces more than two hundred special events annually. Continuing a service close to Dock’s heart, the department trims Harrisburg’s street trees and advises residents on tree pruning and removal. From its clubhouse bordering Riverfront Park, the Civic Club of Harrisburg continues to involve itself in municipal affairs. The GFWC, now more than 100,000 members strong, also continues to work in the area of environmental protection. The Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs was just one state organization involved in conservation during the 1960s and ’70s as its members fought to establish Big Thicket National Preserve. The GFWC itself supported the Wilderness Act of 1964.3 Unfortunately, not all developments have been positive. In 2001, citing an upsurge of illegal activities on state land, Pennsylvania’s DCNR granted police powers and provided firearms training to its foresters. Such problems parallel those of Progressive Era foresters who frequently enforced unpopular state conservation laws against timber thieves, vandals, and arsonists. After World War II, moreover, Wildwood Park lost 450 acres to the Pennsylvania Farm Show parking lot and Route 322 at the eastern edge of the park.4 To be sure, many of Dock’s organizations have evolved in structure and function. New associations have also taken on the work begun by McCormick, McFarland, Rothrock, and Dock. In 1946, the Mont Alto State Forest School reopened as the Mont Alto Branch of the Pennsylvania State College. Here, forestry majors spent their freshman year before transferring to the school’s main campus, in State College. During the 1960s, Penn State began awarding associate degrees in forestry to Mont Alto students who spent two years at the Adams County campus. In 1964, Mont Alto admitted its first women students. By the 1980s, some of these women majored in the male-dominated forestry program. The Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women merged with Temple University in 1958 and now grants bachelor’s and master’s degrees in a variety of fields. As the need for tuberculosis treatment dwindled, the Mont Alto Sanitarium became a center for mentally ill geriatric patients in 1965 and a school for troubled youth in 1992. During the mid-1980s, a volunteer Capital Area Greenbelt Association rehabilitated and completed the twenty-mile network of trails that Manning, McFarland, and Dock envisioned for their City Beautiful. On the federal level, the National Park Service’s 391 properties now include monuments, battlefields, military parks, { 160 }

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historical parks, historic sites, lakeshores, seashores, and scenic rivers as well as forested national parks.5 Dock would likely approve of the expanded roles of these organizations. A practical as well as a Progressive woman, she believed institutions should serve the public in the most efficient ways possible. An ardent believer in women’s equality, the opportunities available to the twenty-first-century female college student would probably astound and delight her. Since much of forestry is now mechanized and women have proven their ability to perform “men’s work,” she might even have changed her mind about forestry as a profession for women. She would probably be less sanguine about the changes that have occurred on Pennsylvania’s portion of the Lincoln Highway. Her fears about the automobile and its impact on the environment have been borne out by the mushrooming of shopping malls, franchise eateries, and kitschy roadside attractions along the Lincoln Highway. While this 350-mile section of road showcases historic houses and breathtaking vistas, two authors who traveled the highway during its one-hundredth-anniversary year also noted Pennsylvania’s “zany roadside attractions.” These included a field holding thousands of hubcaps and a restaurant built in the form of a giant coffeepot.6 Fortunately, Dock also foretold more positive trends. Her belief that women could excel at conservation, preservation, and agricultural and horticultural work has been justified. By 1973, nearly half of the students in U.S. landscape architecture classes were women. By 2007, half of the Harrisburg Parks and Recreation directors and DCNR deputy secretaries were women. Since 1965, when the National Park Service employed one female administrator, both federal affirmative action programs and hard work on the part of ambitious and qualified NPS employees have resulted in change. In 1994, seven out of ten regional public affairs officers were women, and females held top administrative posts at numerous sites. The park service, however, has had only one female director, the recently retired Mary Bomar.7 U.S. institutions and citizens now seem more appreciative of women’s experiences and contributions. Currently, 110 national park sites interpret women’s history. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has likewise commemorated women’s roles, including their vital involvement in Progressive Era conservation. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) has erected historic markers in Harrisburg at the sites of Dock’s house and the civic club’s headquarters. The PHMC likewise commemorates the groundbreaking role of the PSHW with a marker on its campus.8 Human beings, however, are not the only creatures who appreciate the contributions of those like Mira Lloyd Dock. In July 2009, my family took on { 161 }

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the task of nursing a wounded and malnourished eastern painted turtle. “Nash,” who had been mauled by a raccoon, was missing several toes, sported a torn shell, and was severely underweight. With advice from the MidAtlantic Turtle and Tortoise Society (MATTS), he soon healed and gained appropriate weight. When MATTS suggested that we release him to a natural habitat, we immediately decided upon Wildwood Park’s lake. Here, Nash could hunt his normal prey, bask upon lily pads, and mate with the female eastern painteds we’d observed on a previous hike. Six weeks after making his acquaintance, we released the turtle on a glorious September Sunday morning. Nash rode placidly in a cardboard shoebox upon my lap as we drove to Wildwood Park’s north parking lot. As my partner scooted down the lake bank, Nash, smelling the water, squirmed excitedly. After we said a brief goodbye, the turtle submerged in the water, living as nature intended, in the wetlands preserved by Mira Dock.

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notes

In the following citations to primary sources—including letters, articles, and other publications— the dates on which these works were written or published have been provided only when known. The locations from which letters were written and the page numbers for articles from periodicals have likewise been included when known. The spelling and rendering of names and professional titles often varied in these documents; they have been reproduced here exactly as they appeared in the original. Introduction 1. Louv, 108. 2. Ross, F1, 3. 3. Mira Lloyd Dock, Some Arbor Day Reminders and Suggestions, 1910, 13, 15, located in Mira Lloyd Dock Papers, 1814–1951, Library of Congress (hereafter MLDP). 4. M. L. Dock, State Federation of Pennsylvania Women Committee on Forestry and Horticulture Spring Circular, 1911, MLDP. 5. Rimby, 10. 6. Nash, 47–70, 108–19, 162–71; Runte, 8, 33–34, 57. For an overview of conservation and environmental historiography, see Crosby, 1177–89. 7. Hays, 2–4, 261, 264–66, 271–73; Nash, 143, 162–71; Runte, 69–70, 78–79, 104. 8. “What the State Federations Are Doing,” Federation Bulletin 6 (January 1909): 115, located in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Archives. 9. I am indebted to Belinda Robnett for her theories of women’s leadership roles in social movements. See Robnett, 17–22. 10. Boag; Cronon, 14; Davis; Jarvis; Judd; Merchant, Ecological Revolutions, 227–28; Reiger; Smalley, 355–80; Louis Warren. 11. Glave; Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring, 31–33; Mitman, 184–210; Spence. 12. Jacoby; Lipin, 59–69; Meo, 19–24; Rome, “Nature Wars, Culture Wars,” 432–53; Louis Warren, 27–29. 13. Merchant, “George Bird Grinnell’s Audubon Society,” 3–30; Rome, “‘Political Hermaphrodites,’” 440–63. 14. Dunaway, 4–29; Green; Greenwald, 654–60; Merchant, “George Bird Grinnell’s Audubon Society,” 4–5; Mitman, 195, 200–201; Jennifer Price, 58–100; Rome, “Nature Wars, Culture Wars”; Rome, “‘Political Hermaphrodites,’” 448; Schrepfer, 16–94; Smalley, 359–63. 15. Armitage, 528–51; Blum; Boyer, 233–75; Kohlstedt; Paris; Rome, “Nature Wars, Culture Wars,” 445–46; Smith, 3; Tarr, 77–102. 16. Blum, 77–78, 89–90; Robert Clarke; Flanagan, 55–119; Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring, 208– 20; Gottlieb, “Reconstructing Environmentalism,” 249–51; Hoy, Chasing Dirt, 59–149; Hoy, “‘Municipal Housekeeping,’” 173–94; Melosi, “Environmental Crisis in the City”; Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 21–187; Melosi, “Refuse Pollution and Municipal Reform”; Rome, “Nature Wars, Culture Wars,” 437–41. 17. See Merchant, “Gender and Environmental History,” 117. For accounts of individual women and women’s groups involved in conservation and environmental reform, see Blend, 69–73; Robert

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notes to pages – Clarke; Davis; Kaufman; Merchant, “Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement,” 57–85; Norwood; Riley, 4–23; and Shaffer. For work on the gendered nature of environmental work and beliefs see Blend; Boag; Kolodny; Merchant, Ecological Revolutions, 203; Norwood; and Schrepfer. For analyses of gender-related conflict in Progressive Era conservation, see Merchant, “George Bird Grinnell’s Audubon Society,” and Rome, “‘Political Hermaphrodites.’” For studies of how women used conservation to question traditional roles, see Robert Clarke; Green; Kohlstedt; Paris; and Weiss. 18. Jenny Price, 536–55; Taylor. 19. Historians such as Benjamin Kline and Clayton R. Koppes believe that Progressive Era conservation contained conflicting and even contradictory movements; see Kline, 59–61, and Koppes, 231–38. Cary Conglianese and D. T. Kuzmiak go further, stating that Progressive Era conservation was in fact a fringe movement, rescued from marginalism by Theodore Roosevelt; see Conglianese, 86, and Kuzmiak, 269. J. R. McNeill and Martin V. Melosi, however, see Progressive Era conservation as an overlapping, cohesive movement in which all reformers fought for environmental justice; see McNeill, 5–43, and Melosi, “Environmental Justice,” 44. 20. See Nash, 118–20; Paris, 53–58. 21. Woloch, A-3. 22. Blend, 69; Robert Clarke, 109–27; Gottlieb, “Reconstructing Environmentalism,” 249–51; Kaufman, 68. 23. Blair, 60; Martin, 175. 24. In their studies of wilderness and wildlife preservation Nash, Runte, and Spence primarily study national parks such as Glacier, Yellowstone, and Yosemite. Merchant’s and Riley’s works feature women who lived or were employed in California, the Pacific Northwest, or the Southwest. Boyer’s, Flanagan’s, Hoy’s, and Melosi’s works on municipal cleanup work focus on New York City and Chicago, while Tarr concentrates on Pittsburgh. All but one of William H. Wilson’s case studies in The City Beautiful Movement are from western cities. 25. Judd, 5. 26. Blend, 70; Chafe; Jarvis, xii–xiii; Kaufman, 35–43; Lemons; Nash, 200–209; Riley, 11–13, 16, 22; Runte, 111–17, 166–68; Schrepfer, 161–65; Shaffer, 110–21; Weiss, 239; Woloch, 348. 27. See Endres; Hewitt; Muncy; Roydhouse; Scott, 142–57. 28. Garcia, 2–3; Hague, 1, 74–80; Maher, 8, 11, 20–24; Simon, 89. 29. Sklar, “A Call for Comparisons,” 1111; Sklar, “Hull House in the 1890s,” 677; Sklar, “Organized Womanhood,” 176. 30. Muncy, xiv. 31. Scott, 165–66. 32. Armitage, 534, 536, 542–43; Blum, 83–85; Robert Clarke, 82; Davis, 223–24; Kaufman, 32– 36; Kohlstedt, 137–42; Merchant, “George Bird Grinnell’s Audubon Society,” 17; Paris, 46–47; Smalley, 372–73. 33. Longhurst. 34. See Nash, 176–80; Runte, 78–82; Taylor, 8–12, 35–40. 35. Worster, “Transformations of the Earth,” 1088–91. 36. Scott, 2–4. 37. Lucy Dorsey Iames to Mira Lloyd Dock, Pittsburgh, 19 March 1908, MLDP. 38. Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1910), 101–6, located in Rare Book Room, Library of Congress.

Chapter 1 1. Lavinia Dock to Kate, Hopewell, Pa., 13 July 1860, located in Mira Lloyd Dock Papers, 1814–1951, Library of Congress (hereafter MLDP). Also Lavinia Dock to Kate, Harrisburg, June 1863, MLDP.

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notes to pages – 2. Egle, 109–14, 312–22, 326–29, 355–59, 365–68; Wilson, 126. 3. Egle, 461–57. 4. “Death of Gilliard Dock,” unidentified Harrisburg newspaper clipping, 5 April 1895, located in Gilliard Dock Folder, Dauphin County Historical Society (hereafter GDF); Gilliard Dock diary, 18 February 1855. Also contract between Gilliard Dock and the Lorberry Creek Railroad, 26 October 1864, MLDP; Gilliard Dock to Josiah Caldwell, Esquire, Pine Grove, Pa., 14 November 1863, GDF; Gilliard Dock diary, 21 October 1855 and 21 October 1876, located in Dock Family Papers, 1865–1951, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter DFP); Gilliard Dock, Superintendent’s Report (Boston: Wright and Potter, 1866), GDF; Gilliard Dock, Superintendent’s Report (Boston: Wright and Potter, 1868), GDF; Gilliard Dock, Superintendent’s Report (Boston: Wright and Potter, 1869), GDF; “From the Harrisburg Papers,” 5 April 1895, GDF; “Our Coal Trade,” Upper Dauphin Register (Lykens and Millersburg, Pa.), January 1868, GDF; Schwartz, 71; United States Patent Office, “Application by Gilliard Dock of Wiconisco, Pennsylvania,” no. 74, 999-3, March 1868, GDF. 5. Egle, 461–67; certificate of marriage for Gilliard Dock and Lavinia L. Bombaugh, Salem Reformed Church, 28 October 1852, GDF. 6. Gilliard Dock to Lavinia Bombaugh Dock, Idaho Springs, Idaho, 14 August 1873, DFP; Mary M. Roberts, “Lavinia Lloyd Dock: Nurse, Feminist, Internationalist,” American Journal of Nursing 56 (1956): 176, cited in Schwartz, 71; G. Dock, Superintendent’s Report (1866), 9. 7. Lavinia Bombaugh Dock to Kate, Wiconisco, Pa., 27 May 1869, MLDP; Gilliard Dock to Lavinia Bombaugh Dock, Edgerton Station on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, 16 September 1873, DFP. Also George Dock to W. D. Reinhardt, M.D., Harrisburg, 25 June 1860, MLDP; George Dock to W. D. Reinhart, M.D., Harrisburg, 1 September 1859, MLDP; George Dock to W. D. Reinhardt, M.D., Harrisburg, 10 December 1860, MLDP. 8. Burnham, 17; G. Dock to Reinhardt, 25 June 1860; George Dock to W. D. Reinhardt, Harrisburg, 10 March 1862, MLDP; “Miss Myra Dock, Forestry Expert, Is Dead at 91,” Evening News (Harrisburg), 12 July 1945, 1, 10, DFP; “Obituary of Miss Emily G. Dock,” Public Opinion (Chambersburg, Pa.), 26 August 1957, located in Dock Sisters Folder, Kittochtinny Historical Society (hereafter DSF); Schwartz, 71. 9. “Death of Gilliard Dock”; Margaret Dock to Mira Dock, Florence, Italy, 30 January 1911, DFP; Margaret Dock to Mira Dock, Florence, Italy, 19 February 1911, DFP; “Miss Myra Dock, Forestry Expert”; Peggy Thompson, “Dock Women Were Early Activists,” News-Chronicle (Shippensburg, Pa.), 2 May 1990, 1, 3, DSF. 10. George Dock to W. D. Reinhardt, Harrisburg, 23 June 1866, MLDP; L. Dock to Kate, 13 July 1860. Also G. Dock to Reinhardt, 10 December 1860; Lavinia Bombaugh Dock to Kate, Wiconisco, Pa., 26 December 1866, DFP. 11. G. Dock to Reinhardt, 23 June 1866. Also G. Dock to Reinhardt, 10 December 1860; George Dock to W. D. Reinhardt, Harrisburg, 18 October 1861, MLDP; L. Dock to Kate, 13 July 1860. 12. L. Dock to Kate, 13 July 1860. Also Mona Mattingly, “The Dock Sisters,” unpublished paper, March 1990, 1, DSF; “Miss Myra Dock, Forestry Expert.” 13. G. Dock to Reinhardt, 25 June 1860. Also George Dock to W. D. Reinhardt, M.D., Harrisburg, 7 October 1859, MLDP; Egle, 322–26. 14. L. Dock to Kate, June 1863. Also G. Dock to Reinhardt, 18 October 1861. 15. G. Dock to Reinhardt, 18 October 1861; L. Dock to Kate, June 1863; Egle, 245–59. 16. L. Dock to Kate, June 1863. Also Lavinia Bombaugh Dock to Kate, Reading, Pa., 29 June 1863, MLDP. 17. Lavinia Bombaugh Dock to Kate, Wiconisco, Pa., 1868, DFP; Lavinia Bombaugh Dock to Kate, Wiconisco, Pa., 28 July 1869, DFP. Also Lavinia Bombaugh Dock to Kate, Wiconisco, Pa., Summer 1868, DFP; Lavinia Bombaugh Dock to Kate, Wiconisco, Pa., 22 July 1869, DFP; Lavinia Bombaugh Dock to Kate, Wiconisco, Pa., Autumn 1869, DFP; Mira L. Dock diary, 16 April 1900,

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notes to pages – DFP; Mira Dock to “My Dearest Aunt,” Brook Hall, DFP; “Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Brooke Hall Alumnae Held at The Bellevue-Stratford, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 16 April 1910,” DFP. 18. Mira Lloyd Dock to Florence Dibert, Fayetteville, Pa., 1 October 1928, MLDP; Burnham, 19, also 17–18. Also G. Dock diary, 21 October 1876; Lavinia Bombaugh Dock to Kate, Wiconisco, Pa., 6 November 1867, MLDP; Lavinia Bombaugh Dock to Kate, Wiconisco, Pa., 2 March 1869, MLDP; Lavinia Bombaugh Dock to Kate, Wiconisco, Pa., 26 March 1869, MLDP. 19. Merchant, American Environmental History, 111–12. 20. Wilson, 126. 21. Egle, 368–72; Morrison, 23. 22. Merchant, Ecological Revolutions, 2–3, 21–23. 23. Blatz, 105–6; Egle, 355–59; Licht, 219; Merchant, American Environmental History, 229; Morrison, 13–17. 24. Blatz, 98; G. Dock diary, 31 May 1894; Egle, 365–72; Morrison, 16, 20, 23. 25. Egle, 322–26. 26. G. Dock diary, undated entry from 1889; G. Dock diary, 6 August 1893; G. Dock diary, 31 May 1894; G. Dock diary, 31 December 1894. Also Licht, 238, 242. 27. Gilliard Dock to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 24 August 1878, DFP; Gilliard Dock to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 13 August 1878, DFP. Also Gilliard Dock to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 18 August 1878, DFP. 28. Nash, 68–79, 96–107; Runte, 5–31; Shaffer, 4–6. 29. Schrepfer, 6, also 4–5, 67–68, 83–87. Also Kolodny, xii–xiii, 12, 172–75, 235. 30. Mira Dock to Gilliard, Manitoro, Colo., 29 April 1878, DFP; G. Dock to M. L. Dock, 18 August 1878. 31. Mira Lloyd Dock to Gilliard Dock, Inter-Ocean Hotel, Durango, Colo., 2 May 1882, DFP; Mira Dock to Lavinia Dock, Durango, Colo., 2 May 1882, DFP. Also Mira Lloyd Dock to Gilliard Dock, Manitoro, Colo., 29 April 1882, DFP; Mira Lloyd Dock to Gilliard Dock, Palace Hotel, Santa Fe, DFP. 32. Mira Lloyd Dock to Gilliard Dock, Yosemite Valley, Calif., 17 May 1882, DFP. Also Mira Lloyd Dock to Emily Dock, Yosemite Valley, Calif., 17 May 1882, DFP. 33. Mira Lloyd Dock to Emily Dock, Continental Hotel, Salt Lake City, 10 June 1882, DFP. 34. M. L. D., “Her Account of Herself and Her Work,” unpublished paper, MLDP. Also Burnham, 20–21; Blair, 57–58; Martin, 14–30; “Pioneer Nurse Recalls Talks of Early Days,” Patriot (Harrisburg), DFP; Jane Dice Stoner, “The Dock Sisters,” in Papers Read Before the Society, vol. 20, September 1988 to February 1998 (Chambersburg, Pa.: Kittochtinny Historical Society, n.d.), 237, located at Kittochtinny Historical Society. 35. W. D. Howells to Mira L. Dock, Far Rockaway, 10 January 1896, MLDP; M. L. D., “Her Account of Herself and Her Work.” Also “Death of Gilliard Dock”; “From the Harrisburg Papers”; William D. Howells to Mira L. Dock, Jefferson, Ohio, 1 March 1894, MLDP; W. D. Howells to Mira L. Dock, Long Beach Hotel, 18 August 1895, MLDP; General D. B. McKibbin to M. L. Dock, Washington, D.C., 17 November 1886, MLDP. 36. Mira Lloyd Dock to Paul Charlton, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1 June 1896, DFP. Also Burnham, 72; Robert Clarke, 86. 37. Solomon, 62; Woloch, 275. 38. Solomon, 64–65, 70–76; Woloch, 281. 39. M. L. Dock to Dibert, 1 October 1928. Also Solomon, 97. 40. M. L. Dock to Charlton, 1 June 1896. Also M. L. Dock diary, 23 January 1899; M. L. Dock, “General Biology—Plants,” 5 November 1895–21 January 1896, DFP; M. L. Dock, “Geology Notes,” Ann Arbor, Mich., 95–96, DFP; Mira Dock to Dr. John Hundley, Harrisburg, DFP; Mira Lloyd Dock, untitled manuscript, 2, DFP; Solomon, 82–83.

