Summary Information
Abstract
This collection contains correspondence, research files, speeches, writings and
other records related to Katharine F. Lenroot, a child welfare leader and the third
Chief of the United States Children's Bureau (1934-1951). Lenroot served the Children's
Bureau from its earliest years, and contributed significantly to the bureau's
development during the New Deal and to the establishment of United Nations International
Children's Emergency Fund after World War II. Most of the Papers relate to her
professional career, and materials dating from her Washington years comprise the largest
part of this collection. After her retirement Lenroot continued to devote herself to
issues of child welfare at the state, national and international level
At a Glance
| Call No.: | MS#0767 |
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| Bib ID: | 4079022 View CLIO record |
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| Creator(s): | Lenroot, Katharine F. (Katharine Fredrica),
1891-1982. |
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| Title: | Katharine F.
Lenroot Papers
1909-1974.
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| Physical description: | 13.4 linear ft. (32 document boxes and 1 flat box)
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| Language(s): | material is in English.
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| Access: |
This collection has no restrictions.
This collection is located off-site. You will need to request this material at least
twenty-four (24) hours in advance to use the collection in the Rare Book and Manuscript
Library reading room.
More information » |
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Arrangement
Arrangement
This collection is arranged in four series:
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Description
Scope and Content
Katharine F. Lenroot is best known as the third Chief of the United States Children's
Bureau, and materials dating from her service at the bureau (1915-1951) comprise the
largest part of this collection. Lenroot continued to devote herself to the field of
child welfare after her retirement, and the second-largest part of the collection dates
from 1951 to the early 1970s. A few materials from her Wisconsin years are present. The
Papers include typescripts and reprints of Lenroot's speeches and writings, her research
files, correspondence with various individuals and organizations engaged in the field of
child welfare. The collection also contains reports, bulletins, and photographs from
conferences organized by the Children's Bureau or attended by Lenroot. Very little
purely personal material is found in this collection.
The media covered Lenroot and the Children's Bureau on various occasions, and the Papers
include a large number of newspaper and magazine clippings. Please note that newspaper
clippings are in fragile condition. Official biographical notes and personnel records
prepared by the bureau are another biographical source included in the Papers. An
overview of Lenroot's career at the bureau and the network she built in the course are
represented in the biographical notes, clippings, correspondence, and photographs from
her retirement in 1951.
Also included in the Papers are certificates of honorary degrees, numerous awards and
honorary memberships that Lenroot received from both within and outside the U.S. In
addition to the certificates, some folders contain correspondence, photographs, and
speeches related to the ceremonies.
Along with Lenroot's own writings and printed materials, this collection contains
publications by other individuals and child welfare organizations, which Lenroot filed
for her own reference; reprints, journals, pamphlets, and clippings. The largest set of
works is by Emma O. Lundberg, a co-worker and a close friend of Lenroot's since the
1910s. The collection also includes original manuscripts of Burton Jesse Hendrick, the
author of Andrew Carnegie's biography.
Series I: Writings and Speeches, 1911-1973
The writings contained within the collection are both those of Lenroot and those
by other individuals and organizations.
Subseries I.1: Indexed Speeches, Articles and Radio, 1920-1951
This subseries contains Lenroot's speeches, articles, and radio talks dating
from her times in the United States Children's Bureau. Although Lenroot began
her service in the bureau in 1915, this subseries does not include materials
prior to 1920. This material is arranged chronologically; an index, original to
the material, accompanies each set of folders.
Subseries I.2: Speeches and Writings, 1911-1970
Most of the speeches and writings included in this subseries were produced
after Lenroot's retirement from the Children's Bureau, although some material
dates from an earlier period. Among the pre-Washington materials are a
minimum-wage legislation brief that Lenroot prepared as an undergraduate and
her report for the Wisconsin Industrial Commission. This subseries is arranged
chronologically, but does not include an index.
Subseries I.3: Writings and Reports, 1915-1962
This subseries consists of published reports and articles by Lenroot. Studies
that Lenroot conducted with the Children's Bureau in the late 1910s appear in
this subseries. The materials are arranged alphabetically by title.
Subseries I.4: Printed Materials, 1918-1973
Within this small subseries are articles and publications by other individuals
and organizations in the field of child welfare with whom Lenroot often worked
closely. The folders have been arranged alphabetically by author.
