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COLLECTION Identifier: MC 434

Papers of Natalie Walker Linderholm, 1900-1984

Overview

Correspondence, photographs, awards, etc., of Natalie Walker Linderholm, social worker and social work publicist.

Dates

  • Creation: 1900-1984

Language of Materials

Materials in English.

Access Restrictions:

Access. Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright. Copyright in the papers created by Natalie Walker Linderholm as well as copyright in other papers in the collection may be held by their authors, or the authors' heirs or assigns.

Copying. Papers may be copied in accordance with the library's usual procedures.

Extent

1.25 linear feet ((3 file boxes) plus 1 folio volume, 1 folio folder, 1 oversize folder)

This collection consists of correspondence, photographs, awards, honors, and clippings about Natalie Walker Linderholm, and Linderholm's articles about the Family Welfare Society, the Nursery Training School, the Emergency Fund, all of Boston, the New York City Publicity Council, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Greater New York Fund, the New York Commission for Foster Care of Children, and the Protestant Welfare Agencies.

Photographs of Radcliffe friends and classmates were removed to the Radcliffe College Archives Record Group XX, Class of 1914.

BIOGRAPHY

Natalie (Walker) Linderholm, social worker and social work publicist, attended Girls' Latin School in Boston, 1906-1910, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe College in 1914. She then studied at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy (now School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago), earning a certificate (equivalent to a graduate degree) in 1915; she served as research assistant (1915-1916) and secretary to the dean (1917). That year she left Chicago for a tour of the North Carolina mountains as an inspector under the first federal child labor law; the tour ended when the law was declared unconstitutional.

Linderholm married Ernest Linderholm, a lawyer and businessman, in Burlington, Vermont; their daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 1918. Ernest Linderholm died in 1955. From 1919 to 1921, Linderholm did volunteer work in Vermont; in 1921, she established the Vermont Children's Aid Society, a professionally-staffed agency for foster care and adoption of neglected, homeless children, and conducted a research project on the high rate of infant mortality in Burlington. Also in 1921, the family moved to Boston and Linderholm combined volunteer service with homemaking. In 1930 she returned to professional social work as a case worker for the Family Welfare Society and editor of its pamphlet series, Family Welfare. She organized the public relations department of the Boston Community Fund and was publicity consultant to the Nursery Training School of Boston, of which her Radcliffe classmate, Abigail Eliot, was director.

In 1936 the family moved to New York and Linderholm spent a year and a half doing research in publicity methods at the Russell Sage Foundation. She soon joined the Greater New York Fund, where she was assistant director, then director, of public relations, and later a consultant (1938-1958). On her retirement she was drafted to be secretary to the New York Commission for Foster Care of Children (1958-1961); she then became special consultant to the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies of New York City and concurrently served as executive secretary to the Career Center for Social Service of Greater New York, Inc. The center closed in 1974 and she retired from the Protestant Welfare Agencies in 1975, but served as consultant in fund-raising and public relations for the Woodycrest Five Points Child Care Unit until 1977.

Physical Location

Collection stored off site: researchers must request access 36 hours before use.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Accession numbers: 76-338, 81-M9, 81-M103, 87-M34

The papers of Natalie Walker Linderholm were given to the Schlesinger Library by Natalie Walker Linderholm in October 1976 and in January and April 1981; and by her daughter, Elizabeth Lustig, in February 1987.

Related Material:

There is related material at the Schlesinger Library; Papers of Natalie Walker Linderholm, 1910-1979 (SC 47).

CONTAINER LIST

  1. Box 1: 4-17
  2. Box 2: 18-28
  3. Box 3: 29-36

Processing Information

Reprocessed: September 1995

By: Jane S. Knowles

Title
Linderholm, Natalie Walker, 1892-1987. Papers of Natalie Walker Linderholm, 1900-1984: A Finding Aid
Author
Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
Language of description
eng
EAD ID
sch00706

Repository Details

Part of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Repository

The preeminent research library on the history of women in the United States, the Schlesinger Library documents women's lives from the past and present for the future. In addition to its traditional strengths in the history of feminisms, women’s health, and women’s activism, the Schlesinger collections document the intersectional workings of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class in American history.

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