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notes to pages – 41. Kohlstedt, 119; Solomon, 90; Worster, Nature’s Economy, 132–35, 138–40, 156–61. 42. M. L. Dock, untitled manuscript, 3. 43. Edward H. Clarke, 122. Also Solomon, 80–82, 119–21. 44. M. L. Dock diary, 23 January 1899. Also Robert Clarke, 43–44, 49, 52–53. 45. Norwood, 3–4. Also Burnham, 77; Kohlstedt, 145–46; Martin, 31–32; Scott, 177; Stoner, “The Dock Sisters,” 237.

Chapter 2 1. Cutter, Domestic Devils, Battlefield Angels, 104–25; Norwood, 27–42; Tetrault, 1028, 1033–35. 2. Dock’s slides are currently housed in the archives of the Mont Alto campus of The Pennsylvania State University. 3. Mira L. Dock, “Botanical Talks, 1896–1897,” located in Dock Family Papers, 1865–1951, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter DFP). Also Mary B. Couston to Mira Dock, New York, 29 February 1896, DFP; M. L. Dock, “Magnolia glauca,” Garden and Forest 10 (October 1897): 402– 3, DFP; M. L. Dock, “New or Little-Known Plants: Orchids in the South Mountain, Pennsylvania,” Garden and Forest 10 (December 1897): 483–84, DFP; Thomas J. Edge, Secretary, Department of Agriculture, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 31 December 1897, located in Mira Lloyd Dock Papers, 1814–1951, Library of Congress (hereafter MLDP); R. V. Fernow, Chief, Division of Forestry, U.S. Department of Agriculture, to Mira Lloyd Dock, Washington, D.C., 5 November 1897, MLDP; R. V. Fernow, Chief, Division of Forestry, U.S. Department of Agriculture, to Mira Lloyd Dock, Washington, D.C., 15 November 1897, MLDP; Warren H. Manning to Myra L. Dock, Boston, 12 January 1899, DFP; C. S. Sargent to M. L. Dock, Arnold Arboretum, Harvard University, Jamaica Plain, Mass., 29 September 1897, MLDP; “A Series of Botanical Talks at the YMCA, Harrisburg, 1896–1897,” DFP; W. A. Stiles to Mira Dock, New York, 3 July 1897, DFP. 4. Jane Dice Stoner, “The Dock Sisters,” in Papers Read Before the Society, vol. 20, September 1988 to February 1998 (Chambersburg, Pa.: Kittochtinny Historical Society, n.d.), 239–40, located at Kittochtinny Historical Society. 5. Mira L. Dock diary, 22 March and 28 April 1899, DFP. 6. “The Procession of Flowers in Pennsylvania,” lecture notes, Bloomsburg, Pa., 20 February 1900, DFP. 7. “Grace Sunday School Lecture Course: Winter, 1898–99,” 6, DFP; “The Procession of Flowers in Pennsylvania.” 8. “Town Improvements,” Wilkes-Barre Record Almanac, 18 April 1901, DFP. Also “Miss Myra Lloyd Dock Will Give a Series of Botanical Talks at the Y. M. C. A. Parlor,” 1897, DFP. 9. F. C. Newcombe to Mira Lloyd Dock, Ann Arbor, Mich., 7 November 1897, MLDP. Also L. O. Foose to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 19 July 1897, DFP; Kohlstedt, 27–30, 43–47. 10. John Hamilton to Mira Dock, Harrisburg, 13 March 1897, DFP. Also Mira Dock to Family, 11 October 1897, DFP. 11. William H. Arnhold to Mira Lloyd Dock, Germantown, Pa., 8 September 1898, MLDP; Mira L. Dock, “Botanical Talks, 1898–99,” DFP; M. L. Dock, “Outline of Plant Study Prepared for the Misses Bent and Sargeant’s School,” DFP; “Grace Sunday School Lecture Course”; Rimby, 13. 12. Mira Lloyd Dock, “Forestry,” Horticultural Hall, Boston, 29 January 1900, DFP; Mira Lloyd Dock, “Parks, Forests, and Improvement Work,” Arundel Club, Baltimore, 21 January 1903, DFP. Also “Club Day: State Federation of Pennsylvania Women,” located in State Federation of Pennsylvania Women Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives. 13. Rimby, 13. Also Eggert, 29–31; Egle, 372; Wilson, 126. 14. L. C. Clemson to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 22 July 1898, MLDP; Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 119. Also L. C. Clemson to Mira Dock, Harrisburg, 3 August 1898, MLDP; L. C. Clemson

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notes to pages – to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 16 October 1898, MLDP; L. C. Clemson to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 1 June 1899, MLDP; Emma P. Cowden, “Report of the Verbeke Street Playground,” MLDP; John Hoffer to Mira Dock, Harrisburg, 12 April 1898, MLDP; Laura Nolle Jenkins, “Report of the DeWitt School Playground on Walnut Street,” MLDP; “Report of the Harris Building Playground,” MLDP. 15. Blair, 98–106; Blum, 82–83, 86–87, 91; Hoy, Chasing Dirt, 74–75; Martin, 171–74; Merchant, American Environmental History, 120–21; Rome, “Nature Wars, Culture Wars,” 437–43. 16. Blum, 77–79; Hoy, Chasing Dirt, 74–79, 81; Hoy, “‘Municipal Housekeeping,’” 174–75; Sibyl B. Giddings, “The Relation of Literary Clubs to Civic Improvement,” Club Woman 2 (September 1898): 173–74, located in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Collection, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library (hereafter GFWCC); Ellen Henrotin, “The State Federations,” Club Woman 1 (October 1897): 8, GFWCC; Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 34–36; Melosi, “Refuse Pollution and Municipal Reform,” 113–14; Merchant, American Environmental History, 120–21. 17. Rimby, 18–20. 18. “Civic Club, Allegheny County, 1895–1935” (fortieth anniversary program), 5, located in Civic Club of Allegheny County Records, 1896–1949, University of Pittsburgh Archives; Flanagan, 85; Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 34–35; Rimby, 12; Wilson, 36–40. 19. Merchant, Ecological Revolutions, 229; Whitney, 173–85. 20. Burnett Landreth, “Address Read Before the American Forestry Association,” Philadelphia, 1876, 2–7, located in George H. Wirt Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter GHWP). Also D. L. Bitler to Mira Lloyd Dock, Philadelphia, 1 March 1899, MLDP; “Fifty Years of Pennsylvania Forestry,” 2–11, GHWP; Pennsylvania Fruit Growers Association, “Discussion of Forest Culture,” 18 January 1877, 1–3, GHWP; “The Pennsylvania Forestry Association,” Forest Leaves 13 (August 1911): 49–52, DFP. 21. “Botanical Talks in Preparation for 1898–99,” DFP. Also M. L. Dock diary, 8 January, 4 February, 14 February, 16 February, 4 March, 20 March, 8 April, 12 April, and 20 April 1899. 22. “Mira Lloyd Dock and Her Interesting Lecture Booked for Tomorrow Night,” Williamsport (Pa.) Sun, 26 April 1899, DFP; “Miss Dock: Her Most Interesting Lecture on Forestry,” Williamsport (Pa.) Sun, 28 April 1899, DFP; “An Evening of Entertainment: Miss Dock Addressed the Clio Club,” Gazette (Williamsport, Pa.), 28 April, 1899, DFP. Also “Happenings in Society’s Realm,” Pittsburgh Post, 15 March 1899, DFP; “Ridgway to the Front,” Evening Star (Ridgeway, Pa.), 27 January 1899, DFP; untitled article, Pittsburgh Post, 12 February 1899, DFP. 23. Romaine Merkel Jacobs to Mira Dock, 19 January 1899, DFP; “Happenings in Society’s Realm”; Cutter, 174; Endres, 10, also 84–89, 154–58. Also Flanagan, 55–72. 24. “Happenings in Society’s Realm.” 25. J. Horace McFarland, “The Great Civic Awakening,” Outlook 73 (1903): 919, located in Ernest Morrison Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives. 26. “Miss Dock: Her Most Interesting Lecture.” Also “An Evening of Entertainment.” 27. F. R. Wilkinson to Mira Dock, London, 27 May 1899, DFP. Also M. L. Dock diary, 11 May 1899; Fanny Wilkinson to Mira Dock, London, 29 April 1899, DFP. 28. Burnham, 112–13; M. L. D., “A List of What She Did While in London,” MLDP; M. L. Dock diary, 3 and 6 June, 1899; Gifford Pinchot to Mira Lloyd Dock, Washington, D.C., 20 May 1899, DFP; C. A. Schenck, Forester, Forest Department, Biltmore Estate, to M. L. Dock, Biltmore, N.C., 30 December 1898, MLDP; Stoner, “The Dock Sisters,” 238. 29. “Sir Dietrich Brandis,” Bombay Gazette, 5 June 1907, MLDP; “Sir Dietrich Brandis, K.C.I.E., F.R.S.,” Nature, 6 June 1907, MLDP; “Sir Dietrich Brandis Obituary,” The Times (London), 31 May 1907, 10, MLDP; Tucker, 119–24, 137. 30. Isaac Baylor Balfour to Miss Dock, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1 August 1899, DFP; Isaac Baylor Balfour to The Factor to the Duke of Atholl, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1 August 1899, MLDP; Isaac Baylor Balfour to The Factor, Murthly Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1 August 1899, MLDP; “British

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notes to pages – Museum,” mimeographed notes, DFP; Burnham, 114–16; M. L. Dock diary, 3 July, 5 July, 11 July, 17 July, 21 July, 24 July, 26 July, 5 August, and 7 August 1899; M. L. D., “A List of What She Did While in London”; Mira Lloyd Dock, “A Letter from London,” 5 August 1899, DFP; R. E. Sadler to Sir Thomas Adams, London, 17 July 1899, MLDP; Richard E. Sadler to Mira L. Dock, London, 14 July 1899, MLDP; Fanny Wilkinson to Mira Dock, London, 15 June 1899, DFP. 31. D. Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 8 August 1899, MLDP. Also Stoner, “The Dock Sisters,” 238. 32. D. Brandis to Herr Schopfer, Bonn, Germany, 1899, DFP; M. L. Dock diary, 11, 12, 15, and 20 August 1899. 33. Schama, 114–16. 34. M. L. Dock diary, 19 and 22 August 1899; M. L. D., “Report—Stauffen—August 19–23, 1899,” MLDP. Also M. L. Dock diary, 20 August 1899. 35. M. L. Dock diary, 29, 30, 24, 25, and 26 August 1899. Also D. Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 26 August 1899, MLDP; D. Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 8 September 1899, MLDP; M. L. Dock diary, 23 August 1899. 36. Kohlstedt, 8, 161–73; Miller, 80–86; Norwood, 19–21, 58; Tucker, 126. 37. M. L. Dock diary, 23 August 1899; G. R. Yeager, “Letter of Recommendation,” Uhlingen, Germany, 25 September 1899, MLDP. 38. “Expense Account—England, Scotland, Germany—1899,” DFP. 39. Mira L. Dock, “Draft of Report, International Congress of Women, 1899,” MLDP. Also Warren H. Manning to Mira Lloyd Dock, Chicago, 29 October 1899, MLDP. 40. M. L. Dock diary, 6 January 1900; “Rural Delights Abroad,” Philadelphia Press, 2 September 1900, 4, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 11 September 1900, MLDP; Warren H. Manning to Mira Lloyd Dock, Boston, 3 November 1900, MLDP. 41. Mira Lloyd Dock, A Summer’s Work Abroad, in School Grounds, Home Grounds, Play Grounds, Parks, and Forests, Department of Agriculture bulletin no. 62, 1900, 8–10, 13–15, DFP. Also “Rural Delights Abroad.” 42. M. L. Dock, A Summer’s Work Abroad, 7, 12, also 8, 11. Also “Rural Delights Abroad.” 43. “Rural Delights Abroad,” 4. Also M. L. Dock, A Summer’s Work Abroad, 23–30. 44. William J. Rose to Mira Lloyd Dock, St. Davids, Pa., 17 February 1901, DFP. Also Allen Chamberlain to M. L. Dock, Winchester, Mass., 15 February 1900, MLDP; Mira L. Dock diary, 29 March, 30 March, 31 March, 2 April, 3 April, 4 April, 6 April, 24 April, and 25 April 1900; “Fifth Annual Season, 1900–1901, Mira Lloyd Dock of Harrisburg Pa, Illustrated Talks on Forestry, Village Improvement, and Plant Life,” DFP; Franklin M. Olds to Mira Lloyd Dock, Newark, N.J., 27 July 1900, MLDP. 45. M. L. Dock, “Germany,” lecture notes, DFP; “Village Improvements,” Somerset (Pa.) Press, 13 February 1901, DFP; “Rural Delights Abroad”; J. T. Rothrock to Sir Dietrich Brandis, Harrisburg, 15 December 1899, DFP.

Chapter 3 1. Board of Trade, Industrial and Commercial Resources of the City of Harrisburg, Dauphin County, PA (Harrisburg: Harrisburg Publishing, 1887), 1, 4–9, located in Ernest Morrison Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter EMP); Gabriella Gilbert to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 1900, located in Mira Lloyd Dock Papers, 1814–1951, Library of Congress (hereafter MLDP); Morrison, 68–70. 2. J. Horace McFarland to Miss Myra L. Dock, Harrisburg, 24 September 1898, located in Dock Family Papers, 1865–1951, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter DFP); J. Horace McFarland to Mira Dock, Harrisburg, 10 January 1902, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mr. J. H. Hale, Harrisburg, 27 September 1897, MLDP; Morrison, 3–5, 30–34, 66.

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notes to pages – 3. J. Horace McFarland to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 2 June 1899, MLDP. Also Morrison, 68–70. 4. “Board of Trade,” Harrisburg Telegraph, 9 January 1901, 1, EMP; H. W. Fishel to Myra L. Dock, Harrisburg, 21 December 1900, DFP. 5. J. Horace McFarland to Mira Dock, Harrisburg, 22 December 1900, DFP. Also J. Horace McFarland, The Awakening of Harrisburg (Washington, D.C.: American Civic Association, 1914), 1–2, located in City Beautiful File, Dauphin County Historical Society (hereafter CBF); Executive Committee, Proposed Municipal Improvements for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Executive Committee, 1901), frontispiece, located in American Civic Association Papers, 1901–44, Loeb Design Library; Wilson, 133. 6. Boyer, 236–37; Melosi, “Refuse Pollution and Municipal Reform,” 115–16. 7. “Jacob Warren Manning,” in American Series of Popular Biographies (Boston, 1901), 11, CBF; McFarland, The Awakening of Harrisburg, 2–3; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 22 November 1901, DFP; Executive Committee, Proposed Municipal Improvements for Harrisburg, frontispiece. 8. “The Harrisburg Plan,” unidentified Harrisburg newspaper article, 20 April 1919, located in Vance C. McCormick Papers, Dauphin County Historical Society (hereafter VCMP). Also Executive Committee, Proposed Municipal Improvements for Harrisburg, 2–7; Wilson, 133–34. 9. Morrison, 76. Also Executive Committee, Proposed Municipal Improvements for Harrisburg. 10. Morrison, 22–23, 28; Wilson, 120, 132. 11. McFarland, The Awakening of Harrisburg, 12; Wilson, 134–35. 12. “Donor of Island Enemy of Booze,” Harrisburg Patriot, VCMP. Also “Information Furnished to the Secretary’s Office, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut,” 18 September 1947, VCMP; “James McCormick at 81, Finds Chief Delight in Long Walks,” Harrisburg Patriot, VCMP; Morrison, 76–78. 13. Wilson, 135, also 134; Morrison, 80. Also McFarland, The Awakening of Harrisburg, 4–5, 12–13. 14. Dr. George Dock to M. L. Dock, Ann Arbor, Mich., DFP; Hoy, “‘Municipal Housekeeping,’” 174–76. 15. Flanagan, 62–71; Hewitt, 203–4; Morrison, 80, 82; Sandweiss, 82–83; Wilson, 136–38. 16. Wilson, 136, also 138. 17. Rimby, 23; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 21 February 1902, MLDP. Also McFarland, The Awakening of Harrisburg, 3, 10–11, 14; Morrison, 78–79, 81–82. 18. Robnett, 20–21. 19. McFarland, The Awakening of Harrisburg, 18, also 15–17, 19–20; Wilson, 136, also 139–41. Also “A Few of the High Spots in Harrisburg’s Fifteen Years of Progress,” Patriot (Harrisburg), 23 September 1915, EMP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Dock, Harrisburg, 30 October 1902, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 20 November 1905, DFP; Morrison, 83. 20. “A Trip Through Reservoir Park,” Patriot (Harrisburg), 16 September 1905, 1, 8, DFP; “Addition for Playground,” Patriot (Harrisburg), 23 September 1905, DFP; Harrisburg Park Commission, Report for the Year Ending December 31, 1908 (Harrisburg: Telegraph Printing, 1909), 81–82, EMP; Warren H. Manning to Mira L. Dock, Boston, 11 December 1902, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Dock, Harrisburg, 11 November 1902, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 17 March 1905, DFP; Wilson, 139–42. 21. Harrisburg Park Commission, Report for the Year Ending December 31, 1908, 56, 61, also 7, 11–35, 62–80. 22. F. L. Mulford to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 29 April 1907, MLDP. Also Harrisburg Park Commission, Report for the Year Ending December 31, 1908, 7; John Hoffer to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 12 November 1903, MLDP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 26 September 1905, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 29 September 1905, DFP;

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notes to pages – J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 10 February 1913, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 12 February 1913, DFP; F. L. Mulford to Myra L. Dock, Harrisburg, 31 October 1905, DFP; F. L. Mulford to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 28 April 1906, MLDP. 23. Rimby, 22–23; Riverside Juniors, “Constitution, By Laws, and Minutes of Mira’s Club of Boys,” DFP. Also Riverside Juniors, “Treasurer’s Report, 1900–1901,” DFP. 24. Civic Club Department of Forestry and Town Improvement, “Help to Make Harrisburg Beautiful,” 1903, DFP. Also Blair, 104–6; Mira Lloyd Dock to Professor J. M. Norris, Graeffensburg, Pa., 8 April 1909, MLDP; Glave, 46–50; Eefleda Gottschall to Mira Dock, Harrisburg, 26 July 1901, DFP; Kohlstedt, 62–68; Rimby, 22. 25. Mira Lloyd Dock, “One Way to Make Harrisburg Beautiful,” MLDP; Civic Club Department of Forestry and Town Improvement, “Help to Make Harrisburg Beautiful.” Also Smith, 80, 87–94. 26. M. L. D. to Mrs. Harvey F. Smith, Fayetteville, Pa., 29 September 19[??], MLDP; M. L. D. to The Editor, Harrisburg Patriot, Fayetteville, Pa., 9 August 1919, MLDP; Mira L. Dock to Louisa W. Hackney, Fayetteville, Pa., 23 May 1925, MLDP. 27. McFarland coined the term “City Beautiful” during the 1901 bond issue campaign. See Wilson, 128. 28. Anna N. Cadbury to Mira L. Dock, Mohawk Lake, Ulster County, N.Y., 28 May 1902, DFP; Mira Lloyd Dock, “Harrisburg the Beautiful,” Patriot (Harrisburg), 1 January 1903, DFP; “Dock Pleads for Forests,” Sun (Baltimore), 22 January 1903, DFP; Albert Kelsey to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 15 November 1901, DFP; J. Horace McFarland, “The Great Civic Awakening,” Outlook 73 (1903): 917–20, EMP; “Programme of the Sixth Annual Meeting, American Park and Outdoor Art Association, Boston, Massachusetts, August 5th, 6th, and 7th, 1902,” DFP. 29. Draper, 116; Hancock, 168–69; Hoy, “‘Municipal Housekeeping,’” 188–93; Melosi, “Environmental Crisis in the City,” 20–21; Merchant, American Environmental History, 123–26; Tarr, 84– 91; Wilson, 1. 30. Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 119. Also Hoy, “‘Municipal Housekeeping,’” 177–79. 31. “Dock Pleads for Forests.” Also M. L. Dock, “Notes on Parks and Playgrounds,” lecture notes, DFP. 32. McFarland, The Awakening of Harrisburg, 15; McFarland, “The Great Civic Awakening,” 919; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 25 November 1904, MLDP. 33. Boyer, 220–21; H. W. Fishel to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 7 January 1901, DFP. 34. “Information Furnished to the Secretary’s Office,” 1–2, VCMP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 9 October 1905, DFP; Morrison, 88, 244; H. V. White to the Honorable Vance McCormick, State College, Pa., 24 June 1908, VCMP. 35. Robert S. Conklin to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 1 November 1899, MLDP; Meo, 19–20. 36. Marlin P. Olmstead to Mira Lloyd Dock, Washington, D.C., 21 January 1899, DFP; M. L. Dock diary, 20 January 1900. 37. J. T. Rothrock to Myra L. Dock, Harrisburg, 24 July 1901, DFP. Also W. W. Griest to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 25 July 1901, DFP; “Oath of Office,” DFP; Rimby, 13.