Subseries I.5: Writings-- By Burton Jesse Hendrick, 1928-1940s
This subseries contains the original hand-written and typed manuscripts, and
research notes of Burton Jesse Hendrick, three-time Pulitzer winner, and author
of
The Life of Andrew Carnegie.
The materials
here relate to the biographies of Andrew Carnegie and his wife Louise Whitfield
Carnegie. In writing these biographies, Hendrick was financed by Mrs. Carnegie,
but his connection with Lenroot is unknown.
Series II: Professional, 1924-1974
This series contains materials from Lenroot's professional career, spanning
five decades from the mid-1920s to the mid-1970s. Lenroot's earlier research,
at the Wisconsin Industrial Commission and at the Children's Bureau, are
included in the preceding series.
Subseries II.1: Biographical--Chronological, 1934-1972
This subseries contains newspaper clippings and journal articles about
Lenroot, and official biographical notes prepared by the Children's
Bureau.
Subseries II.2: United States Children’s Bureau, 1924-1970
Included in this subseries are articles, clippings, correspondence,
pamphlets, and photographs relating to the Children's Bureau and its
projects. Also present are Lenroot's personnel files, including files of her
promotion to Chief. Although Lenroot officially retired from the bureau in
1951, she maintained contact with the staff, exchanging opinions and advice,
and the subseries also includes materials after her retirement.
A significant amount of material in this subseries is regarding the White
House Conference on Children in a Democracy in 1940 and the Mid-century
White House Conferences in 1950, which Lenroot considered to be one of her
major projects. Included are articles, clippings, correspondence, pamphlets,
photographs, proceedings, and speeches associated with the conferences.
Another subject in this subseries is Lenroot's concern about the place of
the Children's Bureau, which appears frequently in her correspondence.
Subseries II.3: International Activities, 1924-1974
Both during and after her service at the Children's Bureau, Lenroot was
concerned with international and inter-American child welfare, and this
subseries contains documents and photographs associated with the
Pan-American Child Congresses, the League of Nations, and the United Nations
and UNICEF. The subseries also includes Lenroot's own account of the history
of the Children's Bureau's international activities.
Subseries II.4: Special Events, 1930-1961
Throughout her professional career, Lenroot received a number of awards and
honorary degrees. Certificates, clippings, correspondence, and photographs
relating to the awards and ceremonies constitute this subseries. Materials
from her retirement from the Children's Bureau in 1951 provide an overview
of her official career and the network she built in the course.
Series III: Correspondence, 1928-1973
This series contains Lenroot's personal and professional correspondence
unrelated to the Children's Bureau. Two folders of previously catalogued
correspondence are included in this subseries. Correspondence directly
associated with the Children's Bureau can be found in Series II: Professional.
The correspondence in this series is arranged alphabetically.
Series IV: Subject Files, 1909-1973
This series consists of subject files labeled by Lenroot, with the exception of
the last subseries labeled during processing. In order to maintain the original
context, this series has been separated from other series, but most of the
subject matter relates to Lenroot's professional career, and the series
includes printed materials, clippings, photographs and correspondence as
well.
Subseries IV.1: Individuals, 1925-1973
Many folders in this subseries include correspondence with, articles, and
clippings about, or publications by the individual.
Subseries IV.2: Subjects and Organizations, 1912-1970
These subject files often contain the organization's publications, sometimes
accompanied by Lenroot's comments. Correspondence with Lenroot, research
notes, including clippings and reprints, and papers written by Lenroot
organization also appear in this subseries.
Subseries IV.3: Personal--Chronological, 1909-1971
This subseries holds a small collection of documents and photographs related
to the personal life of Lenroot. The earliest material is from her high
school years, and the latest dates from her eightieth birthday.
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Using the Collection
Offsite
Access Restrictions
This collection has no restrictions.
This collection is located off-site. You will need to request this material at least
twenty-four (24) hours in advance to use the collection in the Rare Book and Manuscript
Library reading room.
More information and link to off-site request form
Restrictions on Use
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish material
from the collection must be requested from the Curator of Manuscripts/University
Archivist, Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML). The RBML approves permission to
publish that which it physically owns; the responsibility to secure copyright permission
rests with the patron.
Preferred Citation
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Katharine F. Lenroot Papers; Box and
Folder; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library.
