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Agency History/Biographical note:
Frances Adelle Hurrey was born on August 4, 1909 in Buenos Aires, Argentina to Charles D. Hurrey and Daisy Girton Hurrey. She attended Montclair High School in Montclair, New Jersey before coming to Mount Holyoke College in 1927. She spent her junior year abroad at the Université de Nancy and the Sorbonne (Université de Paris) in France. She graduated in 1931 with a major in French and during the summer of 1931 she attended Montclair State Teacher's College. From 1931-1932 she taught French and Latin at the Brookside School in Montclair. From 1932-1933 she tutored French in Switzerland while attending the Université de Genève, and after returning to the United States in 1933, she received her M.A. in French from Columbia University in 1934. That same year she began teaching French at the Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey and held that position until she became principal in 1940. She remained its principal until 1951 when she retired. In the summer of 1935 she attended the Middlebury Summer Language School in Middlebury, Vermont and the following summer studied at the American Institute in Munich, Germany. On December 9, 1946 she married Dixon C. Philips, a graduate of Cornell University and the mayor of Plainfield, New Jersey from 1943 to 1947. She died at the age of eighty-one on December 4, 1971 in Hightstown, New Jersey.

Scope and Content:
The Frances Hurrey Philips papers consist of correspondence, a photograph album and photographs. Correspondence dates from 1927-1931, her undergraduate years at Mount Holyoke College, and is addressed to her parents and younger sister "Jiggs" (Marguerite Hurrey Wolf, a 1936 graduate of Mount Holyoke College). She discusses a wide range of activities on campus from classes and faculty to outings with her friends. She frequently mentions food,  clothes, gym, sports, chapel, motion pictures, table waiting, concerts, faculty, and travel by train and car. She includes comments on lectures and sermons, and often mentions Robert Wicks, Mount Holyoke Chaplain from 1926-1928, and his family. She provides detailed descriptions of many events on campus, including room choosing, the May Day pageant, and Junior Show. Specific letters describe Faculty Show (March 4, 1928), hazing (October 24, 1927), and Junior Prom which she attended as a freshman usher (April 28, 1928). She also describes her sister's visit to campus (October 12, 1930) and a special assembly during which President Mary Emma Woolley discussed the expulsion of four students for drinking and smoking (February 24, 1928). She makes frequent references to a classmate, Frances Dorman Menning, and to Ruth Tenny Hall, Class of 1929, and her future husband Frederick R. Hall, who was from Philip's hometown of Montclair, New Jersey. Correspondence includes letters from her junior year in France describing her coursework at the Université de Nancy and the Sorbonne (Université de Paris), the families she lived with and travels in Europe as well as mentioning food and French fashions. The photograph album dates from 1927-1933 and contains photographs from her year in France as well as from the time she spent in Geneva, Switzerland as a tutor and as a student at the Université de Genève from 1932-1933. It also includes photographs from her years at Mount Holyoke and features fellow members of the Class of 1931 including Virginia F. Babcock, Louise K. Wilde, Sara Holmes Boutelle, Elizabeth Lauckhardt Jantzen, Vimala Appasamy, and Ruth J. Brackenridge. Biographical information consists of newspaper clippings about Philips from 1929-1971, including her obituary. Photographs include formal and informal photographs of Philips during her undergraduate years, a picture of students at the Universite de Nancy in 1929 and two photos of her from a weekend at Colgate College in 1931.

Cite as: Frances Hurrey Philips Papers, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, South Hadley, MA

Access Restrictions: Unrestricted.

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