Chapter 4 1. “Miss Dock Appointed,” Harrisburg Telegraph, 25 July 1901, located in Dock Family Papers, 1865–1951, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter DFP); Eefleda Gottschall to Mira Dock, Harrisburg, 26 July 1901, DFP; D. Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 29 August 1901, DFP. Also Mary Knox Garvin to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, October 1901, DFP; John Hamilton to Mira Dock, Harrisburg, 31 July 1901, DFP; W. A. Hiester to Myra Dock, Harrisburg, 26 July 1901, DFP.

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notes to pages – 2. Mira Lloyd Dock, “Forestry,” Horticultural Hall, Boston, 29 January 1900, DFP; Burnett Landreth, “Address Read Before the American Forestry Association,” Philadelphia, 1876, 1–3, located in George H. Wirt Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter GHWP); Pennsylvania State Agriculture Society, “Destruction and Preservation of Trees,” 1877, 172–73, GHWP; Pennsylvania State Agriculture Society, “May Meeting,” 1877, 295–96, GHWP. 3. Mira Lloyd Dock, A Summer’s Work Abroad, in School Grounds, Home Grounds, Play Grounds, Parks, and Forests, Department of Agriculture bulletin no. 62, 1900, 22–30, DFP; Merchant, Ecological Revolutions, 198; “Some Pennsylvania Conservation Facts, 1925,” Department of Forests and Waters Records, Pennsylvania State Archives; Whitney, 186–88, 193–200. 4. Cronon, 108–26; Kline, 48–51; Merchant, Ecological Revolutions, 224–27; Miller, 123–24, 138; Whitney, 205. 5. Concurrent Resolution 31, Pennsylvania General Assembly, 1887, located in Department of Forestry Records, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter DFR). Also Judd, 90–98; Merchant, Ecological Revolutions, 227–28; Pennsylvania Forest Commission, To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, 1889 (Harrisburg: State Printer, 1889?), DFR; Rimby, 13. 6. Joseph S. Illick, “A Sketch of Joseph Trimble Rothrock,” DFP; Concurrent Resolution 31; “Secured from Miss Mira L. Dock,” 1942, 1, GHWP; “To Joseph Trimble Rothrock,” DFP. 7. Pennsylvania Forest Commission, To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives, 1– 9. Also “Duties of the Committee on Forestry,” DFR; Thomas J. Edge, Secretary, Department of Agriculture, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 31 December 1897, located in Mira Lloyd Dock Papers, 1814–1951, Library of Congress (hereafter MLDP); Forestry Commission minutes, 20 April, 13 June, 18 October, and 27 December 1888, and 16 January 1889, DFR. 8. Pennsylvania Forest Commission, To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives, 11, 14. 9. An Act to Establish a Forest Commission, and to Define Its Powers and Duties, and for the Preservation of Forest and Timber Lands (Harrisburg: State Printer, 1897?), DFR; Pennsylvania Forest Commission, To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives, 10–17; J. T. Rothrock, Preliminary Report of the Commissioners of Forestry for 1896 (Harrisburg: Department of Agriculture, Division of Forestry, 1897), DFP; George H. Wirt, “List of Forest Commissioners and Secretaries,” GHWP; George H. Wirt, “Pennsylvania State Forest Commissions,” GHWP. 10. J. T. Rothrock to Mira Dock, Harrisburg, 18 November 1896, DFP; J. T. Rothrock to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 3 November 1897, MLDP. 11. An Act to Establish a Forest Commission; “Forestry Research Bureau,” Forester 3 (10): 122– 23, DFP. 12. Miller, 78–87, 93–95. 13. J. T. Rothrock to the Honorable Samuel W. Pennypacker, Harrisburg, 20 December 1902, located in Samuel W. Pennypacker Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter SWPP). Also Clepper, 30; Robert S. Conklin to J. T. Rothrock, Harrisburg, 14 April 1903, located in Joseph Trimble Rothrock Papers, Chester County Historical Society (hereafter JTRP); “Department of Forestry at The Pennsylvania State College,” State College, 1907, 1, located in Pennsylvania Forest Academy Records, Penn State Mont Alto Archives; Henry S. Drinker to Mira Dock, South Bethlehem, Pa., 1 March 1911, MLDP; William Frear to Mira L. Dock, State College, Pa., 23 May 1899, MLDP; Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring, 212–13; Elizabeth H. Thomas, “Student Life at the Pennsylvania State Forest Academy, 1905–1910,” in Papers Read Before the Society, vol. 16, 1971–1978 (Chambersburg, Pa.: Kittochtinny Historical Society, n.d.), located at Kittochtinny Historical Society (hereafter KHS), 479; J. T. Rothrock to Andrew Carnegie, West Chester, Pa., 3 January 1902, located in Penn State Mont Alto Archives (hereafter PSMAA); Benjamin G. Welch to Mira Lloyd Dock, Jonestown, Pa., 2 March 1901, MLDP; John A. Woodward to J. T. Rothrock, Howard, Pa., 19 February 1903, JTRP.

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notes to pages – 14. Robert S. Conklin, “State Forest Academy Information,” DFP. Also Robert S. Conklin to the Honorable Samuel W. Pennypacker, Harrisburg, 28 August 1905, SWPP; “Contract for William Byers, Chambersburg,” 1 September 1905, 1–2, PSMAA; Thomas, “Student Life,” 478. 15. “One Woman’s Work for Trees,” New York Evening Post, 17 August 1907, DFP; Thomas, History of the Pennsylvania State Forest School, 26, 36, 38; Thomas, “Student Life,” 478–79. 16. Thomas, “Student Life,” 480–81. Also Clepper, 31; Thomas, History of the Pennsylvania State Forest School, 22. 17. Mira L. Dock to Louisa W. Hackney, Fayetteville, Pa., 23 May 1925, MLDP. Also unknown author to Margaret B. Updegraff, 15 May 1924, located in Michaux State Forest Records, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter MSFR); M. L. D., “Her Account of Herself and Her Work,” unpublished paper, MLDP; Albert Kelsey to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 4 August 1901, DFP; Jane Dice Stoner, “The Dock Sisters,” in Papers Read Before the Society, vol. 20, September 1988 to February 1998 (Chambersburg, Pa.: Kittochtinny Historical Society, n.d.), 229–31, KHS. 18. Mira Dock to Lavinia and Margaret, Graeffensburg, Pa., 14–15 April 1904, DFP. 19. M. L. Dock to Hackney, 23 May 1925. 20. Mira L. Dock to Dr. Rothrock, Graeffensburg, Pa., 6 May 1903, 5–6, JTRP; M. L. Dock to Hackney, 23 May 1925. Also Gard Conklin to Mira Lloyd Dock, Camp Hill, Pa., 21 November 1914, MLDP; Margaret Dock to Emily Dock, Baden, Switzerland, 29 September 1910, DFP; Margaret Dock to Emily Dock, Montreux, Switzerland, 14 April 1911, DFP; Margaret Dock to Mira Dock, France, 6 April 1911, DFP; Mira Dock to Lavinia and Margaret Dock, Graeffensburg, Pa., 13 March 1904, DFP; Mira Dock to Lavinia Dock, Graeffensburg, Pa., 6 April 1904, DFP; Mira Dock to Lavinia and Margaret Dock, Graeffensburg, Pa., 24 April 1904, DFP; Gifford Pinchot to Myra L. Dock, Washington, D.C., 8 March 1902, DFP; Report of the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry for the Years 1912–1913 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1915), 32, DFR. 21. Mira. L. Dock diary, 14 and 22 May 1907, DFP. Also Burnham, 269; George Dock Jr. to Dr. George Dock, Graeffensburg, Pa., 10 July 1903, DFP; M. L. Dock diary, 1 May 1910; Margaret Dock to Family, S.S. Teutonia, 27 April 1911, DFP; M. L. Dock diary, January–October 1907; D. B. Meredith to Robert S. Conklin, Graeffensburg, Pa., 9 March 1907, located in State Foresters and Rangers Correspondence, Department of Forestry Records, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter SFRC); Mason D. Pratt to Myra Dock, Harrisburg, 18 May 1907, DFP. 22. M. L. Dock diary, January–October 1907; George H. Wirt to Mira L. Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 13 April 1908, PSMAA. Also W. Gard Conklin to Paul H. Mulford, 12 April 1913, SFRC; Alfred E. Rupp to Robert S. Conklin, Fort Loudon, Pa., 1 April 1913, SFRC; Thomas, History of the Pennsylvania State Forest School, 53; Thomas, “Student Life,” 482; Raymond B. Winter to Robert S. Conklin, Mifflinburg, Pa., 12 December 1910, SFRC; Raymond B. Winter to Robert S. Conklin, Mifflinburg, Pa., 14 March 1911, SFRC; George H. Wirt, “Mont Alto Division, South Mountain Reserve, 1909,” in Report of the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry for the Years 1908–1909 (Harrisburg: C. E. Aughinbaugh, 1910), 232, DFR; E. A. Ziegler, “The State Forest Academy,” in Report of the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry for the Years 1912–1913, 470, DFR. 23. M. L. Dock diary, 3 February, 10 August, and 19 February 1910. Also Thomas, “Student Life,” 483–85. 24. James Irwin to Mira Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 28 April 1912, DFP. Also D. L. Bitler to M. L. Dock, Philadelphia, 11 January 1912, DFP; D. L. Bitler to M. L. Dock, Philadelphia, 5 February 1912, DFP; Mira Dock to John Birkinbine, Fayetteville, Pa., 9 December 1911, DFP; Mira L. Dock to D. L. Bitler, Fayetteville, Pa., 3 February 1912, DFP; P. Hartman Fox to Mira L. Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 3 March 1911, DFP; Ira L. Shenenfelt to Mira L. Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 4 October 1914, MLDP; John L. Strobeck and R. Lynn Emerick to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 7 March 1912, DFP; Thomas, History of the Pennsylvania State Forest School, 95; Irving T. Worthley to Mira L. Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 20 March 1912, DFP. 25. Joseph O. Boggs to Robert S. Conklin, Fayetteville, Pa., 26 April 1907, SFRC; Robert G. Conklin to Robert S. Conklin, Fayetteville, Pa., 8 September 1908, SFRC; M. Dock to L. and

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notes to pages – M. Dock, 24 April 1904; Mira L. Dock to Miss Bennet, Harrisburg, 12 October 1910, MLDP; “Pennsylvania State Forest School Nursery, Mont Alto,” 8 February 1910, PSMAA; Alfred E. Rupp to Robert S. Conklin, Fort Loudon, Pa., 12 July 1912, SFRC; Alfred E. Rupp to Robert S. Conklin, Fort Loudon, Pa., 15 August 1913, SFRC; “Sandy Ridge Improvement, Summer 1912,” PSMAA; “Statement of Improvement Cuttings on Mont Alto Division, South Mountain Reserve, in Connection with Which the State Sawmill Was Used,” 24 April 1911, PSMAA; Thomas, “Student Life,” 480; George H. Wirt to Max E. Muller, Harrisburg, 4 August 1913, GHWP. 26. Clepper, 32; “Former Mont Alto Professor Dies,” Record Herald (Waynesboro, Pa.), 1 September 1967, 166, PSMAA; Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission, “Mont Alto Forest Lands,” GHWP; “Services Tomorrow for Edwin A. Ziegler,” unidentified Lewisburg, Pa., newspaper, 19 October 1967, PSMAA; Thomas, History of the Pennsylvania State Forest School, 1. 27. Robert S. Conklin to Coyle H. Tewell, Harrisburg, 1 August 1913, SFRC. Also Robert S. Conklin to H. E. Bryner, Harrisburg, 12 August 1908, PSMAA; Mira Lloyd Dock to William S. Harvey, Harrisburg, 1910, MLDP; Thomas, History of the Pennsylvania State Forest School, 83–85, 92. 28. Robert S. Conklin to P. Hartman Fox, Harrisburg, 4 September 1913, SFRC. Also Robert S. Conklin to P. Hartman Fox, Harrisburg, 12 June 1913, SFRC; P. Hartman Fox to Robert S. Conklin, Austin, Pa., 10 January 1913, SFRC; P. Hartman Fox to Robert S. Conklin, Austin, Pa., 2 April 1913, SFRC; P. Hartman Fox to Robert S. Conklin, Austin, Pa., 14 April 1913, SFRC; P. Hartman Fox to Robert S. Conklin, Austin, Pa., 12 May 1913, SFRC; P. Hartman Fox to Robert S. Conklin, Austin, Pa., 20 December 1913, SFRC; Louisa Fox Warren. 29. Walter D. Ludwig to Robert S. Conklin, Boalsburg, Pa., 25 October 1913, SFRC. Also E. K. Ellicot to Mira Lloyd Dock, Roland Park, Md., 1 December 1902, MLDP; P. Hartman Fox to Robert S. Conklin, Austin, Pa., 8 November 1913, SFRC; John W. Keller to Professor George H. Wirt, Lloyd, Pa., 13 December 1911, SFRC; Kohlstedt, 43–55; Homer S. Metzger to Robert Conklin, Logantown, Pa., 3 November 1913, SFRC; T. Roy Morton to Robert S. Conklin, Petersburg, Pa., 18 October 1913, SFRC; Rimby, 20; Alfred E. Rupp to Robert S. Conklin, Fort Loudon, Pa., 27 January 1913, SFRC; A. C. Silvius to Robert S. Conklin, Laurelton, Pa., 28 October 1913, SFRC; R. B. Winter, “Arbor Day Report,” 3 November 1913, SFRC. 30. John W. Keller to Professor G. H. Wirt, Lloyd, Pa., 19 December 1911, SFRC; Carl L. Kirk to Robert S. Conklin, Penfield, Pa., 3 September 1913, SFRC. Also W. F. Byers to I. C. Williams, Rainsburg, Pa., 10 January 1910, SFRC; James E. McNeal to Robert S. Conklin, Pittsburgh, 6 September 1913, SFRC; Meo, 23; Walter M. Mumma to Robert S. Conklin, North Bend, Pa., 19 September 1913, SFRC; Rimby, 23; Alfred E. Rupp to Robert S. Conklin, Fort Loudon, Pa., 4 March 1913, SFRC; Raymond B. Winter to Robert S. Conklin, Mifflinburg, Pa., 22 April 1913, SFRC. 31. Thomas, History of the Pennsylvania State Forest School, 1, 15. 32. Burnham, 175–77, 217; Estabrooks, 146. 33. Dormandy, 147–48, 150–54; Dubos and Dubos, 173, 197–201; Reber, 413–14. 34. Dormandy, 18–182; Keers, 92; Reber, 414–15. 35. Mira L. Dock, “The Invalids’ Camp at Mont Alto,” in Statement of Work Done by the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry, During 1901 and 1902 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1902), 66, DFP. Also Paris, 32–33; J. T. Rothrock, “Why a State Should Acquire Land and Exploit It for Forestry Purposes,” 1897, GHWP; Yelinek, 3. 36. M. D. Dock, “One Hundred Dollars in Awards for Tree Planting on Arbor Days,” 10 November 1906, MLDP; M. L. Dock to Edgar C. Felton, Fayetteville, Pa., 5 August 1915, MLDP; M. L. Dock to the Honorable M. E. Olmsted, Fayetteville, Pa., 30 January 1912, MLDP; Mira Lloyd Dock, “How to Preserve and Perpetuate the Beauty of Town and Country,” 1899, MLDP. Also Mira Lloyd Dock, “Municipal Responsibility for Public Health, in Homes, Streets, and Streams,” MLDP. 37. J. T. Rothrock, “The Sanatorium at South Mountain, Pa.,” Forest Leaves (October 1903): 72–75, DFP.

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notes to pages – 38. J. T. Rothrock, “Statement About Sanatorium in Forest Reserve,” 1906, GHWP; J. T. Rothrock, “The Sanatorium at South Mountain, Pa.,” Forest Leaves (October 1903): 72–75, DFP. Also D. L. Bitler to Dr. Rothrock, Philadelphia, 14 June 1902, JTRP; R. S. Conklin to Rothrock, 14 April 1903; Robert S. Conklin to Mira Dock, Harrisburg, 3 May 1903, MLDP; Robert S. Conklin to Samuel W. Pennypacker, Harrisburg, 13 November 1904, SWPP; D. L. Bitler to Mira Lloyd Dock, Philadelphia, 14 December 1904, MLDP; Rolando Kuehn to J. T. Rothrock, Philadelphia, 7 July 1904, JTRP; Reber, 415–16, 421; “Report of State Forestry Commission, 1901–1902,” in Report of the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry, 1901–1902 (Harrisburg: State Printer, 1903?), 42, DFR; Dr. John H. W. Rhein to J. T. Rothrock, Philadelphia, 26 June 1903, JTRP; J. T. Rothrock, “Relations of Forests to Public Health and Prosperity,” 12, GHWP; J. T. Rothrock, “State Sanatory Camp for Consumptives, at Mont Alto, Franklin County, Pennsylvania,” 1904, JTRP; J. T. Rothrock to the Honorable William A. Stone, Harrisburg, 1 December 1902, located in William A. Stone Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives; Yelinek, 6. 39. Rothrock, “State Sanatory Camp,” 1–2. Also Hampton L. Carson to J. T. Rothrock, Harrisburg, 9 September 1903, DFP; Robert S. Conklin to the Honorable Samuel W. Pennypacker, Harrisburg, 13 October 1904, SWPP; Robert S. Conklin to the Honorable Samuel W. Pennypacker, Harrisburg, 6 June 1906, DFP; Robert S. Conklin to the Honorable Bromley Wharton, Harrisburg, 4 October 1904, SWPP; Mira L. Dock to the Honorable Charles E. Dorworth, Fayetteville, Pa., 1926, MLDP; J. T. Rothrock to Hampton L. Carson, Harrisburg, 11 August 1903, DFP; Rothrock, “Sanatorium at South Mountain.” 40. Rothrock, “State Sanatory Camp,” 1; Fred Stickel to J. T. Rothrock, Mont Alto, Pa., 20 April 1903, JTRP; Fred Stickel to J. T. Rothrock, Mont Alto, Pa., 26 April 1903, JTRP. Also D. Knepper to J. T. Rothrock, Mont Alto, Pa., 18 April 1903, JTRP; “Mont Alto: A Once Active Little Church in the Mountains, Now Silent but Not Forgotten,” Harrisburg Churchman 2 (April 1906): 2, PSMAA; Reber, 421–25. 41. M. L. Dock, “The Invalids’ Camp,” 66–67; George H. Wirt to Mira L. Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 6 October 1902, DFP. Also Bitler to M. L. Dock, 14 December 1904; M. L. Dock diary, 2 January 1907; Mira Lloyd Dock, “Mont Alto and the State Federation,” MLDP; Mira L. Dock to Governor S. W. Pennypacker, Graeffensburg, Pa., 29 March 1906, DFP; Mira L. Dock to Dr. Rothrock, Graeffensburg, Pa., 2 May 1903, DFP; John Fulton to Mira L. Dock, Johnstown, Pa., 3 April 1906, DFP; J. T. Rothrock to Mira Lloyd Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 15 June 1905, MLDP; George H. Wirt to Mira Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 14 April 1903, DFP. 42. In 1907 the Pennsylvania General Assembly transferred the sanatorium from the Department of Forestry to the Department of Health. See Reber, 417, and Yelinek, 8–11. 43. Frederick Stickel to Dr. Rothrock, Mont Alto, Pa., 12 April 1903, JTRP; Harriet M. Simmons to J. T. Rothrock, Mont Alto, Pa., 28 August 1904, JTRP. 44. M. L. Dock, “Municipal Responsibility for Public Health.” Also Gottleib, Forcing the Spring, 7. 45. M. L. Dock to Felton, 5 August 1915. 46. D. L. Bitler to J. T. Rothrock, Philadelphia, 13 March 1901, JTRP; “Facts and Figures Regarding Our Forest Resources Briefly Stated,” U.S. Department of Agriculture circular no. 11, 10 February 1896, DFP; Meo, 19; Thomas, History of the Pennsylvania State Forest School, 5–6. 47. Meo, 22. 48. Ibid., 21–22. 49. Jacoby, 50–76, 83–107, 150–75; Miller, 157–67; Spence, 43–80, 118–19; Smith, 74. 50. J. T. Rothrock, “A Plain Statement of an Important Problem,” 1–2, 5–6, GHWP. Also J. T. Rothrock, “Removal of Fertile Soil from the Farm by Water,” 2, 5, GHWP; J. T. Rothrock, “Water Supply,” 2, GHWP. 51. J. T. Rothrock, “What Forestry Is,” 1897, 1–2, GHWP; “Report of the State Forestry Commission, 1901–1902,” 44. Also J. T. Rothrock, “What Forestry Can Do for Pennsylvania,” 1, GHWP; “Timberland-Taxation in Pennsylvania,” DFP.

