February 8, 1927

President MacCracken announced the completion of a $25,000 fund in honor of the most senior professor at Vassar, Lucy Maynard Salmon, the chair of the history department. After postgraduate study at her alma mater, the University of Michigan, and at Bryn Marwr, Salmon joined the Vassar faculty in 1887, charged specifically with the foundation of the history department. An innovative teacher and scholar from the outset of her long career, she pioneered in the use of statistics and the evidentiary materials of every day life in the study of social history. An early proponent of woman suffrage, she was among the faculty leaders who shaped the modern Vassar curriculum.

Professor Salmon was to have received the income from the fund during her lifetime, but she died a few days after this announcement, on February 14. The Salmon Fund was subsequently used to promote faculty research, and in the subsequent settlement of Salmon’s estate, a sum of $30,200 was bequeathed to the college for a fund to be used at the discretion of the librarian.