Selected Related Material-- At Columbia
Reminiscences of Katharine Fredrica Lenroot: Oral History, 1965
Oral History Research Office Collection, Columbia University Library
Selected Related Material-- At Other Repositories
Records of the United States Children's Bureau, 1908-1969 (Record Group 102),
National Archives and Records Administration
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About the Finding Aid / Processing Information
Columbia University Libraries. Rare Book and
Manuscript Library; machine readable finding aid created by Columbia University
Libraries Digital Library Program Division
Processing Information
Papers processed 8/--/2009 Yuki Oda (GSAS 2013)
Finding aid written 8/--/2009 Yuki Oda (GSAS 2013)
Machine readable finding aid generated from MARC-AMC source via XSLT conversion
November 20, 2009
Finding aid written in English.
2010-03-25
XML document instance created by Jocelyn Wilk.
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Subject Headings
The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches at Columbia University through the Archival Collections Portal and through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, as well as ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.
All links open new windows.
Subjects
| Heading | CUL Archives:
Portal | CUL Collections:
CLIO | Nat'l / Int'l Archives:
ArchiveGRID |
|---|
| Abbott, Edith, 1876-1957. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Abbott, Grace, 1878-1939. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Carnegie, Andrew, 1835-1919. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Child labor. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Child welfare. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Children--Legal status, laws, etc. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Children. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Eliot, Martha M. (Martha May), b.1891. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Hendrick, Burton Jesse, 1870-1949. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Lenroot, Katharine F. (Katharine Frederica),
1891-1982. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Lundberg, Emma O. (Emma Octavia). | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Mid-century White House Conference on Children and Youth
(1950--Washington, D.C.) | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| National Conference of Social Work (U.S.) | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Pan American Child Congress. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Social security. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| UNICEF. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| United States.--Children's Bureau. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| United States.--Social Security Administration. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| White House Conference on Childnre in a Democracy
(1939-1940--Washington, D.C.) | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
| Working class families. | Portal | CLIO | ArchiveGRID |
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History / Biographical Note
Biographical Note
Katharine F. Lenroot, child welfare leader and the third Chief
of the United States Children's Bureau (1934-1951) was born in Superior, Wisconsin on
March 8, 1891 to Irvin Luther and Clara C. Lenroot. From early on, her father's
political career made Lenroot aware of social and political issues. Admitted to the bar
in 1898, Irvine was elected to the Wisconsin state legislature in 1901. After his
service in Wisconsin until 1907, he was elected to the national House of Representatives
from 1909 to 1918, and to the Senate from 1918 to 1927. During her father's terms in the
state legislature, Katharine frequently stayed in Madison, and after graduating from
Superior State Normal School in 1909 she deferred entering college for a year to join
him in Washington, D.C.
Affected by her father's engagement in the regulation of
Wisconsin railroads, Lenroot majored in economics and minored in sociology at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison. There, she was most influenced by the economist John
R. Commons, who often required his students to conduct research for new legislation.
Lenroot prepared a brief and testified before the legislative committee of Wisconsin to
support minimum wage legislation, which did not exist in the United States at the time.
With continued interest in minimum wage legislation, Lenroot decided to take the civil
service examination, and upon completion of her B.A. in 1912, she began her professional
career in 1913 as a deputy of the Industrial Commission of Wisconsin, of which Commons
was a member. Lenroot, hired as an assistant to Emma O. Lundberg, with whom she would
work closely in the following years, surveyed living costs in relation to the state's
new minimum wage law.
In 1914, Lenroot and Lundberg both left Wisconsin to join the
United States Children's Bureau in Washington, D.C. The bureau had been created only two
years earlier by President Taft, with Julia Lathrop as the first Chief (1912-1921), and
Lundberg was appointed the first Director of the Social Service Division. Through a
civil service examination, Lenroot started as a special investigator in the division,
and was soon promoted to Assistant Director. Lenroot mostly studied juvenile courts, and
issues of unmarried mothers and their children.
Illegitimacy as a
Child Welfare Problem
(1920, 1922) and
Juvenile Courts
at Work
(1925), both co-authored with Lundberg, cover some of her research
from this period. In June 1921, Lenroot became Director of the Editorial Division, and
in November 1922, at the age of 30, she was advanced to Assistant Chief of the Bureau,
serving under Grace Abbott, the second Chief (1922-1934). On Abbott's retirement, in
December 1934 Lenroot was appointed the third Chief by President Roosevelt, and remained
in the position until 1951. In 1935, she also served as the president of the National
Conference of Social Work.