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notes to pages – 52. Rothrock, “Why a State Should Acquire Land and Exploit It for Forestry Purposes.” Also J. T. Rothrock, “Growth of the Forestry Idea in Pennsylvania,” 1897, 2, GHWP. 53. Rimby, 17. 54. Mira L. Dock, “Forestry and Tree Protection,” lecture notes, DFP. Also Mira L. Dock, “On Fire Protection,” DFP; M. L. Dock, “Syllabus: State Forests of Pennsylvania,” lecture notes, 1–5, DFP; “To Protect Forests: Miss Dock Tells of Pennsylvania Commission’s Work,” Baltimore News, 21 January 1903, DFP. 55. Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring, 23. 56. Miller, 155, also 168; Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1910), 77, also 80–81, located in Rare Book Room, Library of Congress. Also Gifford Pinchot, “The Conservation of Natural Resources,” Outlook, 12 October 1907, 291–94, located at Loeb Design Library; Gifford Pinchot, “A Primer of Forestry,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farmer’s Bulletin no. 173, 1903, 34–39, DFP. 57. Miller, 118. Also Kline, 58–59. 58. Mira Lloyd Dock to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 7 January 1909, MLDP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 29 March 1909, DFP. Also Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring, 24; Kline, 59–61; J. Horace McFarland to Dr. Rothrock, Harrisburg, 24 September 1910, DFP; Miller, 136–41; Rimby, 25. 59. Mira L. Dock, “Summary, with Recommendations,” 3 December 1907, DFP. Also Bitler to M. L. Dock, 14 December 1904; D. L. Bitler to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 15 June 1912, DFP; “The Chestnut Tree Blight,” Valley Spirit (Chambersburg, Pa.), 8 February 1912, DFP; Robert S. Conklin to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 29 March 1912, DFP; M. L. Dock diary, 4 March 1910; Mira Dock to D. L. Bitler, Fayetteville, Pa., 17 February 1908, DFP; Mira L. Dock, “The Christmas Tree Question,” Philadelphia Press, 1 September 1908, DFP; Mira Lloyd Dock, “Protection of Forest Lands in Pennsylvania,” Bulletin of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia 10 (April 1912): 121–28, MSFR; Mira Dock to Dr. G. B. Roorbach, Fayetteville, Pa., 20 March 1912, DFP; Mira Dock to the Honorable John K. Tener, Fayetteville, Pa., 29 June 1911, DFP; B. F. Laudig to Mira L. Dock, Scranton, Pa., 8 January 1905, DFP; Virginia E. B. Pennypacker to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 13 October 1905, MLDP; G. B. Roorbach to Mira L. Dock, Philadelphia, 15 April 1912, DFP; J. T. Rothrock to Colonel D. B. Meredith, Harrisburg, 21 May 1903, MSFR; John K. Tener to Myra L. Dock, Harrisburg, 21 September 1911, DFP. 60. Mira Dock to Robert Conklin, Fayetteville, Pa., 3 November 1911, DFP. 61. George H. Wirt to M. L. Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 1 December 1909, DFP; M. Dock to Conklin, 3 November 1911. Also D. L. Bitler to the Honorable Robert S. Conklin, Philadelphia, 3 March 1908, DFP; D. L. Bitler to M. L. Dock, Philadelphia, 11 February 1908, DFP; D. L. Bitler to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 29 February 1908, DFP; D. L. Bitler to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 10 March 1908, DFP; D. L. Bitler to Mira L. Dock, Philadelphia, 1 June 1908, DFP; Robert S. Conklin to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 19 November 1909, DFP; Mira L. Dock, “Public Schools,” DFP; Rimby, 20; Report of the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry for the Years 1912–1913, 168–70. 62. Mira Lloyd Dock, “Forestry and the State Federation: Reminiscences,” 2–3, MLDP. Also Mira L. Dock to John Birkenbine, Fayetteville, Pa., 11 January 1907, MLDP; Mira L. Dock to the Honorable W. U. Hensel, Harrisburg, 18 February 1903, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 24 September 1907, MLDP; William J. Rose to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 17 April 1907, MLDP; I. C. Williams to Mary S. Garrett, Harrisburg, 11 December 1913, MLDP. 63. Mira Dock to Family, Glen Eyre, Pa., 17 May 1905, DFP; Mira L. Dock, “Inspection Tour Notes, 23–24 October” (year unknown), DFP; Mira Dock, “Itinerary as a Whole, Sinnemahoning Inspection, October–November” (year unknown), DFP; Mira L. Dock, “Report of a Short Trip to Huntingdon County, November 5th to 9th, 1907,” DFP; M. L. Dock to Rothrock, 6 May 1903, 5; Charles Walec to the Honorable M. L. Dock, Pennsylvania Forestry Commission, 20 October 1902, DFP.

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notes to pages – 64. Robert S. Conklin to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 18 December 1911, DFP; Report of the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry for the Years 1912–1913, 31. 65. M. L. Dock, “Forestry and the State Federation,” 1; M. L. Dock, “A Short Trip to Huntingdon County”; Mira L. Dock, “Forestry and Penn’s Woods Notes,” 30 June and 29 August 1910, DFP; Mira L. Dock, “Report to Commissioners of Forestry,” January 1912, DFR. 66. Mira L. Dock, “State Run,” 26 October 1911, DFP. 67. Robert S. Conklin to Robert G. Conklin, Harrisburg, 6 December 1910, MSFR. Also Mira L. Dock, “To the Commissioner of Forestry and Members of the State Forestry Reservation Commission,” 2 February 1911, DFP; Mira L. Dock to R. S. Conklin, Harrisburg, 24 February 1912, DFP; M. L. Dock to Rothrock, 6 May 1903, 1–2; D. B. Meredith to Robert S. Conklin, Chambersburg, Pa., 1 November 1904, SFRC; D. B. Meredith to Dr. J. T. Rothrock, Graeffensburg, Pa., 29 March 1904, MSFR; J. T. Rothrock to Colonel D. B. Meredith, Harrisburg, 4 December 1903, MSFR; J. T. Rothrock to Colonel D. B. Meredith, Harrisburg, 1 April 1904, MSFR; I. C. Williams to Robert G. Conklin, Harrisburg, 25 May 1910, MSFR. 68. F. E. Olmsted to Mira Lloyd Dock, Washington, D.C., 5 November 1902, MLDP; M. L. Dock to Rothrock, 6 May 1903, 4. Also J. T. Rothrock to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 20 September 1901, MLDP; Pennsylvania Department of Forestry, Report for the Years 1903 and 1904 (Harrisburg: Harrisburg Publishing, 1905), 3, MSFR; Rome, “‘Political Hermaphrodites,’” 443, 446; Statement of Work Done by the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry, During 1901 and 1902 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1902), 3, MSFR; Walec to M. L. Dock, 20 October 1902. 69. D. Kerr Warfield to Mira Lloyd Dock, Milroy, Pa., 20 September 1911, DFP; Walter M. Mumma to Robert S. Conklin, Hammersley Fork, Pa., 6 November 1911, SFRC; Walter M. Mumma to Robert S. Conklin, Hammersley Fork, Pa., 14 November 1911, SFRC. Also W. L. Byers to Robert S. Conklin, Rainsburg, Pa., 3 November 1908, SFRC; W. L. Byers to Robert S. Conklin, Rainsburg, Pa., 10 March 1911, SFRC; Robert G. Conklin to Robert S. Conklin, Fayetteville, Pa., 20 October 1908, SFRC; D. B. Meredith to R. S. Conklin, Fayetteville, Pa., 30 August 1904, SFRC; David Libby to Robert S. Conklin, Weikert, Pa., 16 October 1908, SFRC; David Libby to Robert S. Conklin, Weikert, Pa., 28 October 1908, SFRC. 70. S. B. Elliot to Mira L. Dock, Reynoldsville, Pa., 11 September 1911, DFP; George H. Wirt to Robert G. Conklin, Mont Alto, Pa., 17 November 1909, MSFR. Also Robert S. Conklin to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 22 November 1911, DFP; Robert S. Conklin to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 12 March 1912, DFP; S. B. Elliot to Mira Dock, Reynoldsville, Pa., 1 November 1911, DFP; J. T. Rothrock to Mira Lloyd Dock, West Chester, Pa., 6 November 1910, MLDP. 71. Report of the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry for the Years 1908–1909, 11; Report of the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry for the Years 1912–1913, 9, 67, 72, 102, 158–64. 72. Report of the Department of Forestry of the State of Pennsylvania for the Years 1912–1913, 33, also 152. Also Reiger, 150–69; Meo, 21; “Report of the State Forest Commission, 1901–1902,” 43– 46; Report of the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry for the Years 1908–1909, 45; Smalley, 372–73; Louis Warren, 28–45, 52–55. 73. Jacoby, 16–17, 29–46; Judd, 85–98; Reiger, 120–22, 155; Albert C. Ritchie to Mira Lloyd Dock, Baltimore, 5 April 1906, MLDP. 74. “To Protect Forests”; Mira Dock to D. L. Bitler, Fayetteville, Pa., DFP; Henry A. Barker to Mira L. Dock, Providence, R.I., 17 January 1908, DFP. Also Miller, 156; Charles L. Taylor to Myra L. Dock, Los Angeles, 10 March 1904, DFP. 75. D. Brandis to Mira Dock, Kew, England, 20 August 1905, DFP; Robert S. Conklin to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 13 April 1906, DFP; Katherine Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 15 January 1907, MLDP. Also Katherine Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 24 June 1907, MLDP; Katherine Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 12 February 1909, MLDP; Mira Lloyd Dock to the Honorable S. B. Elliot, Fayetteville, Pa., 17 December 1913, MLDP; Mira Dock to John Birkinbine, Ann Arbor, Mich., 30 July 1906, DFP; Mira Lloyd Dock to Governor

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notes to pages – S. W. Pennypacker, Graeffensburg, Pa., 17 February 1906, 1, DFP; Mira Lloyd Dock to Mrs. Lovell White, Harrisburg, 11 June 1912, MLDP; Report of the Department of Forestry of the State of Pennsylvania for the Years 1912–1913, 155. 76. “Resolution of the Pennsylvania Forestry Commission, 1913,” DFR. Also Report of the Department of Forestry of the State of Pennsylvania for the Years 1912–1913, 155–56. 77. Katherine Brandis to Mira L. Dock, Bonn, Germany, 24 December 1913, MLDP; R. Lynn Emerick to Mira L. Dock, Cross Fork, Pa., 25 August 1913, DFP.

Chapter 5 1. Jane Cunningham Croly, “Address by Mrs. Croly to the First Meeting of Women’s Clubs, Held in Brooklyn, New York, April 23, 1890,” in Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, “Jennie June” (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 117, available online from American Memory Collection, Library of Congress, at http://www.memory.loc.gov. Also Blair, 45–48; Blum, 79; Martin, 14–18, 30–38; Cordelia M. F. Ralph to Mira Lloyd Dock, Utica, N.Y., 7 July 1900, located in Mira Lloyd Dock Papers, 1814–1951, Library of Congress (hereafter MLDP). 2. Jane Cunningham Croly, The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America (New York: H. G. Allen, 1898), 75–76, available through Harvard Digital Resources at http://www.digital.har vard.edu. Also Blair, 25–29, 97–104; Endres, 90; Flanagan, 89–103; Martin, 171–74; Muncy, 10; Roydhouse, 55–56. 3. Blair, 95–98; General Federation of Women’s Clubs, “Report on Social Economics,” in Third Biennial, General Federation of Women’s Clubs (Louisville, Ky.: Flexner Brothers, 1896), 294–309, available through Harvard Digital Resources at http://www.digital.harvard.edu; Sarah H. Platt Decker, “The Meaning of the Woman’s Club Movement,” Annals of the American Association of Political and Social Science Magazine, September 1906, 4, located in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Collection, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library (hereafter GFWCC); “Village Improvement,” Evening Star (Ridgeway, Pa.), 21 February 1899, located in Dock Family Papers, 1865–1951, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter DFP). 4. “The Story of the Fifth Biennial,” Club Woman 6 (July 1900): 149–50, GFWCC; “Objectionable Advertising,” Club Woman 8 (August 1901): 139, GFWCC; Rimby, 18–19. 5. Mira Dock to Mrs. F. F. Chrostwaite, Fayetteville, Pa., 21 October 1909, DFP; Mira L. Dock diary, 26 June 1907, DFP; Mira Dock to Mrs. Clara Rebert, Fayetteville, Pa., 25 April 1912, DFP; Mira L. Dock, “Report of the Vice President of the Central District, 1908–09,” located in State Federation of Pennsylvania Women Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter SFPWP); Clara M. Rebert to Mira Dock, Cashtown, Pa., 1 May 1912, DFP; State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, “Minutes of Executive Board, The New Century Club, Philadelphia, 4 December 1895,” SFPWP; State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, “Minutes of the Executive Board, 30 March 1908, New Century Club, 124 S. 12th St., Philadelphia,” SFPWP; State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, “Minutes of the Executive Board, The Senate Hotel, Harrisburg, 9 November 1909,” SFPWP; Mrs. Harry R. Wilson, ed., “Pennsylvania Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1895–1945,” unpublished paper, 5–8, located in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Archives (hereafter GFWCA). 6. “Annual Report of the Female Benevolent Society, 1886,” unidentified newspaper article, located in Female Benevolent Society File, Cumberland County Historical Society (hereafter FBSF). Also “Annual Report of the Female Benevolent Society,” unidentified newspaper article, FBSF; “Constitution of the Female Benevolent Society of Carlisle, 1828,” 1–2, 3, 5, 7, FBSF; “Constitution of the New Brighton Female Moral Reform Society, 22 March 1838,” located at New Brighton Historical Society (hereafter NBHS); “History of New Brighton Women’s Christian Temperance Union, 1882,” unpublished speech, 1, NBHS; Lear, 142; Henrietta Miner Read, Souvenir History of the Ladies Benevolent Society of New Brighton (Pittsburgh: Eichbaum Press, 1896), 3, NBHS.

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notes to pages – 7. “Constitution of the New Brighton Female Moral Reform Society.” 8. “Constitution of the Female Benevolent Society of Carlisle,” 1–2. 9. Lear, 143; “History of New Brighton Women’s Christian Temperance Union,” 1, also 3–5, 10. Also “Annual Report of the Female Benevolent Society, 1886”; Endres, 53–59. 10. Katherine G. Ryan, “History of the Village Improvement Association of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 1895–1932,” unpublished manuscript, 3, located in Doylestown Village Improvement Association Papers, Spruance Library; Woman’s Club of Mechanicsburg, “Programme, 1905– 1906,” 1, located in Woman’s Club of Mechanicsburg File, Cumberland County Historical Society. 11. Woman’s Club of New Castle, “75 Year History of Woman’s Club of New Castle, Pennsylvania,” unpublished paper, GFWCA; “Report of the Harris Building Playground,” MLDP; John C. Olmsted, “Parks Should Be Out of Politics,” Municipal Journal, 1903, 52, DFP; Paris, 53–54, also 55–57; M. L. D. to The Editor, Harrisburg Patriot, Fayetteville, Pa., 9 August 1919, MLDP. Also Blair, 103; Laura Nolle Jenkins, “Report of the DeWitt School Playground on Walnut Street,” MLDP; Rimby, 18. 12. Mira Dock to Mrs. Edward W. Biddle, Harrisburg, 14 October 1909, DFP; Mira L. Dock, “Report of the Central District, 1906,” DFP; Mira Dock to Miss Stearns and Miss Grimes, Chambersburg, Pa., 27 December 1910, DFP; Mira Dock to William Solotaroff, Chambersburg, Pa., 27 December 1910, DFP; Wilkes-Barre Record Almanac, 1910, 47, located at Bishop Memorial Library (hereafter BML); Wilkes-Barre Record Almanac, 1914, 54, BML; Woman’s Club of Mechanicsburg, “Programme,” 13. 13. Ruth Evans Gerberich, “Our Club History: History of the Woman’s Club of Lebanon, Written to Be Read Before Club Members at the Celebration of Our Fiftieth Anniversary, January 18, 1947,” unpublished paper, 20–21, located in Women’s Club of Lebanon Papers, Lebanon County Historical Society; Elizabeth Leighton Lee to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 13 December 1910, DFP. 14. M. L. D. to Mrs. Crocker, Fayetteville, Pa., 30 January 1914, MLDP. Also Mira Lloyd Dock, “Correspondence and Accounts, State Federation of Pennsylvania Women,” DFP; Eleanor Clark Neal to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 14 April 1898, MLDP; C. P. Shotwell, “Department of Forestry and Town Improvement Report, July 1899,” unpublished paper, MLDP; State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, “Programme—Eighth Annual Meeting of the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women at Carlisle, 1903,” located in Carlisle Civic Club File, Cumberland County Historical Society (hereafter CCCF); State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, “Third Annual Meeting of the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, November 2–3, 1898, First Baptist Church, 7th and Fulton Streets,” DFP. 15. Mira L. Dock, “Address to the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women’s Clubs, 1898,” DFP; Mira L. Dock, “Report of the Vice-President, 1908–1909,” DFP. 16. “One Woman’s Work for Trees,” New York Evening Post, 17 August 1907, DFP. Also Cutter, 7; Rimby, 18–19. 17. “The New Century Club of West Chester—Federated 1895,” Pennsylvania Clubwoman, March 1989, GFWCA; New Century Club of Philadelphia, “75th Anniversary, The New Century Club, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, 1877–1952,” 15, GFWCA. 18. Gertrude Biddle, “The Story of the Civic Club of Carlisle,” Chautauquan 37 (August 1903): 503–5, CCCF. Also M. L. Dock, “Report of the Vice-President”; “Minutes of the December Meeting, 1905, Civic Club of Carlisle,” Minute Book of the Civic Club of Carlisle (hereafter MBCCC), 117–18, CCCF; “Minutes of January Meeting, 1906, Civic Club of Carlisle,” MBCCC, 122–24; “Minutes of Midsummer Meeting, June 18, 1906, Civic Club of Carlisle,” MBCCC, 147. 19. G. E. Jones, “In Re: Query of Liliane S. Howard, 5315 Osage Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” 10 April 1946, 1, located in Liliane Stevens Howard Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives; Roydhouse, 53; “Second Annual Report of the Civic Betterment Association of the Civic Club of Philadelphia, 1325 Walnut Street, June 1, 1904,” 4–12, located in Civic Club of Philadelphia Records, 1898–1904, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter CCPR).

