Records of the Women's Travel Club, 1933-2014

In October 1934, Augusta Batchelder Hartt and several friends began planning a women's travel club modeled on the men-only Harvard Travellers Club, with the goal of providing a venue for women who had taken unusual trips to share their experiences and provide help and advice to other female travelers. By January of the following year, fifty-three women, members of well-known families in the Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, area, had joined the Women's Travel Club, and the first formal meeting was held on January 14th, with Mrs. Carleton S. Coon addressing the group on her "Travels in Southern Arabia." The club held monthly and annual meetings, with a speaker giving a talk about unusual travel, such as an archeological dig in China or botanical research in Canada. Early talks included "Over the Old Jade Road from Yunnanfu to Mandalay" and "Fifteen Months in Communist China, 1948-1950," with later talks ranging from "Restoring Natural Habitat in Chile and Argentina" to "Perspectives on Iran over Four Decades," Other events, such as joint meetings with the Harvard Travellers Club, picnics, teas, luncheons, and a costume party, all focused on some aspect of travel. In its early years, the club frequently had guest speakers who were not members, including Margaret Mead, Jane Goodall, and Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen). Initially, talks were illustrated with slides, photographs, movies, or artifacts; later PowerPoint became more common. The nature of the members' travel also changed over time. In her 2010 history of the club, Paula Cronin notes "In the 'good old days,' individuals, couples and families tended to mount their own Grand Tours and often lived overseas for extended periods of time...Today we are more apt to join organized tours with specific orientations." As organized tours became more common, several members of the club began spearheading expeditions, leading groups of travelers on trips to exotic locations.

For the first few years, members met at various public venues including the Boston YWCA, but in 1939 the club began renting part of a building on Fairfield Street in Boston. The advantage of this was that club members could visit the club at any time. The club changed location several times over the next seventeen years, and eventually began holding meetings in members' homes, as well as at museums, libraries, and hotels. During World War II, the club formed a Red Cross Sewing Unit, which met weekly to sew layettes; members also invested in U.S. War Bonds. In 1968, the club began making travel grants to women wishing to study or do research abroad. Notable members of the club included Mary McMillan, the first president of the American Physical Therapy Association and a prisoner of war of the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II; Barbara Washburn, the first woman to climb Mt. McKinley; Marian Cannon Schlesinger, the first wife of historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and her sister, art historian Wilma Cannon Fairbank; and many other mountaineers, explorers, photographers, and sociologists. The club celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2009 with a reception and gala at the Wellesley Country Club. As of 2014, the club is still active. (For further information, see the club histories in #4.7 and 5.17.)