Under the FDR administration, the responsibilities of the
Children's Bureau expanded significantly. Lenroot, along with Assistant Chief Martha
Eliott and former Chief Grace Abbott designed and advocated the Title IV, or the Aid to
Dependent Children, and Title V and VII of the Social Security Act of 1935. The act
authorized the Children's Bureau to administer federal grants-in-aid to the states for
maternal and child health and child welfare, and services to disabled children. Later,
the bureau also became responsible for the child labor provisions of the Fair Labor
Standards Act of 1938. From 1943 to 1947 the bureau administered the Emergency Maternity
and Infant Care Program for soldiers' wives and children. To obtain the cooperation of
professional and citizens' groups, the bureau also took the initiative in forming the
National Commission on Children in War-time, which became the basis of Mid-century White
House Conference on Children and Youth.
After the war, in July 1946, the Children's Bureau went
through administrative reorganization, and was transferred from the Department of Labor,
the home of the bureau since 1913, to the Federal Security Agency. While the child labor
function remained in the Department of Labor, the bureau maintained its other functions,
but the place of the Children's Bureau in the federal government continued to be a
concern for Lenroot in the later years.
Lenroot's responsibility as the head of the Children's Bureau
was not limited to national child welfare, and one of her contributions in the post-war
years was the creation of the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund. In
1946, when the Economic and Social Council established the Temporary Social Commission
of the United Nations, Lenroot was appointed as its Secretary to establish a new
organization within the UN to specialize in child welfare. By then, Lenroot and the
Children's Bureau already had considerable international experience. Lenroot's
involvement in inter-American child welfare had begun in 1924, when she attended the
Fourth Pan-American Child Congress in Chile. Fluent in Spanish, she was the chair of the
U.S. delegation in the Fifth (Cuba, 1927), Sixth (Peru, 1930), and Ninth (Venezuela,
1948) Pan-American Child Congresses, and served as the president in the Eighth (U.S.,
1942) Pan-American Child Congress. Lenroot was also a member of the Advisory Committee
of the Traffic in Women and Children established by the League of Nations Council in
1922. From 1937 through 1939, she represented the U.S. on the Advisory Committee of
Social Questions of the League of Nations. Drawing on her international and
inter-American experiences, Lenroot served as the U.S. representative on the executive
board of UNICEF from 1947 to 1951, and played a significant role in setting the
direction of the new organization.
Lenroot retired from the Children's Bureau in 1951, a year
after serving as the Secretary of the Mid-century White House Conference on Children and
Youth. She was succeeded by Martha Eliott, who had been her Assistant Chief since the
mid-1930s. For her nearly 37 years of service in the bureau, Lenroot was honored with
the Federal Security Agency Distinguished Civilian Service Award. Among numerous other
awards she received in the course of her career were the University of Chicago's
Rosenberg Medal (1942), the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Social Sciences
(1947), and the Survey Award (1950). She also received honorary doctorates from the
University of Wisconsin (1938), her alma mater, Russell Sage College (1948), Tulane
University (1948), Western Reserve University (1951), and Boston University (1952). For
her engagement in inter-American child welfare, a number of organizations in Latin
America honored her as well.
Until the early 1970s, Lenroot continued to be active in
local, national and international child welfare work. After her retirement from the
federal government, Lenroot moved from Washington D.C. to Hartsdale, New York, and
shared a home with Emma O. Lundberg until Lundberg's death in 1954. Lenroot frequently
traveled to attend conferences and to give speeches and lectures before various
audiences. Among the organizations Lenroot worked closely with were the Child Welfare
League of America and the International Union for Child Welfare. She also kept in
contact with the staff of the Children's Bureau such as Martha Eliott, discussing the
role and the future of the bureau. After moving to Princeton, New Jersey in 1960, she
served at the New Jersey State Board of Child Welfare and at the advisory council of
Graduate School of Social Work at Rutgers University. From 1962 to 1963, Lenroot also
worked as a consultant to the UNICEF, drafting their field manual and traveling to
Geneva.
Katharine F. Lenroot died on February 10, 1982; she was 90
years old.
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