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notes to pages – 20. Emma Blakiston, “Report of the Committee on Resolutions, Pittsburgh, October 29, 1908,” MLDP; Civic Club of Allegheny County, “Civic Club, Allegheny County, 1895–1945,” 4–5, located in Civic Club of Allegheny County Records, 1896–1949, University of Pittsburgh Archives (hereafter CCACR); “Civic Club Has Its Annual Meeting,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, 10 November 1912, CCACR; Lucy Dorsey Iames to Mira Lloyd Dock, Pittsburgh, 19 March 1908, MLDP; Mira Lloyd Dock, “Mont Alto and the State Federation,” 3, MLDP; Mira Lloyd Dock to Helen Merrick Semple, Fayetteville, Pa., 12 October 1914, MLDP; E. E. Stephenson, “Civic Club of Allegheny County,” Modern Woman, 27 November 1913, 4, CCACR. 21. “Minutes of November Meeting, 1905, Civic Club of Carlisle,” MBCCC, 112; “Minutes of May Meeting, 1906, Civic Club of Carlisle,” MBCCC, 142; Forest Dutlinger to R. S. Conklin, Glen Union, Pa., 26 April 1911, located in State Foresters and Rangers Correspondence, Department of Forestry Records, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter SFRC); Forrest H. Dutlinger to R. S. Conklin, Whetham, Pa., 21 September 1911, SFRC; Ryan, “History of the Village Improvement Association,” 4; Rimby, 20; Wilkes-Barre Record Almanac, 1911, 44, BML. 22. M. L. Dock, “Report of the Vice-President”; Mira L. Dock, “Call for Report for 1913,” 22 September 1913, MLDP. Also M. L. Dock diary, 25 January 1900; Mira Dock to Miss Regenstine, Fayetteville, Pa., 18 March 1908, DFP; Mira Dock, “Work of the Year,” DFP. 23. U.S. Census Office, “Schedule Number 1—Population”; Civic Club, Civic Betterment Association, Public Education Association, and City Parks Association, “Philadelphia School Gardens,” 1904, title page, CCPR; Lulu Gabel Geise, “From the Scrapbook of the Woman’s Club of the City of Pittsburgh of Gracye Druitt Latus,” unpublished manuscript, 2, GFWCA; Hoffer, 133; “State College Woman’s Club, 1894–1985,” unpublished manuscript, 4, GFWCA. 24. “Civic Club, Allegheny County, 1895–1935,” 8, 26, 28; Civic Club of Philadelphia, The Alice Lippincott Memorial: The Decoration of Public Schools (Philadelphia: Ketterlinus, 1898), 28–30, 51– 57, 61–83, CCPR; “Civic Organizations Begin Campaign Against Monstrosities of Billboards,” Pittsburgh Post, 16 October 1910, CCACR; Federation of Women’s Clubs, “The Woman’s Club of Pittsburgh: Fortis est Veritas, Blue Stocking Tea, South Hills Country Club, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15, Sunday, November 19, 2000,” 6, 8, GFWCA; Gerberich, “Our Club History,” 12–13; Patty Goehring, “Club History—The Woman’s Club of New Brighton,” unpublished manuscript, 1–2, GFWCA; “State College Woman’s Club, 1894–1985,” 5; “Lot Gardening Given Impetus,” Pittsburgh Sun, 9 April 1915, CCACR; Adrienne Morrell and Susan C. Holton, The Woman’s Club of Sewickley Valley, 1897–1997 (Sewickley, Pa.: Woman’s Club of Sewickley Valley, 1997), 6–7, located in Woman’s Club of Sewickley Valley Papers, Senator John Heinz Regional History Center; “The New Century Club of West Chester”; Ryan, “History of the Village Improvement Association,” 2, 5, 6, 7; “Second Annual Report of the Civic Betterment Association,” 9–10, 12, 14–15, CCPR; Stephenson, “Civic Club of Allegheny County,” 4. 25. Mira L. Dock, “Dr. Rothrock and the State Federation,” 1, MLDP; M. L. Dock, “Mont Alto and the State Federation,” 1. 26. Mira L. Dock, “Call for Report for 1911,” 26 September 1911, MLDP; M. L. Dock, “Call for Report for 1913.” Also Corrine M. Allen to Mira Lloyd Dock, Salt Lake City, 15 July 1898, MLDP; Mira Lloyd Dock, “Forestry and the Federation, 1896–1916, Prepared for the 21st Annual Meeting of the State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, Philadelphia, Philomusian Club House, 26 October 1916,” 3–4, DFP; Mira Dock, “Report on Forestry Work During the Past Year—1904–05,” unpublished paper, 1905, SFPWP; “Interested in Forestry,” Pittsburgh Dispatch, 11 May 1913, DFP; “State Federation News,” Club Woman 10 (March 1903): 252, GFWCC; Wilson, “Pennsylvania Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1895–1945,” 7–9. 27. Mira L. Dock, “Arbor Day and Planting Leaflet, State Federation of Pennsylvania Women Forestry Committee, April 1906,” 1, MLDP; Mira Lloyd Dock, “Forestry and Arbor Day,” 1906, 2, MLDP. Also Mira Lloyd Dock, Some Arbor Day Reminders and Suggestions, 1910, 11–16, MLDP; M. L. Dock, State Federation of Pennsylvania Women Committee on Forestry and Horticulture Spring

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notes to pages – Circular, 1911, 3–8, MLDP; Gabriella Gilbert to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 13 March 1900, MLDP; “Hints for Arbor Day Exercises Issued by the Civic Club of Pittsburgh and Allegheny,” 2– 10, CCACR; Kohlstedt, 68–78, 169–71, 178–79; Rimby, 20. 28. Mira Lloyd Dock to Elizabeth Hall Peale, Fayetteville, Pa., 19 September 1914, MLDP; Gertrude B. Biddle to Mira Lloyd Dock, Carlisle, Pa., 27 March 1909, 3, located in Civic Club of Chambersburg Records, Kittochtinny Historical Society. Also M. L. Dock, “Arbor Day and Planting Leaflet,” 3; M. L. Dock, Committee on Forestry and Horticulture Spring Circular, 4; Mira L. Dock, “Forestry and Tree Protection,” in A Civic Primer, 1904–1906 (Washington, D.C.: General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1904), 47–57, MLDP; Mira Lloyd Dock, State Forestry Today (Washington, D.C.: General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1924), 4–5, MLDP; Rome, “‘Political Hermaphrodites,’” 450–51. 29. E. A. Ziegler to Mira L. Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 26 February 1917, MLDP. Also Mira L. Dock to “Madam President,” Fayetteville, Pa., 25 March 1908, MLDP; M. L. Dock, State Forestry Today, 14, 16, 18; Mira Lloyd Dock to E. Lee Worsham, Fayetteville, Pa., 22 September 1913, MLDP; Iames to M. L. Dock, 19 March 1908. 30. Florence Keen to Mira Lloyd Dock, Philadelphia, 18 March 1910, MLDP. Also Mira Lloyd Dock to John Birkinbine, Harrisburg, 6 October 1906, MLDP; Mira Lloyd Dock to Professor David Emmert, Fayetteville, Pa., 19 September 1906, MLDP; M. L. Dock, “Forestry and the Federation,” 1; M. L. Dock, Committee on Forestry and Horticulture Spring Circular, 2; Helen Grimes to Mira Lloyd Dock, 1906, MLDP; Florence Keen to Mira Lloyd Dock, Philadelphia, 6 March 1910, MLDP; Florence Keen to Mira Lloyd Dock, Philadelphia, 9 March 1910, MLDP; Meo, 23; Rimby, 20. 31. M. L. D. to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 14 January 1907, MLDP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 7 April 1908, MLDP; J. Horace McFarland, “The Great Civic Awakening,” Outlook 73 (1903): 920, located in Ernest Morrison Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter EMP); J. Horace McFarland, “A New Call to the Colors: The President’s Annual Address Delivered at the Thirteenth Annual Convention of the American Civic Association, at St. Louis, Missouri, October 22, 1917,” frontispiece, located at Widener Library; J. Horace McFarland and Clinton Rogers Woodruff, “The Uplift in American Cities,” American Uplift, July 1904, 4965, 4979, EMP; G. A. Parker to Mira Lloyd Dock, Hartford, Conn., 20 September 1904, MLDP. 32. Biddle to M. L. Dock, 27 March 1909, 4. Also Henry A. Barker to Mira Dock, Providence, R.I., 25 January 1908, DFP; Margaret E. Blackburn, “The President’s Report, The Woman’s Club of Mechanicsburg, 1909–1910,” 26–27, MLDP; Ione V. H. Cowles to State Presidents, 14 May 1917, MLDP; McFarland, “The Great Civic Awakening,” 919–20; “Minutes of April Meeting, 1905, Civic Club of Carlisle,” MBCCC, 84; Rome, “‘Political Hermaphrodites,’” 450–52. 33. Philip W. Ayres to M. L. Dock, Concord, N.H., 14 May 1906, DFP; Mira Dock to Philip W. Ayers, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1 August 1906, DFP; M. L. Dock to “Madam President,” 25 March 1908; Laura S. Feigel to Mira Lloyd Dock, Philadelphia, 23 February 1906, DFP; Adelaide M. Godding to Mira L. Dock, Boston, 16 May 1916, MLDP; Iames to M. L. Dock, 19 March 1908. 34. Merchant, “Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement,” 60. 35. J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 14 April 1906, DFP. Also J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 17 February 1911, MLDP; “Minutes of December Meeting, 1906, Civic Club of Carlisle,” MBCCC, 160; “Minutes of February Meeting, 1906, Civic Club of Carlisle,” MBCCC, 127; “Minutes of January Meeting, 1906,” 122; Morrison, 106–7, 111, 115–20. 36. E. K. Ellicot to Mira Lloyd Dock, Roland Park, Md., MLDP; M. L. Dock to Mrs. F. W. Gerard, Fayetteville, Pa., 29 January 1909, DFP. Also Philip W. Ayres to Mira L. Dock, Franconia, N.H., 23 August 1915, DFP; Barker to M. Dock, 25 January 1908; Mira Lloyd Dock to Miss Wilkinson, Graeffensburg, Pa., 25 March 1908, MLDP; Jessie Bryant Gerard, “Circular Letter to GFWC Forestry Committees,” Norwalk, Conn., 25 January 1909, DFP; Jarvis, 87–94; “State Federation

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notes to pages – News,” Club Woman 3 (December 1898): 91, GFWCC; “State Federation News,” Club Woman 4 (July 1899): 134, GFWCC; “What the State Federations Are Doing,” Federation Bulletin 4 (October 1906): 72, GFWCA. 37. Mary E. Mumford to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 10 February 1903, DFP. Also Mrs. Emmons Crocker, “Circular Letter to Presidents of Women’s Clubs,” Fitchburg, Mass., 1910, DFP; Marion A. Crocker to Mira Dock, Fitchburg, Mass., 29 November 1910, DFP; M. L. Dock diary, 5 and 18 June 1900; Mira L. Dock, “Reservation Trip,” 1900, DFP; M. L. Dock to Major Stuart, Fayetteville, Pa., 26 March 1923, DFP; Jessie Bryant Gerard to Mira Lloyd Dock, Norwalk, Conn., 25 January 1909, DFP; Merchant, “Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement,” 61–63; Mary E. Mumford to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 22 January 1902, DFP; Mary E. Mumford to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 5 March 1902, DFP; “State Federation News,” Club Woman 7 (December 1900): 85, GFWCC; “State Federation News,” Club Woman 6 (April 1900): 29, GFWCC; “The Story of the Fourth Biennial,” Club Woman 2 (August 1898): 145, GFWCC; “The Story of the Fifth Biennial,” 135; Lydia P. Williams to Mira Lloyd Dock, Minneapolis, 26 June 1900, MLDP; Lydia P. Williams to Mira Lloyd Dock, Minneapolis, 3 July 1900, MLDP; Lydia P. Williams to Mira Lloyd Dock, Chicago, 29 October 1900, MLDP. 38. Mira L. Dock to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 25 March 1914, DFP. 39. Marion A. Crocker to Mira L. Dock, Fitchburg, Mass., 26 April 1911, MLDP. Also Mrs. Emmons Crocker, “Report of the Conservation Department, Federation Year of 1912–1913,” in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Twelfth Biennial Convention, June 9 to 19, 1914, Chicago, Illinois, Official Report (Portland, Maine: Lakeside Printing, 1914), 388, GFWCA; Mira L. Dock to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 5 September 1913, DFP; Mira L. Dock to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 22 May 1914, DFP; Mira L. Dock, “Memorandum Submitted to Mrs. Grace Julian Clarke,” MLDP. 40. Beers, “Tener Was Athlete, Strong Executive,” A6; Mira L. Dock, “To the Members of the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission,” Fayetteville, Pa., 1 March 1920, 1, MLDP. Also Beers, “Brumbaugh Guided State Through World War I,” A6; Beers, “Stuart Started Graft Investigation,” A10; Robert G. Conklin to M. L. Dock, Fayetteville, Pa., 9 October 1916, located in Michaux State Forest Records, Pennsylvania State Archives; Mira L. Dock to J. Horace McFarland, 9 March 1914, DFP; Arthur Paschall to Mira Lloyd Dock, Doylestown, Pa., 28 February 1900, MLDP. 41. Mira Lloyd Dock to Mary Sherman, Fayetteville, Pa., 4 January 1915, MLDP; M. L. Dock to Professor C. S. Sargent, Chambersburg, Pa., 25 March 1915, MLDP. Also F. W. Besley to Mira L. Dock, Baltimore, 17 May 1916, MLDP; M. L. Dock, “GFWC, Special Note: Measures Before Congress,” 3 March 1914, DFP; Mira L. Dock to “Madam Chairman,” Fayetteville, Pa., 11 February 1915, MLDP; Mira Lloyd Dock to Mrs. John D. Sherman, Fayetteville, Pa., 11 January 1915, MLDP; M. L. Dock to Mary Caroline Sweet, Fayetteville, Pa., 24 September 1914, MLDP; F. A. Elliot to Mira L. Dock, Salem, Ore., 18 May 1916, MLDP; F. W. Rane to Mira Lloyd Dock, Boston, 25 April 1916, MLDP. 42. Mira L. Dock, “Abstract of State Reports for 1914–1916, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs,” 256–64, MLDP; General Federation of Women’s Clubs, “Reports of State Chairmen of Conservation, 1912–1914,” MLDP; Mary K. Sherman to Mira L. Dock, Chicago, 7 February 1916, MLDP; Mary K. Sherman to Mira L. Dock, Chicago, 16 April 1916, MLDP; Harry A. Slattery to Mira L. Dock, Washington, D.C., 26 January 1914, MLDP; Sarah B. Visanska to Mira L. Dock, Charleston, S.C., 13 May 1916, MLDP. 43. Slattery to M. L. Dock, 26 January 1914. Also Armitage, 538; Marion C. Crocker to Mira Lloyd Dock, Fitchburg, Pa., 13 March 1913, MLDP; Crocker, “Report of the Conservation Department,” 386; M. L. Dock to Marion Crocker, Fayetteville, Pa., 21 May 1913, MLDP; M. L. D. to Mrs. Crocker, 30 January 1914; Mira L. Dock, “Notes for Conservation Department,” 13 February 1914, MLDP; Mira Lloyd Dock, “Report of the Department of Conservation from January 25 to June 1, 1914,” in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Twelfth Biennial Convention, 389; Merchant, “George

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notes to pages – Bird Grinnell’s Audubon Society,” 18; Merchant, “Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement,” 63–65. 44. Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1910), 101, 105–6, located in Rare Book Room, Library of Congress; “What the State Federations Are Doing,” Federation Bulletin 6 (January 1909), 115, GFWCA. Also Rimby, 23; Rome, “‘Political Hermaphrodites,’” 450–51. 45. Mrs. F. W. Gerard, “Report of the Forestry Committee,” in Federation of Women’s Clubs Tenth Biennial Convention, May 11 to May 18, 1910, Cincinnati, Ohio, Official Report (Newark, N.J.: General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1910), 127, GFWCA; Merchant, “Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement,” 66; Thomas R. Shipp to Mira L. Dock, Washington, D.C., 13 October 1913, MLDP; John K. Tener to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 12 November 1913, MLDP; J. W. Tourney to Mira Lloyd Dock, Chicago, 16 April 1916, MLDP. 46. Mrs. P. S. Peterson, “Forestry Work for Women,” Federation Bulletin 3 (December 1905): 96, GFWCA; Mrs. Jessie B. Gerard and Mira Lloyd Dock, “In Memoriam: Mrs. Lovell White,” 1916, MLDP; “From the Chairmen of Standing Committees,” Federation Bulletin 4 (December 1906): 113, GFWCA. Also M. L. Dock to Sherman, 11 January 1915; Merchant, “Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement,” 59–60; “What the State Federations Are Doing,” Federation Bulletin 5 (January 1908): 153, GFWCA. 47. Mary K. Sherman, “National Scenery, Parks, and Preparedness,” 1 April 1917, 2, MLDP. 48. J. Horace McFarland, “Are National Parks Worthwhile?” American Civic Association National Parks occasional paper, ser. 11, no. 6, 25–26, located in American Civic Association Papers, 1901–44, Loeb Design Library; Rome, “Nature Wars, Culture Wars,” 446. Also M. L. Dock to McFarland, 5 September 1913; M. L. Dock, Some Arbor Day Reminders and Suggestions, 11–12; Shaffer, 2–6. 49. Jacoby, 16–17, 83–84; Nash, 108–21; Reiger, 128–41; Runte, 28–37, 57, 63–69, 74–76. 50. Richard B. Watrous to Mira Lloyd Dock, Washington, D.C., 14 March 1914, MLDP. Also Crocker, “Report of the Conservation Department,” 388; Jessie Bryant Gerard, “Save the Hetch Hetchy Valley,” Federation Bulletin 7 (November 1909): 54, GFWCA; Kaufman, 30–32; Merchant, “Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement,” 77; Morrison, 159, 164–71; Nash, 162–80; Runte, 82–89; Mrs. John D. Wilkinson, “Waterways,” Federation Bulletin 6 (May 1909): 227, GFWCA. 51. M. L. Dock diary, 21 February 1899; Beatrix Jones to Mira Lloyd Dock, New York, 12 March 1900, MLDP; Louisa G. King to Mira Lloyd Dock, Minneapolis, 8 December 1905, MLDP; Gifford Pinchot to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 17 May 1899, MLDP; Gifford Pinchot to Mira L. Dock, Washington, D.C., 21 November 1899, MLDP; Gifford Pinchot to Mira Lloyd Dock, Washington, D.C., 24 September 1909, DFP; Rimby, 24–25. 52. Mira Lloyd Dock to Gifford Pinchot, Fayetteville, Pa., 9 September 1909, DFP; Pinchot to M. L. Dock, 24 September 1909; Marion A. Crocker to Mira L. Dock, Fitchburg, Pa., 22 December 1913, MLDP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 5 March 1914, DFP. 53. Davis, 213–26; Decker, “The Meaning of the Woman’s Club Movement,” 3; Mira Lloyd Dock to Mrs. M. B. Arnstein, Chambersburg, Pa., 23 March 1915, MLDP; Mira Lloyd Dock to Mary K. Sherman, Fayetteville, Pa., 18 May 1915, MLDP; Jarvis, 77–88; Kaufman, 27–30, 33–36; Merchant, “Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement,” 59–60; Dorothea Moore, “The Work of the Women’s Clubs in California,” Annals of the American Association of Political and Social Science Magazine, September 1906, 257–59, GFWCC; Mrs. Percy V. Pennypacker, “The Eighth Biennial Convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs,” Annals of the American Association of Political and Social Science Magazine, September 1906, 279, GFWCC; Runte, 104; Shaffer, 106–9; Mrs. John Dickinson Sherman, “Report of Conservation Department,” in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Thirteenth Biennial Convention, May 24 to June 2, 1916, New York City, Official Report (Washington, D.C: General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1916), 248–50, GFWCA; Mrs. John Dickinson Sherman, “Report of Conservation Department,” in General Federation of Women’s

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notes to pages – Clubs Fourteenth Biennial Convention, April 30 to May 8, 1918, Hot Springs, Arkansas, Official Report (Washington, D.C: General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1918), 224–25, GFWCA; “A Victory for Colorado Club Women,” Federation Bulletin 4 (October 1906): 60, GFWCA. 54. “Council of National Defense Immediate [Press] Release,” 5 May 1917, MLDP; M. L. Dock and J. G. Godding, “The Forest Regiments,” in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Fourteenth Biennial Convention, 230–31; Mary K. Sherman, Our Natural Resources and the War (Washington, D.C.: General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1918), 2, MLDP; Sherman, “Report of Conservation Department,” in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Fourteenth Biennial Convention, 228; Thomas, History of the Pennsylvania State Forest School, 120–22; Weiss, 47–48. 55. M. L. Dock and Godding, “The Forest Regiments,” 232–33. Also M. L. Dock to W. Gardner Conklin, Fayetteville, Pa., 5 November 1917, DFP; Mira Lloyd Dock to Adelaide Godding, Fayetteville, Pa., 27 December 1917, MLDP; Mira L. Dock to Mrs. Godding, Fayetteville, Pa., 18 September 1917, DFP; Mira L. Dock to J. T. Rothrock, Fayetteville, Pa., 15 September 1917, MLDP; Mira L. Dock to Mary K. Sherman, Fayetteville, Pa., 18 April 1918, MLDP; Leighow, 84; J. T. Rothrock to Mira Lloyd Dock, West Chester, Pa., 13 September 1917, MLDP; Mary K. Sherman to Mira Lloyd Dock, Longs Peak, Colo., 25 May 1918, MLDP; Sherman, Our Natural Resources and the War, 3; Herbert A. Smith to Mira L. Dock, Washington, D.C., 20 February 1920, MLDP; Thomas, History of the Pennsylvania State Forest School, 122–23. 56. M. L. D. to Mrs. John Dickinson Sherman, Fayetteville, Pa., 24 January 1916, MLDP. Also Mira L. Dock to Elizabeth Hall Peale, Fayetteville, Pa., 13 June 1914, MLDP; Vida Nesom, Committee on Roads, Memorial Tree Planting, and the Lincoln Highway (Washington, D.C.: Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1922), 3–4, GFWCA; Kimes, 381–83; Sherman to M. L. Dock, 7 February 1916; Shaffer, 141, 149–50; Sherman, “Report of Conservation Department,” 229. 57. Adela Parker Kendall to Mira Lloyd Dock, Chicago, 17 April 1914, MLDP. Also Pearl Townsend Evans to Mira Lloyd Dock, David City, Neb., 17 May 1916, MLDP; Adela Parker Kendall to Mira Lloyd Dock, Chicago, 27 June 1914, MLDP; Agnes B. Wautters to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bayonne, N.J., 15 May 1916, MLDP; Mrs. Francis E. Whitely, “Lincoln Highway Division,” General Federation of Women’s Clubs Fourteenth Biennial Convention, 236, MLDP; Mrs. D. E. Williams to Mira L. Dock, Fallon, Nev., 22 May 1916, MLDP. 58. J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 11 June 1912, DFP; Mira Dock to Mary Blakiston, Fayetteville, Pa., 16 March 1917, DFP; Mira Dock to Mr. Harvey M. Watts, Fayetteville, Pa., 1920, DFP. Also Mira Dock to Mrs. Frank B. Black, Fayetteville, Pa., 19 June 1922, DFP. 59. Mira L. Dock to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 5 September 1919, DFP; M. L. Dock to Blakiston, 16 March 1917. Also Mira L. Dock, “Forests and Parks,” lecture notes, DFP; M. L. Dock to Peale, 13 June 1914; “Miss Dock to Civic Club,” Franklin Repository (Chambersburg, Pa.), 17 March 1914, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 7 September 1919, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 18 January 1920, DFP; Morrison, 202, 208–10; “Some Things the Chamber of Commerce Has Done,” Valley Spirit (Chambersburg, Pa.), 5 March 1915, DFP. 60. Scott, 2–3, also 185–89. Also M. L. Dock, State Forestry Today, 6–14, 21–25; Pinchot to M. L. Dock, 24 September 1909; J. T. Rothrock to Mira Dock, West Chester, Pa., 29 April 1921, DFP; J. T. Rothrock to M. L. Dock, West Chester, Pa., 1 March 1922, DFP. 61. Scott, 2.

Chapter 6 1. Scott, 4, also 2–3, 176–77. Also Merchant, “Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement,” 75. 2. Kessler-Harris, 114; Muncy, xii–xiii, 38–40, 47–51; Solomon, 125–30.

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notes to pages – 3. Cott, 825–27; Davis, 232–33. 4. Mira L. Dock, “Draft of Report, International Congress of Women, 1899,” located in Mira Lloyd Dock Papers, 1814–1951, Library of Congress (hereafter MLDP); Mira Lloyd Dock, “Origin of the Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural International Union,” in “Report for the Ghent Agricultural Conference 1913,” MLDP; A. Vanderpant, “The Story of the Women’s Farm and Garden Association,” Women’s Farm and Garden News Letter and Regional Review, September 1947, located in Dock Family Papers, 1865–1951, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter DFP). 5. S. L. Chamberlain to Mira Lloyd Dock, London, 3 February 1900, MLDP; S. L. Chamberlain to Mira Lloyd Dock, London, 29 December 1910, MLDP; Ethel to Mira Dock, London, 29 May 1918, DFP; Ella Gill to Mira Lloyd Dock, Westminster, England, 16 March 1912, MLDP; Edna Grinnell to Mira Dock, Exeter, England, 10 January 1941, DFP; Frances E. McIlwaine to Mira Lloyd Dock, Downingtown, Pa., 18 September 1900, MLDP; T. W. Powell to Mira Dock, London, 16 January 1900, DFP; T. W. Powell to Mira Dock, Guildford, England, 29 January 1901, DFP; Frieda Seeman to Misses Dock, New York, 10 June 1946, DFP; Sherman, “Report of Conservation Department,” 1918, 228; Vanderpant, “The Story of the Women’s Farm and Garden Association.” 6. F. R. Wilkinson to Mira Dock, York, England, 6 September 1939, DFP; Grinnell to M. Dock, 10 January 1941. Also Edna Grinnell to Mira Dock, Exeter, England, 14 December 1930, DFP; Shirk, 216; Vanderpant, “The Story of the Women’s Farm and Garden Association”; Weiss, 7, 10, 96–107, 274; Women’s National Farm and Garden Association Monthly Bulletin, January 1918, MLDP; Women’s National Farm and Garden Association Monthly Bulletin, August 1917, MLDP; Women’s National Farm and Garden Association membership card of Miss Mira L. Dock, for the year ending 28 February 1933, MLDP. 7. “The Horticultural College, Swanley, Kent,” 26 January 1899, DFP. Also Kohlstedt, 77–84; Vanderpant, “The Story of the Women’s Farm and Garden Association”; F. Wilkinson to Mira Dock, Swanley, Kent, England, 10 December 1905, DFP; Fanny Wilkinson to Mira Dock, London, 10 November 1900, DFP. 8. Mira L. Dock, “Training in Farm and Garden Work,” 1903, located in State Federation of Pennsylvania Women Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter SFPWP). Also Mira L. Dock diary, 26 January 1900, DFP; Glave, 42–43; Kohlstedt, 77–78. 9. M. L. Dock, “Training in Farm and Garden Work.” 10. William Burckout to M. L. Dock, State College, Pa., 2 November 1899, MLDP. Also L. H. Bailey to Mira Lloyd Dock, Ithaca, N.Y., 1 November 1899, MLDP; L. H. Bailey to Mira L. Dock, Ithaca, N.Y., 5 October 1910, MLDP; Robert Clarke, 43–44; Mira Lloyd Dock to Florence Dibert, Fayetteville, Pa., 1 October 1928, MLDP; Mira Dock to Mrs. Houghton, Ann Arbor, Mich., 30 July 1906, DFP; M. L. Dock, “Training in Farm and Garden Work”; Kohlstedt, 90–91; Solomon, 80–82. 11. M. L. Dock to Dibert, 1 October 1928. Also M. L. Dock, “Training in Farm and Garden Work”; Kohlstedt, 147–48, 152–56. 12. Mira Dock, “Introductory,” SFPWP. Also Gertrude B. Biddle to Mira Dock, Carlisle, Pa., 18 February 1907, DFP; Mira Lloyd Dock, “Outline of Reports on the Women’s Congress and a Summer’s Work in Parks and Forests Abroad,” Carnegie Music Hall, Pittsburgh, 9 November 1899, SFPWP; Mira L. Dock, “Report of the Central District,” 1906, SFPWP; State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, “Minutes of Executive Board,” Cambridge Springs, Pa., 20 October 1906, SFPWP. 13. Mira L. Dock to the Honorable Vance C. McCormick, Fayetteville, Pa., 19 March 1917, MLDP; Mira Lloyd Dock to Governor S. W. Pennypacker, Graeffensburg, Pa., 14 September 1905, DFP; Arthur Paschall to Mira Lloyd Dock, Doylestown, Pa., 28 February 1900, MLDP. 14. Jane B. Haines to Mira Dock, Cheltenham, Pa., 27 December 1909, DFP. Also M. Dock, “Introductory.” 15. Mira L. Dock, untitled document, Cheltenham, Pa., 12 September 1910, 2, MLDP. 16. Ibid., 1–3.

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notes to pages – 17. M. L. Dock diary, 6 May 1910. Also Mary O. Collins to Mira Dock, Three Turns, Pa., 4 November 1910, DFP; M. L. Dock diary, 12 January, 15 April, and 12 May 1910; M. Dock, “Introductory”; Haines to M. Dock, 27 December 1909; Jane B. Haines to Mira Dock, Cheltenham, Pa., 11 January 1910, DFP; Jane B. Haines to Mira Dock, Cheltenham, Pa., 12 February 1910, DFP; Jane B. Haines to Mira L. Dock, Cheltenham, Pa., 4 July 1910, DFP; Jane B. Haines to Mira Dock, Cheltenham, Pa., 12 September 1910, DFP; J. B. Haines to Mira Dock, Cheltenham, Pa., 25 October 1910, DFP. 18. Haines to M. Dock, 12 September 1910. Also M. L. Dock, untitled document, 1, 3; Norwood, 114; “Pennsylvania School of Horticulture Annual Report,” 1 January 1913, 4, MLDP. 19. School Catalogue, 4, also 7–10, MLDP; “Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women,” 8, also 4, 6–7, MLDP. Also “Pennsylvania School of Horticulture Annual Report,” 1. 20. “Pennsylvania School of Horticulture Annual Report,” 1, 2; M. L. Dock, untitled document, 3; Haines to M. Dock, 12 September 1910; Jane B. Haines to Mira Dock, Cheltenham, Pa., 19 March 1911, DFP; Jessie T. Morgan to Myra Dock, Ambler, Pa., 15 April 1914, DFP; School Catalogue, 5–6; M. Catherine Strait to Mira L. Dock, Ambler, Pa., 21 March 1913, MLDP. 21. “The Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women,” unidentified newspaper advertisement, MLDP; “Pennsylvania School of Horticulture Annual Report,” 2–3. Also “Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women Summer School,” 1913, MLDP. 22. Mira Lloyd Dock to Charles Lathrope Pack, Fayetteville, Pa., 14 June 1917, MLDP; “The Drexel Institute War Courses 1918,” unidentified newspaper advertisement, DFP; Caroline G. Peeler, “The Canning Department, Fiscal Year August 31, 1916 to August 31, 1917,” DFP; Caroline G. Peeler to Mira Dock, Ambler, Pa., 18 December 1917, DFP; Weiss, 40–48. 23. Jane B. Haines to M. L. Dock, Cheltenham, Pa., 10 November 1913, MLDP; Ann Dorrance to Mira Lloyd Dock, Dorranceton, Pa., 28 June 1911, MLDP; Marian Parris to Mira Lloyd Dock, Philadelphia, 1912, MLDP. 24. John L. Doan to Mira L. Dock, Ambler, Pa., 5 October 1921, MLDP. Also John L. Doan to Professor Frank S. Magill, Ambler, Pa., 5 October 1921, MLDP; M. L. Dock to McCormick, 19 March 1917; Mira Dock to Jane B. Haines, Fayetteville, Pa., 10 February 1910, DFP; Ann Dorrance to Mira Lloyd Dock, Dorranceton, Pa., 12 January 1911, MLDP; Jane B. Haines to M. L. Dock, Cheltenham, Pa., 18 July 1912, MLDP; Elizabeth Leighton Lee to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 5 January 1911, DFP; State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, “Minutes of Executive Board,” New Century Club, Philadelphia, 7 February 1910, SFPWP. 25. Haines to M. L. Dock, 4 July 1910. Also “Pennsylvania School of Horticulture Annual Report,” 2–3; M. L. Dock to Pack, 14 June 1917; M. L. Dock, untitled document, 3; Hilda Justice to Mira Dock, Ambler, Pa., 26 September 1919, DFP; S. Mendelson Meeham to Mira Dock, Mt. Airy, Pa., 15 February 1924, DFP; Ellen C. Woods to M. L. Dock, Camden, N.J., 12 January 1912, MLDP. 26. “Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women,” 4. Also Marjorie McKaig to Mira Lloyd Dock, Radnor, Pa., 4 January 1942, MLDP; Solomon, 89–90, 100–101; Edna M. Tunnell to Miss Dock, Exeter, N.H., 20 January 1947, MLDP; Walsh, 179, 262. 27. School Catalogue, 3. 28. Mira L. Dock, “The Pennsylvania School of Horticulture,” 10 May 1910, DFP; Mira Dock, “Suggestions and Criticisms on the Text of the Proposed Booklet,” 1910, DFP. Also Jane B. Haines to Mira Dock, Cheltenham, Pa., 28 August 1910, DFP. 29. Kohlstedt, 119; Norwood, 145, 212; Schrepfer, 52. 30. Mira L. Dock, “The Profession of Forestry,” 1934, DFP. Also Olmsted to M. L. Dock, 5 November 1902; Tebeau, 69–74. 31. Mira L. Dock, “This Is Why I Believe in Suffrage,” 16 November 1910, 1, 4, 5, MLDP. 32. J. Horace McFarland, “A New Call to the Colors: The President’s Annual Address Delivered at the Thirteenth Annual Convention of the American Civic Association, at St. Louis, Missouri, October 22, 1917,” 11, located at Widener Library.

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notes to pages – 33. Ibid.; M. L. Dock to McFarland, 9 March 1914. Also M. L. Dock diary, 29 June 1899; Miller, 255–56; Rimby, 21; Scott, 164–66, 169–70. 34. Mira L. Dock, “Central Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association,” MLDP. Also Alice Huey Bedford to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 24 May 1916, MLDP; Emory R. Johnson to Mira L. Dock, Philadelphia, 12 November 1908, MLDP; Mabel Cronise Jones to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 15 February 1913, MLDP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, 18 February 1913, DFP; “Program of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, November 17 and 18, 1910,” 2, MLDP. 35. Burnham, 264–67; Schwartz, 76. 36. Blair, 98–99; Chafe, 17; Merchant, “Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement,” 75. 37. Roydhouse, 58, 61–62. 38. “Constitution of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, 1911,” 2, MLDP; Lucretia L. Blankenburg to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 27 December 1905, DFP. 39. Liliane Stevens Howard, “Field Report,” unpublished manuscript, 3–4, located in Liliane Stevens Howard Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter LSHP); Blankenburg to M. Dock, 27 December 1905. Also Liliane S. Howard, “Philadelphia Woman Suffrage Society,” unpublished manuscript, 1945, 4, LSHP; Jones to M. L. Dock, 15 February 1913; “Program of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association”; Roydhouse, 57–61. 40. Lulu Gabel Geise, “From the Scrapbook of the Woman’s Club of the City of Pittsburgh of Gracye Druitt Latus,” unpublished manuscript, 2, located in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Archives. Also Howard, “Philadelphia Woman Suffrage Society,” 1; Adrienne Morrell and Susan C. Holton, The Woman’s Club of Sewickley Valley, 1897–1997 (Sewickley, Pa.: Woman’s Club of Sewickley Valley, 1997), 12, located in Woman’s Club of Sewickley Valley Papers, Senator John Heinz Regional History Center; Roydhouse, 53, 57; Katherine G. Ryan, “History of the Village Improvement Association of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 1895–1932,” unpublished manuscript, 3, located in Doylestown Village Improvement Association Papers, Spruance Library. 41. State Federation of Pennsylvania Women, “Minutes of the Executive Board,” New Century Club, Philadelphia, 12 February 1909, SFPWP. 42. Gertrude B. Biddle to Miss Mira, Carlisle, Pa., 1 October 1910, DFP. Also Carter, 78; Mira L. Dock to “Dear Madam,” Fayetteville, Pa., 3 November 1909, DFP; M. L. Dock, “This Is Why I Believe in Suffrage,” 1; Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee, 33–34, 159. 43. Flexner, 271, 293, 316; Roydhouse, 62. 44. Mira L. Dock, “High Levels and Higher Standards for the Many,” 1934, MLDP. 45. Mira L. Dock to Herman P. Miller, Fayetteville, Pa., 1934, MLDP.

Chapter 7 1. For a discussion of the scholarly debate on women’s political achievements during the 1920s, see Woloch, 348–49. See also Chafe, 35–36, and Lemons, 41–48. 2. “Industrial and Local Features,” 16 March 1917, located in Dock Family Papers, 1865– 1951, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter DFP). 3. R. A. Cram to J. Horace McFarland, Boston, 30 October 1919, located in Mira Lloyd Dock Papers, 1814–1951, Library of Congress (hereafter MLDP). Also Mira Dock to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 25 October 1919, MLDP. 4. “Women Act to Save Historical Bridges in Franklin County,” Franklin Repository (Chambersburg, Pa.), 21 November 1919, located in Ernest Morrison Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives. Also Gertrude B. Biddle to Mira Lloyd Dock, Philadelphia, 15 November 1919, MLDP; “Condition of Stone Arch Bridges in Franklin County, as Reported by the Committee of the Cumberland Valley League of Clubs,” 18 November 1919, DFP; Mira Dock to Mrs. Edward W. Biddle, Fayetteville,

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notes to pages – Pa., 18 November 1919, DFP; Mira L. Dock to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 14 November 1919, DFP; Mira L. Dock to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 21 November 1919, DFP; Jane Dice Stoner, “The Dock Sisters,” in Papers Read Before the Society, vol. 20, September 1988 to February 1998 (Chambersburg, Pa.: Kittochtinny Historical Society, n.d.), 243, located at Kittochtinny Historical Society. 5. M. Dock to McFarland, 25 October 1919. 6. Mira Dock to the Honorable Gifford Pinchot, Fayetteville, Pa., 1 December 1919, MLDP. Also M. Dock to McFarland, 25 October 1919; J. Horace McFarland to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 5 November 1919, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Ralph Adams Cram, Harrisburg, 29 October 1919, DFP. 7. Jarvis, 25, 107–9, 126–33, 150; Kaufman, 35, 68; Vida Nesom, Committee on Roads, Memorial Tree Planting, and the Lincoln Highway (Washington, D.C.: Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1922), located in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Archives (hereafter GFWCA); Mrs. John D. Sherman, Outline of Work, Department of Applied Education, The Federation of Women’s Clubs, President, Mrs. Thomas G. Winter, 1922–1924 (Washington, D.C.: General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1924), 19, GFWCA. 8. Mira Dock to Flora S. Black, Fayetteville, Pa., 9 September 1921, DFP. 9. Mira L. Dock to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 24 January 1922, DFP; Frances S. Wright to Mira Dock, Bryn Mawr, Pa., 4 May 1924, DFP; Mira L. Dock to Louisa W. Hackney, Fayetteville, Pa., 23 May 1925, 2, MLDP; M. L. Dock to R. Y. Stuart, Fayetteville, Pa., 23 September 1926, MLDP. Also Burnham, 269; William F. Diller to Mira L. Dock, Lancaster, Pa., 1 October 1922, located in Dock Sisters Folder, Kittochtinny Historical Society (hereafter DSF); Mira Dock to Emily Dock, Miami, 22 April 1921, DFP; Mira L. Dock, “Help to Keep Pennsylvania Roadsides Beautiful,” lecture notes, 25 January 1922, DFP; Mira L. Dock to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 17 January 1922, DFP; David H. Riddle to Mira Dock, Chambersburg, Pa., 19 April 1922, DFP; Stoner, “The Dock Sisters,” 234–35. 10. Mira L. Dock to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 17 May 1922, DFP; Mira L. Dock to E. L. Gross, Park Commissioner, Fayetteville, Pa., 27 January 1920, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 23 January 1920, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 30 January 1920, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 25 January 1922, DFP. 11. J. S. Holmes to Mira L. Dock, Chapel Hill, N.C., 11 February 1920, MLDP; Florence Keen to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 23 March 1926, DFP; Florence Keen to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, DFP; Florence Keen to Mira Dock, Seal Harbor, Maine, 1 August (year unknown), DFP; Charles Lathrope Pack to Mira L. Dock, Lakewood, N.J., 24 December 1930, MLDP; “Resolutions Adopted by the Second Southern Forestry Congress, New Orleans, Louisiana, January 28–30, 1920,” MLDP; Millard B. Simmons to Myra L. Dock, Gettysburg, Pa., 3 March 1925, DFP. 12. W. L. Byers to Mira L. Dock, McConnellsburg, Pa., 26 February 1925, DFP; Robert G. Conklin to Mira Dock, 1929, DFP; Mira Dock to the Honorable George Woodward, Fayetteville, Pa., 6 March 1925, DFP; “Joseph Trimble Rothrock, Program of Memorial Dedication, October 29, 1923,” DFP; J. T. Rothrock to Mira Dock, West Chester, Pa., 12 April 1921, DFP. 13. M. L. D. to the Honorable Gifford Pinchot, Fayetteville, Pa., 28 February 1920, DFP; M. L. D. to Gifford Pinchot, Fayetteville, Pa., 4 January 1922, DSF; Mira L. Dock, “To the Members of the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission,” Fayetteville, Pa., 1 March 1920, 2, MLDP; M. L. Dock to Hackney, 23 May 1925, 2. Also Mira Dock to Gifford Pinchot, Fayetteville, Pa., 10 January 1922, DFP; Mira Dock to Major Stuart, Fayetteville, Pa., 1 June 1922, DFP; Mira L. Dock to R. Y. Stuart, Fayetteville, Pa., 19 June 1922, DFP; “Pinchot Takes Post of State Forester to Reform Bureau,” National American (Philadelphia), 11 March 1920, DFP; R. Y. Stuart to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 24 June 1922, DFP; Thomas, 144. 14. M. L. Dock, “To the Members of the Pennsylvania State Forest Commission,” 2. Also Tom O. Bradley, “The Collection of Forest Tree Seed,” Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters

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notes to pages – Service Letter (hereafter Service Letter), 20 August 1925, located in Department of Forestry Records, Pennsylvania State Archives; M. L. D. to the Honorable Gifford Pinchot, Fayetteville, Pa., 15 March 1924, MLDP; “Forest Tree Planting in Pennsylvania, Spring 1925,” Service Letter, 13 August 1925, located in Department of Forests and Waters Records, Pennsylvania State Archives (all subsequent citations to the Service Letter refer to this record collection); “Forest Tree Planting in Pennsylvania,” Service Letter, 31 December 1925; “Forest Trees Available for Distribution,” Service Letter, 1 October 1925; “Income from the State Forests of Pennsylvania,” Service Letter, 18 February 1916; John W. Keller, “Tree Orders Coming in Fast,” Service Letter, 5 November 1925; “Pennsylvania’s Leadership in State Forests,” Service Letter, 20 August 1925; “Pennsylvania Leads,” Service Letter, 5 February 1925; J. T. Rothrock to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 4 March 1920, MLDP; “There Is Hope for Penn’s Woods,” Service Letter, 8 and 15 October 1925. 15. “Fine Water Supply in Michaux State Forest,” Service Letter, 20 August 1925. Also “Permanent Camp Sites Under Lease on State Forests of Pennsylvania,” Service Letter, 11 February 1925; “A Plantation of White Pine, Scotch Pine, and Norway Spruce in Lycoming County,” Service Letter, 8 and 15 October 1925; “Recreational Map of Pennsylvania,” DFP. 16. H. E. Clopper, “Five Years of Retrospect,” Service Letter, 23 July 1925. Also “Big Forest Tree Planters,” Service Letter, 6 August 1925; Meo, 21–24; Louis Warren, 47–49. 17. “Hillside Beautification,” Pittsburgh Post, 6 April 1924, located in Civic Club of Allegheny County Records, 1896–1949, University of Pittsburgh Archives (hereafter CCACR); J. T. Rothrock to Mira Lloyd Dock, West Chester, Pa., 12 April 1921; “Schools Observing Spring Arbor Days,” Pittsburgh Sun, 13 April 1923, CCACR; Sherman, Outline of Work, 18; Mrs. Francis Edmund Whitley, “A Plea for the Wild Flowers,” 2, located in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Collection, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library (hereafter GFWCC). 18. Endres, 142–50; Flanagan, 85; Hewitt, 246–51; Muncy, 163; Scott, 171–72. 19. Mira L. Dock to R. E. Chamberlin, Fayetteville, Pa., 25 August 1936, DFP; W. L. Byers to Mira Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 24 December 1934, DFP. Also W. L. Beyers to Mira L. Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 17 October 1934, DFP; The Birch Log (State Forest School newspaper), 24 April 1925, DFP; R. E. Chamberlin to Mira L. Dock, Fayetteville, Pa., 12 August 1936, DFP; Mira L. Dock to R. Lynn Emerick, Fayetteville, Pa., 24 January 1934, located in George H. Wirt Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives; R. Lynn Emerick to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 25 April 1932, DFP; “Laying of Cornerstone of New Forest School Building at Mont Alto,” Service Letter, 21 January 1926; “Pinchot Takes Post”; Thomas, 152–57; J. R. Williams and W. L. Byers to Mira L. Dock, Mont Alto, Pa., 24 December 1934, DFP; E. A. Ziegler, “Changes to the Pennsylvania Forest Academy During 1922–24,” Service Letter, 1 January 1925. 20. Vilmorin Andrieux to Mira Lloyd Dock, Paris, 22 December 1916, DFP; Bill Dock to Aunt Mira, Casmalia, Calif., 31 July 1921, DFP; George Dock Jr. to Aunt Mira, Hanover, N.H., 28 April 1916, DFP; M. L. Dock to Rothrock, 15 September 1917. 21. Bill Dock to Aunt Mira, Chicago, 1 April 1921, DFP; William Dock to Aunt Mira, Vienna, Austria, 7 December 1924, DFP; George Dock Jr. to Aunt Mira, New York, 8 January 1928, DFP; George Dock Jr. to Mira L. Dock, New York, 7 August 1928, DFP; George Dock Jr. to “Dear Aunts,” New York, 5 May 1929, DFP. 22. “Billy (William Dock) M.D.,” DFP; Bill Dock to “Dear Aunts,” Chicago, 1921, DFP; Bill Dock to Aunt Mira, Chicago, 20 February 1922, DFP; Bill Dock to Aunt Mira, Boston, 18 September (year unknown, probably 1922–24), DFP; Bill Dock to Aunt Mira, Boston, probably 1922–24, DFP; Bill Dock to Aunt Mira, Boston, 5 August 1924, DFP; Bill Dock to Aunt Mira, Boston, 30 September 1924, DFP; Bill and Genie Dock to Mira L. Dock, Pont de Portte, France, 13 October 1924, DFP; Bill Dock to Cousin Clara, Vienna, 15 February 1925, DFP; Genie Dock to “Dearest Aunts,” San Francisco, 16 April 1928, DFP; Bill Dock to “Dear Aunts,” 7 September 1932, DFP. 23. Mildred Howells to Cousin Mira, Boston, 4 February 1923, MLDP; Florence Harmon Dock to Mira Dock, Guadalajara, Mexico, 9 February 1928, MLDP. Also Florence Harmon Dock

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notes to pages – to “My Dear Cousins,” Guadalajara, Mexico, 9 April 1932, MLDP; Florence Harmon Dock to “Dear Friends and Cousins,” New York, 12 May 1933, MLDP; George Dock, M.D., to Mira L., Pasadena, Calif., 10 April 1933, MLDP; George Dock to M. L. Dock, Pasadena, Calif., 5 June 1933, MLDP; George Dock to Mira L. Dock, Pasadena, Calif., 21 April 1933, MLDP; George Dock to M. L. Dock, Pasadena, Calif., 9 September 1935, MLDP; Mira Dock to Cousin Mildred Howells, Fayetteville, Pa., 24 August 1931, MLDP; Mildred Howells to Cousin Mira, Savannah, Ga., 4 March 1920, MLDP; Mildred Howells to Cousin Mira, Cambridge, Mass., 13 June 1920, MLDP; Mildred Howells to Cousin Mira, York Harbor, Maine, 2 July 1931, MLDP; Mildred Howells to Cousin Mira, Chocorua, N.H., 24 July 1932, MLDP. 24. Mira L. Dock to Mrs. McNider, Fayetteville, Pa., 28 August 1922, MLDP. Also Philip Crispano to Mira Dock, New York, 8 September 1931, DFP; Philip Crispano to Miss Mira, Palisade, N.Y., 8 September 1932, MLDP; Mira L. Dock to Dr. Walter Steckbeck, Fayetteville, Pa., 18 March 1936, MLDP; Emily Exley to Mira Lloyd Dock, Philadelphia, 23 September 1926, MLDP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, 18 March 1936, DFP; J. Horace McFarland to Mira Lloyd Dock, 27 March 1936, DFP. 25. Katherine Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 12 June 1920, MLDP; Katherine Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 31 December 1924, MLDP; Katherine Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 8 February 1925, MLDP; Katherine Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 2 September 1927, MLDP; J. B. Jaeger to Mira Lloyd Dock, Freiberg, Germany, 12 June 1926, MLDP; J. B. Jaeger to Mira Lloyd Dock, Freiberg, Germany, 19 January 1929, MLDP; J. B. Jaeger to “My Dear Mira,” Freiburg, Germany, 31 August 1935, DFP. 26. Katherine Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 16 February 1915, MLDP; Brandis to M. L. Dock, 8 February 1925; Bill Dock to Aunt Mira, 8 January 1925, DFP; Mira Dock to Lavinia and Laura, Miami, 25 March 1926, DFP; Howells to Cousin Mira, 24 July 1932; “Obituary of Miss Margaret E. Dock,” Public Opinion (Chambersburg, Pa.), 2 April 1938, DFP; Stoner, “The Dock Sisters,” 234–35. 27. Katherine Brandis to Mira Lloyd Dock, Bonn, Germany, 1926, MLDP; Esther Everett Lape to Mira L. Dock, Philadelphia, 17 April 1922, DFP; Mira L. Dock to Mrs. Mumford, Fayetteville, Pa., 10 June 1922, MLDP. Also Brandis to M. L. Dock, 8 February 1925; Miller, 249; Gifford Pinchot to Mira Dock, Philadelphia, 24 May 1922, DFP. 28. Gifford Pinchot to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 28 February 1931, MLDP; Gifford Pinchot to Mira Lloyd Dock, 4 May 1931, MLDP; Gifford Pinchot to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 19 November 1931, MLDP. Also Miller, 310–18; Wolensky, 15. 29. Voda, 28. Also Miller, 255–59. 30. Scott, 173, also 171–72. Also Flanagan, 147, 154, 159–60, 163–65; Hewitt, 238–42; Miller, 295–96, 315, 349; Voda, 23. 31. Mira L. Dock to Cornelia Bryce Pinchot, Fayetteville, Pa., 12 January 1927, MLDP. Also Cornelia Bryce Pinchot to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 8 May 1924, MLDP; Cornelia Bryce Pinchot to Mira Lloyd Dock, Harrisburg, 5 January 1925, MLDP; Voda, 31. 32. M. L. D. to Pinchot, 15 March 1924; Gifford Pinchot to Mira L. Dock, Harrisburg, 18 March 1924, MLDP. 33. Speakman, 12, also 2, 11. Also Miller, 317–18. 34. Mira L. Dock to the Honorable George H. Earle, Fayetteville, Pa., 30 November 1934, DFP; Mira L. Dock to the Honorable R. M. Bashore, Fayetteville, Pa., 25 May 1935, MLDP; Mira L. Dock to Dr. J. F. Bogadur, Fayetteville, Pa., 25 May 1935, MLDP. Also Mira L. Dock to President Roosevelt, Fayetteville, Pa., 30 November 1934, MLDP. 35. J. F. Bogardus, “To District Foresters, Assistant District Foresters, Camp Superintendents,” Harrisburg, 8 September 1936, located in Michaux State Forest Records, Pennsylvania State Archives (hereafter MSFR); J. F. Bogardus, “To District Foresters, Assistant District Foresters, Camp Superintendents, Truck Trail Locators,” Harrisburg, 22 October 1936, MSFR; R. E. Chamberlin to

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notes to pages – Camp Superintendents, Fayetteville, Pa., 9 September 1936, 1–2, MSFR; W. E. Montgomery, “Memorandum to District Foresters,” Harrisburg, 18 September 1933, 1–2, MSFR; Speakman, 92– 95, 103; Wolensky, 17. 36. George Dock Jr. to Mira L. Dock, New York, 16 November 1928, DFP. Also George Dock Jr. to Aunt Mira, New York, 7 November 1928, DFP; Gifford Pinchot to Mira L. Dock, Milford, Pa., 17 August 1936, DFP. 37. Mira Lloyd Dock to J. Horace McFarland, Fayetteville, Pa., 15 March 1936, DFP. Also Mira L. Dock to C. F. Korstian, Fayetteville, Pa., 16 August 1940, DFP; Mira L. Dock to Secretary of the Harrisburg Municipal League, Fayetteville, Pa., 4 February 1942, DFP; Harlan P. Kelsey to Mira L. Dock, East Boxford, Mass., 9 June 1944, DFP; Marjorie McKaig to Mira Lloyd Dock, Radnor, Pa., 4 January 1942, MLDP; Walter Stecberk to Miss Dock, Philadelphia, 21 May 1943, DFP. 38. W. Gard Conklin to Mira Dock, Camp Hill, Pa., 5 January 1943, DFP; Bill Dock to “Dear Ladies,” San Francisco, 14 August 1940, DFP; Bill Dock to “Dear Ladies,” New York, 9 January 1943, DFP; Bill Dock to “Dear Ladies,” Indio, Calif., 28 November 1943, DFP; Donald Stone Dock to Aunt Mira, Scarsdale, N.Y., 14 March 1942, DFP; George Dock Jr. to Aunt Mira, New York, 20 June 1941, DFP; George Dock Jr. to “Dear Aunts,” New York, 12 December 1941, DFP; George Dock Jr. to “Dear Aunts,” Scarsdale, N.Y., 29 January 1942, DFP; George Dock Jr. to “Dear Aunts,” Scarsdale, N.Y., 25 October 1944, DFP; George Dock Jr. to “Dear Aunts,” U.S.S. Penguin, 21 June 1944, DFP; George S. Perry to Mira Dock, Knoxville, Tenn., 30 January 1942, DFP; George S. Perry to Mira Dock, Knoxville, Tenn., 18 July 1942, DFP; George S. Perry to Mira Dock, Knoxville, Tenn., 28 July 1942, DFP; John L. Witherow to Mira L. Dock, Richmond Furnace, Pa., 5 June 1944, DFP. 39. Burnham, 271; “Lavinia L. Dock, Pioneer, Nurse, Author Passes,” Public Opinion (Chambersburg, Pa.), 18 April 1956, 2, 4, DSF; Lavinia Lloyd Dock to Sarah H. Wallace, Fayetteville, Pa., 16 July 1951, MLDP; William Dock to Aunt Vin, New York, 24 July 1945, DFP; “Miss Myra Dock, Forestry Expert, Is Dead at 91,” Evening News (Harrisburg), 12 July 1945, 1, 10, DFP; “Obituary of Miss Emily G. Dock,” Public Opinion (Chambersburg, Pa.), 26 August 1957, DSF. 40. “Miss Myra Dock, Forestry Expert,” 1; “Myra Dock Sparked Drive for State Forest Parks,” unidentified periodical, vol. 28, DFP. Also Laura Douglas Dock to Dr. Henry Rothrock, Fayetteville, Pa., 13 September 1945, DFP; Lynn Emerick to Lavinia L. Dock, Harrisburg, 5 September 1945, DFP; Marion L. Haines to L. L. Dock, Philadelphia, 14 November 1945, DFP; George H. Wirt to Laura Dock, Harrisburg, 6 September 1945, DFP. 41. L. D. Dock to Rothrock, 13 September 1945; Laura Douglas Dock to George H. Wirt, Fayetteville, Pa., 14 September 1945, DFP; “Miss Myra Dock, Forestry Expert,” 1, 10; “Mira Dock Papers in the Library of Congress, Dock Family Papers; Sent from Mira’s Collection,” itemized list of Mira Lloyd Dock’s papers and where they were sent, DFP; Thomas, 187.

Conclusion 1. Davis, 334, 349–59; Garcia, 9; Gottlieb, “Reconstructing Environmentalism,” 251–54; Hague, 1–11; Herman, B1–B2; Kaufman, 187; Longhurst, 30–31; Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 232–40; Turner, 125. 2. Kelly, “Towards a Green Europe,” 17. Also Norwood, 261–73; Karen Warren, 3–4, 6, 12. 3. Jenny Price, 539, also 537, 549–52. Also Smith, 5; Taylor, 18–20, 30–31, 36–40; Karen Warren, 5–6, 11. 4. Frankland and Schoonmaker, 196–211. 5. Kelly, “Women and Power,” 114. Also Allouche, Nicol, and Mehta, 156–58; Frankland and Schoonmaker, 144, 186; Kelly, “For a Nuclear-Weapon Free and Nonviolent World,” 30–32; Kelly, “Poisoned Food and World Hunger”; Kelly, “Towards a Green Europe,” 20–21.

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notes to pages – 6. Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1910), 101–6, located in Rare Book Room, Library of Congress; “What the State Federations Are Doing,” Federation Bulletin 6 (January 1909): 115, located in General Federation of Women’s Clubs Archives (hereafter GFWCA). 7. “Civic Club Has Its Annual Meeting,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, 10 November 1912, located in Civic Club of Allegheny County Records, 1896–1949, University of Pittsburgh Archives (hereafter CCACR). 8. “From the Chairmen of Standing Committees,” Federation Bulletin 4 (December 1906): 113, GFWCA. 9. “Civic Club, Allegheny County, 1895–1935” (fortieth anniversary program), 2, CCACR; J. Horace McFarland, “A New Call to the Colors: The President’s Annual Address Delivered at the Thirteenth Annual Convention of the American Civic Association, at St. Louis, Missouri, October 22, 1917,” 2, located at Widener Library. 10. Lydia P. Williams to Mira Lloyd Dock, Minneapolis, 3 July 1900, located in Mira Lloyd Dock Papers, 1814–1951, Library of Congress (hereafter MLDP); Lydia P. Williams to Mira Lloyd Dock, Chicago, 29 October 1900, MLDP. 11. Rimby, 17. Also Robert Clarke, 102–11; Gottlieb, “Reconstructing Environmentalism,” 249–51; Miller, 7–8, 155. 12. Contemporary women sometimes still use maternalist rhetoric to explain their environmental work. Cynthia Hamilton, for example, states, “‘Women are more likely to take on these issues than men precisely because the home has been defined as woman’s domain.’” Quoted in Karen Warren, 11. 13. Mira Dock, “Introductory,” located in State Federation of Pennsylvania Women Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives.

Epilogue 1. Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, “Pine Grove Furnace State Park,” http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/findapark/pinegrovefurnace/ (accessed 26 June 2012). 2. Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, “DCNR at a Glance,” http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/discoverdcnr/ataglance/index.htm (accessed 26 June 2012). 3. General Federation of Women’s Clubs, “About GFWC,” http://www.gfwc.org/gfwc/ About_GFWC.asp (accessed 13 February 2008). 4. Kaufman, 192; Lacasse, 14–15; Meo, 19; Harrisburg City Government, “Parks and Recreation,” http://www.harrisburgpa.gov/parksRec (accessed 29 January 2008); Turner, 126. 5. National Park Service, “Frequently Asked Questions,” http://www.nps.gov/faqs.htm (accessed 13 February 2008); Heinemann; Lacasse, 7–8, 13, 15–16; Nehr; Shupp; Ambler College, Temple University, “A Brief History of Temple University Ambler,” http://www.temple.edu/ ambler/la-hort/history.htm (accessed 8 September 2007); Thomas, 187; Toddes; Yelinek, 21, 33–35. 6. Wallis and Williamson, 41–43, 52–67. 7. Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, “DCNR at a Glance”; National Park Service, “Frequently Asked Questions”; Kaufman, 134–39, 150–51, 161–69, 173; Harrisburg City Government, “Parks and Recreation.” 8. Ambler College, Temple University, “A Brief History of Temple Ambler”; Kaufman, 307–12.

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index

Adams County (Pennsylvania), 115, 144, 160 Addams, Jane, 130 Adirondack Mountains Forest Commission, 2, 80, 90 American Civic Association, 33, 53, 85, 102–5, 109, 135, 148, 153 American Forestry Association, 6, 102–4, 109, 116, 127 American Institute of Architects, 114, 153 American League for Civic Improvement, 53 American Park and Outdoor Art Association, 30, 51, 53, 105 American Public Health Association, 30 American Tree Association, 138 Appalachian National Park Association, 105 Arbor Day, 28, 74, 88, 102–4, 109 Armitage, Kevin, 5 Arnold Arboretum, 68, 108 Asaph Nursery, 87. See also Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Association for the Advancement of Women, 92 Association of Collegiate Alumnae, 22 Atherton, Frances, 100. See also State College (Pennsylvania) Woman’s Club Atherton, George W., 122, 123. See also Pennsylvania State College (University) Audubon Society, 105, 109 Automobile Association of America, 115 Bailey, Liberty Hyde, 122 Biddle, Gertrude (Mrs. Edward), 98, 100, 103, 105, 133, 135 Biltmore Forest, 34, 68 Bird, Adelaide, 135. See also Cumberland Valley League of Women’s Clubs Bird Day, 109 Blankenburg, Lucretia, 132. See also Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association Blum, Elizabeth, 5 Boag, Peter, 4 Bomar, Mary, 161. See also National Park Service Bombaugh, Aaron, 13 Bombaugh, Mira Lloyd, 13 Boone and Crockett Club, 89

Bowditch, Vincent Y. See tuberculosis Bowlker, Katherine L. See Women’s Municipal League of Boston Boyer, Paul, 5 Brandis, Sir Dieterich, 3, 40, 65, 68, 90–91 career in India, 33–34 work with Dock in 1899, 34–36 Brandis, Lady Katherine, 34, 143 Brehmer, Hermann. See tuberculosis Brock, Ralph, 69 Brown, Isaac H. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Brumbaugh, Martin, 108 Bryner, Harold Emery. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Burton Act. See Niagara Falls Bussey Institute, 68 Byers, William L. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Calaveras National Forest, 103–16 Caledonia State Park. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission California Federation of Women’s Clubs, 3 Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Design for Women, 125 Capital Area Greenbelt Association, 160 Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Female Benevolent Society, 94–95 Carlisle Indian School, 48 Carnegie, Andrew, 69, 100 Carson, Rachel, 149 Central Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, 130 Chafe, William, 7 Chambersburg (Pennsylvania) Civic Club, 115 Chestnut Hill (Pennsylvania) Garden Club, 123 Chestnut Tree Blight Commission, 84 Chicago Waste Commission, 51 Chicago Women’s Club, 93 Christian Benevolent Association of Wilkes-Barre (Pennsylvania), 94–95

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index Citizens’ Association of Chicago, 30 Civic Betterment Association of Philadelphia, 98–99 Civic Club of Allegheny County (Pennsylvania), 30, 52, 99, 152–53 Civic Club of Carlisle (Pennsylvania), 98–100, 102, 104, 106 Civic Club of Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) affiliations, 94 historic marker, 161 municipal improvements, 46–47, 49–50, 96, 160 summer playground program, 95–96 Civic Club of Philadelphia, 33 municipal improvement work, 93, 96 political work, 98–99, 155 Civic Club of Pittsburgh, 140 Civilian Conservation Corps, 134, 145–46 Clarke, Robert, 5 Collins, Mary O. See Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (PSHW) Congressional Union, 119, 130–31 Conklin, Robert S., 69, 74, 80–81, 140. See also Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Conklin, W. Gard. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission conservation definition, 2 feminization, 155 gendered dialectic, 5, 9, 156 gendered perspective, 5–6, 19, 36 1920s, 115, 136–37 origins, 2–3 post–World War II era, 149–51 soil, 39, 65–67, 82 water, 81 Cooper’s Hill Forestry School (England), 36 Cornell University, 68, 121–22 Cott, Nancy F., 119 Coxe, Mrs. Brinton. See Pennsylvania Forestry Association Cram, Ralph Adams, 135–36 Crane, Caroline Bartlett, 52 Crater Lake National Park, 111 Crocker, Marion. See General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) Croly, Jane Cunningham, 92 Cronon, William, 4 Cumberland County League of Women’s Clubs, 135–36 Cumberland Valley Railroad, 12, 70 Cutter, Barbara, 32

Darwin, Charles, 23 Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, 11, 15–17 Parks and Recreation Department, 159–60 Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), 114, 135 Davis, Jack E., 4, 7–8, 119 Democratic Party, 44–45, 123 Dock, Christopher, 142 Dock, Donald, 141, 147 Dock, Emily, 71, 143 career, 14, 21, 34 death, 148 health problems, 90, 137 Dock, Eugenie Maillard (Genie), 142 Dock, Florence Harmon, 142 Dock, George (uncle), 12, 15–16 Dock, George III (grandnephew), 142 Dock, George, Jr. (nephew), 22, 114, 146, 148 bird-banding, 147 career, 141–42 military service, 113 trips to Pennsylvania, 71, 143 Dock, George, Sr. (brother) children, 22, 90, 114 death, 147 medical career, 14, 21 retirement, 142 Dock, Gilliard, 12–13 businesses, 13 Civil War, 15–16 death, 21 marriage, 13–14 Panic of 1873, 17 Panic of 1893, 18–19 perspective on the American West, 14, 19 Dock, Laura (sister), 14, 21, 71, 137, 147 Dock, Laura (sister-in-law), 22, 143 Dock, Lavinia Lloyd Bombaugh (mother) Civil War, 15–16 death, 16 marriage, 13–14 Dock, Lavinia Lloyd (sister), 13–14, 71 death, 147 International Congress of Nurses, 33–34 nursing career, 21 pacifism, 114 retirement, 71, 137 tuberculosis expertise, 75–78 woman suffrage, 119, 130–31 Dock, Margaret (sister), 14, 21, 70–71, 137, 143 Dock, Margaret Gilliard (grandmother), 12 Dock, Marie Maillard, 142, 147

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index Dock, Mildred, 141 Dock, Mira Lloyd. See also American Civic Association; American Forestry Association; Central Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association; Civic Club of Harrisburg; General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC); McFarland, J. Horace; Mont Alto Tuberculosis Sanitarium; Pennsylvania Forestry Association; Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (PSHW); Pennsylvania State Forestry Academy; Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission; Pinchot, Gifford; Rothrock, Joseph Trimble; State Federation of Pennsylvania Women; Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural Union A Summer’s Work Abroad, 37–39 Backyard Contest, 49–50, 101 Black Forest tour, 34–36 bridge leader, 47, 103–8, 116, 135, 15 childhood, 14–15 Civil War, 15–16 Chippewa reservation trip, 107, 123 college education, 21–24 death, 147–48 delegate to International Congress of Women, 33–34, 119 European trip, 33–39 feminism, 128–9, 133, 156–57 forestry, 34–39, 79–91, 101–9, 138–39, 145–46 health, 91, 137, 147 historic marker, 161 lecture career, 24–29, 38–42, 51, 82 municipal improvement, 29, 44–47, 49–51, 95–97, 102 national conservation congresses, 84, 103–4 papers and books, disposition of, 148 political campaigns, 143–44 professionalization of women’s work, 119–23 public health, 76–77 secondary education, 16 tree nursery and farm, 70–71, 107, 137 Western trips, 19–20 woman suffrage, 119, 129–33 Dock, William (grandfather), 12 Dock, William (nephew), 113, 141–42, 148 Dorrance, Ann. See Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (PSHW) Douglas, Marjory Stoneman, 119 Doylestown (Pennsylvania) Village Improvement Society, 95, 100 Dunaway, Finis, 5

Earle, George H., 146 Earth Day, 149 ecofeminism, 150–51 Edge, Rosalie, 149 Elliot, Samuel B. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Emerick, R. Lynn. See Pennsylvania State Forest Academy, Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission environmental movement. See also ecofeminism definition, 9–10 gendered perspectives, 31, 250–51 1970s, 150–51 radical, 250–52 Everglades National Park, 4, 149 Everglades: River of Grass, 149 Female Benevolent Society (Carlisle, Pennsylvania), 94–95 feminism, definition, 119 Fisher, Carl. See Lincoln Highway Flanagan, Maureen, 5 Flanders, Henry. See Pennsylvania Forestry Association Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs, 113, 149 Forest Regiments’ Relief Committee. See General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) forestry. See also Black Forest, ecofeminism curriculum, 68, 70 Minnesota, 154 New Deal, 145–46 New Hampshire, 67, 105, 154 opposition, 67, 79–82, 86 professionalization, 68–69 utilitarian, 3, 5, 82–83, 11 Fox, Philip Hartman. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Franconia Notch, 137 Franklin County, Pennsylvania, 134–35 Kittochtinny Historical Society, 137, 148 Fritchey, John. See Harrisburg City Beautiful Campaign Fuertes, James H. See Harrisburg City Beautiful Campaign GASP, 8, 149 General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC), 4, 92, 116. See also Dock, Mira Lloyd; Hetch Hetchy; Lincoln Highway; McFarland, J. Horace; Pinchot, Gifford alliances, 105, 110

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index GFWC (continued) bird protection, 109 Conservation Department, 109, 140, 152 environmental protection, 160 forestry, 106–8, 154 municipal improvement, 30, 37, 50, 93–103 national parks, 110–13 nature study curriculum, 137 Waterways Committee, 109 woman suffrage, 131 World War I, 113–14, 135 Gerard, Jessie Bryant. See General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) Civic Club, 100 Gettysburg College, 13 Glacier National Park, 112 Godding, Adelaide. See General Federation of Women’s Clubs Gordon, Kate N. See National American Woman Suffrage Association Gottleib, Robert, 5–6, 149 Green, Amy, 5, 7 Green Party, 150–51 Greenwald, Emily, 5 Greenwood Furnace Forest Reserve. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Grimke, Angelina and Sarah, 26 Grimes, Helen. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Association Haines, Jane B. See Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (PSHW) Hamilton, Dr. Alice, 7, 156 Hamilton, John, 28, 33, 37 Harris, John, 11 Harrisburg Academy, 12, 18 Harrisburg Board of Trade, 41–42, 65 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. See also Civic Club of Harrisburg; Dock, Gilliard; Dock, Mira Lloyd; McFarland, J. Horace City Beautiful Campaign, 42–48, 152–53 Civil War, 15–16 nineteenth century, 17–18 origins, 11–12 Park Commission (Parks and Recreation Department), 48–49, 138, 142, 159–60 Hatch Act, 122 Hawk Mountain Bird Sanctuary, 149 Heintzelmen, B. Frank. See Pennsylvania State Forest Academy Henry Street Settlement House. See Dock, Lavinia Lloyd

Hetch Hetchy Valley, 84, 110, 112–13 Howard, Emma Shafter. See Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural Union Howard, Liliane Stevens. See Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association Howells, Mildred, 142 Howells, William Dean, 21 Hoy, Suellen, 5 Hull House, 93, 118 Illick, Joseph. See Pennsylvania State Forest Academy Indiana Federation of Women’s Clubs, 136 International Congress of Women, 33–34, 37, 119, 129 Jarvis, Kimberly, 4 Jensen, Jens. See Lincoln Highway Joy, Henry. See Lincoln Highway Judd, Richard, 4, 7 Kauffman, W. L. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Keen, Florence. See Pennsylvania Forestry Association Keller, John W. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Kelley, Florence. See Hull House Kelly, Petra. See ecofeminism, Green Party Kendall, Adela Parker. See Lincoln Highway Kirk, Carl. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory, 5, 25 Kolodny, Annette, 19 Ladies Benevolent Society of New Brighton (Pennsylvania), 94–95 Ladies Health Society of Allegheny County, (Pennsylvania), 52 Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 11, 81 League of Women Voters, 144 Lee, Elizabeth Leighton, 96, 100. See also Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (PSHW) L’Ecole Nationale Foresterie (Nancy, France), 36, 68 Lehigh University, 70 Lemons, J. Stanley, 7 Lettsom, John Cockley. See tuberculosis Lever Act, 122 Lewis, Albert. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission

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index Libby, David. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Lincoln Highway, 114–16, 137 Longhurst, James, 8 Louv, Richard, 1 Love Canal, 150 Lowthorpe School, 125 lumber industry, 11, 17, 80–81, 110–11, 151 in Germany, 39 in Pennsylvania, 31–33, 64–68, 82, 139 Lundy, Mrs. John P., See Pennsylvania Forestry Association Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, 140 lyceum movement, 24, 26 Manning, Warren, 38. See also Harrisburg City Beautiful Campaign Mariposa Grove. See General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) Marsh, George Perkins, 66 Massachusetts Forestry Association, 39 maternalism, 8–9, 30, 52, 116–18, 129, 156 McCormick, Vance Criswell. See Harrisburg City Beautiful Campaign McFarland, J. Horace, 3, 38, 51, 160. See also American Civic Association; Dock, Mira Lloyd; General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC); Harrisburg Board of Trade; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Park Commission; Hetch Hetchy Valley; Lincoln Highway; Pinchot, Gifford forestry work, 83, 85, 104 municipal improvement, 33, 41–48, 52, 138, 142 national parks, 111–13 Niagara Falls preservation, 105–6 stone arch bridges preservation, 135–36 woman suffrage, 130 McKnight, Kate Cassatt. See Civic Club of Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) Meehan, Thomas. See Pennsylvania State College (University) Melosi, Martin, 5 Merchant, Caroline, 4–6, 17, 156 Meredith, D. B. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Mesa Verde. See General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) Michaux Forest Reserve. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Miller, Emma Guffey, 139 Mills, Enos, 110, 116, 152, 158 Mitman, Gregg, 5

Mont Alto Forest Reservation. See Pennsylvania State Forest Academy, Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Mont Alto Sanatorium. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission, tuberculosis Moore, Mrs. Philip. See General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) Mount Holyoke College, 126 Mount Pleasant Press. See McFarland, J. Horace Muir, John, 3, 84 Mulford, F. L. See Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Park Commission Mumford, Mary, 99, 107, 144 Mumma, Walter. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Muncy, Robyn, 8, 118 National American Woman Suffrage Association, 131 National Association of Colored Women (NAWC), 30, 92, 118 National Conservation Congress, 84, 103–4, 107, 110 National Park Service, 81, 92, 113, 150, 160–61 National War Gardens Commission, 113 nature study movement, 5, 23–28, 36–37, 74, 102, 121–22. See also General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) New Brighton (Pennsylvania), Female Moral Reform Society, 94–95 New Century Club (Philadelphia), 33, 39, 98, 132 New Era Club of Pittsburgh, 102 New Hampshire Federation of Women’s Clubs, 106, 113, 136–37 New York’s Citizen Committee of Twenty-One, 30 New York City Ladies Protective Health Association, 30 Newport (Pennsylvania) Civic Club, 100 Niagara Falls, 103, 111, 116. See also McFarland, J. Horace Nineteenth Amendment, 133, 143, 145 Northern Tier (Pennsylvania). See lumber industry, Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Norwood, Vera, 25 Nutting, Adelaide. See Dock, Lavinia Lloyd Oakley, Violet, 113 Ohio River, 81, 140 Old Man of the Mountain. See New Hampshire Federation of Women’s Clubs

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index Olmsted, Frederick Law, 43 O’Neill, William, 7 Palisades Interstate Park (New Jersey), 110, 116 Paris, Leslie, 5 Pack, Charles Lathrope. See American Forestry Association Parks Association of Philadelphia, 33, 37 Paul, Alice, 130 Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, 33, 103 Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), 159–60 Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters, See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Pennsylvania Forestry Association, 65, 77, 84–5, 102. See also Arbor Day; Dock, Mira Lloyd; Pennsylvania State Forest Academy; State Federation of Pennsylvania Women Forest Leaves, 69, 106 founding, 31 women leaders, 104 Pennsylvania Game Commission, 145 Pennsylvania General Assembly, 86, 133 Pennsylvania Highway Department, 136 Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 161 Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (PSHW), 124–28, 147, 160 Pennsylvania State College (University), 123. See also Pennsylvania State Forest Academy Pennsylvania State Conservation Council, 138 Pennsylvania State Forest Academy. See also Dock, Mira Lloyd; Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission; Rothrock, Joseph Trimble Alumni Association, 73 careers of faculty and students, 73–75, 113 founding, 69–70 merger with Pennsylvania State College (University), 160 reorganization as Pennsylvania State Forest School, 141 Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission. See also Arbor Day; Civilian Conservation Corp; Dock, Mira Lloyd; Rothrock, Joseph Trimble; State Federation of Pennsylvania Women conservation work, 85–89, 139, 146 founding, 53, 67–68 Mont Alto Sanatorium, 77–79 public recreation policy, 89 relationship with local citizens, 80–82

reorganization as the Department of Forests and Waters, 138–39 structure, 90 Pennsylvania State Grange, 136 Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association, 129– 32. See also Central Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association Pennypacker, Samuel, 69, 79, 90, 123 Penrose, Boise, 106, 108, 131, 143 Phelps, Almira. See Troy Female Seminary Philadelphia County Woman Suffrage Society, 132 Philadelphia Council of Jewish Women, 106 Pinchot, Cornelia Bryce, 131, 144–45 Pinchot, Gifford, 3, 141, 148, 152. See also Brandis, Sir Dietrich; Dock, Mira Lloyd; General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWE); Hetch Hetchy Valley; McFarland, J. Horace; Mills, Enos; Muir, John; Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Fight for Conservation, 10, 109, 116 education as a forester, 68 Pennsylvania governor, 139, 143–44, 146 utilitarian forestry, 83 U.S. Chief Forester, 66, 81, 90 woman suffrage, 130 Pine Grove Furnace State Park. See Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) Porter, Gene Stratton, 5 Powell, T. W. See Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural Union Price, Jennifer (Jenny), 5–6, 150–51 Progressive Era. See also conservation, forestry, General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC), maternalism; Pinchot, Cordelia Bryce; Pinchot, Gifford City Beautiful and municipal improvement movements, 51–52, 152 definition, 2 education, 28, 74 efficiency, 156 impact on women, 8, 118 science, 43 social control, 4, 6, 52, 97, 111 woman suffrage, 130–31 Progressive Party, 130 Raker Bill. See Hetch Hetchy Valley redemptive womanhood, 32 Reiger, John, 4 Republican Party, 18, 131. See also Penrose, Boise; Pinchot, Gifford

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index Richards, Ellen Swallow, 7–8, 24, 30, 122, 156 Riis, Jacob, 111 Robnett, Belinda, 47 Rocky Mountain National Park, 112 Roessing, Jennie Bradley. See Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association Rome, Adam, 4–5 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 146 Roosevelt, Theodore, 84, 104. See also conservation, forestry, Niagara Falls, Progressive Party Rothrock, A. M. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Mont Alto Sanatorium Rothrock, Joseph Trimble. See also Brandis, Sir Dietrich; conservation; forestry; Dock, Mira Lloyd; Pennsylvania Forestry Association; Pennsylvania Forestry Commission; tuberculosis alliances with women’s groups, 101, 116 death, 138 medical career, 67, 75 stone arch bridge preservation, 134 Royal Palms State Park. See Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs Roydhouse, Marion, 99 Rupp, Alfred. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Schrepfer, Susan, 5 Schuylkill River, 37, 81 Scott, Anne Firor, 8, 10, 116, 118 Settlement house movement, 9 Sheered, M. R. See Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, City Beautiful Campaign Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act, 140, 145 Sherman, Mary Belle King (Mrs. John). See American Civic Association (ACA), General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) Sinnemahoning State Forest. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Sklar, Kathryn Kish, 8 Smalley, Andrea J., 4–5 Society for the Preservation of the White Mountains, 137, 154 Society of Farm Women of Pennsylvania, 115, 137 Solomon, Barbara Miller, 22 Sorosis, 92 South Mountain Forest Reserve. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Southern Forestry Congress, 138 Speakman, Joseph, 146

Sproul, William, 108, 116, 136, 138 State College (Pennsylvania) Woman’s Club, 100 State Federation of Pennsylvania Women. See also Arbor Day; Dock, Mira Lloyd; forestry; General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC); Lincoln Highway; Pennsylvania Forestry Association affiliations and alliances, 99, 103–4, 153 founding, 94 municipal improvement, 32, 96–97, 100–102 professional education for women, 121, 123, 126 stone arch bridge preservation, 135 woman suffrage, 132–33 Stone, William A., 54, 68 Strait, M. Catherine. See Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (PSHW) Stuart, Edwin, 90, 98 Stuart, Robert Y. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission, reorganization as Department of Forests and Waters Sunday, F. P. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Susquehanna River, 17, 29, 37, 53, 81. See also Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, City Beautiful Campaign Swanley Agricultural College, 121, 124. See also Dock, Mira Loyd, European trip; Wilkinson, Frances (Fanny) Tarr, Joel, 5 Taylor, Dorcetta, 6, 150 Temple University. See Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (PSHW) Tener, John K., 108 Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs, 160 Towanda (Pennsylvania) Village Improvement Society, 102 Troy Female Seminary, 36 Trudeau, Edward Livingston. See tuberculosis tuberculosis, 75–77. See also Dock, Lavinia Lloyd; Pennsylvania Forestry Commission, Mont Alto Sanatorium; Rothrock, Joseph Trimble United States Children’s Bureau, 119 United States Department of Agriculture, 113 United States Department of the Interior, 84 United States Forest Regiments, 97, 113–14 United States Forestry (Division) Service, 66, 104, 109, 113, 154 United States Geological Survey, 85 United States Reclamation Service, 112

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index United States War Food Administration, 121 United States Woman’s Land Army, 120–21 University of Michigan. See Dock, George, Sr.; Dock, Mira Lloyd, college education University of Minnesota, 123 University of Pennsylvania, 69–70, 72, 147. See also Dock, George (uncle); Rothrock, Joseph Trimble Vanderbilt, George. See Biltmore Forest Vassar College, 22, 126 Wald, Lillian, 118. See also Dock, Lavinia Lloyd Waring, George E., Jr., 43 Warren, Louis S., 4 Wednesday Club of Harrisburg (Pennsylvania), 21, 92 Weiss, Elaine, 8 Wetherill, Edith. See Civic Club of Philadelphia White House Conference on the Conservation of National Resources, 104 White House Governors Conference on Conservation, 110 White, Mrs. Lovell. See General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) White Mountains. See New Hampshire Federation of Women’s Clubs, Society for the Preservation of the White Mountains The Wilderness Act, 149, 160 Wilderness Preservation System, 150 Wilkinson, Frances (Fanny), 34, 121. See also International Congress of Women, Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural Union Williams, John. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Williams, Lydia Phillips. See Dock, Mira Lloyd, Chippewa reservation trip Williamsport, Pennsylvania, 27, 32–33 Willard, Emma. See Troy Female Seminary Wilson College, 73, 84, 135 Wilson, Woodrow, 53, 112, 130 Winter, Raymond. See Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission Wirt, George H. See Pennsylvania State Forest Academy, Pennsylvania State Forestry Commission

Woman’s Civic Club of Wilkes-Barre (Pennsylvania), 96, 99 Woman’s City Club of Chicago, 30 Woman’s Club of Lebanon (Pennsylvania), 100 Woman’s Club of Mechanicsburg (Pennsylvania), 95–96, 104 Woman’s Club of New Castle (Pennsylvania), 95–96 Woman’s Club of Pittsburgh, 100, 132 Woman’s Club of the Sewickley Valley (Pennsylvania), 100, 132 women. See also conservation, ecofeminism, environmental movement, feminism, General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC), lyceum movement, National American Woman Suffrage Association, nature study movement, State Federation of Pennsylvania Women as botanical illustrators, 36 college attendance, 22–24, 121–23 Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural International Union (Women’s Farm and Garden Association), 119–21, 157 Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 94–95 Women’s Civic Club of Lock Haven (Pennsylvania), 100 Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, 145 Women’s Municipal League of Boston, 52 Women’s Musical and Literary Society of Irwin (Pennsylvania), 102 Women’s National Land Service Corps, 120 Yale University, 68 Yeager (Jaeger), G. R., 143. See also Dock, Mira Lloyd, Black Forest tour Yellowstone National Park, 81, 111 Yellowstone Park Act, 2 Yosemite National Park, 81 Yosemite Valley, 19–20, 111. See also Dock, Mira Lloyd, Western trips; Hetch Hetchy Valley YWCA, 140 Ziegler, Edwin A. See Pennsylvania State Forest Academy

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