Violet Barbour (1884–1968)

Violet Barbour was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. She obtained her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D degrees from Cornell University. In 1914, she was appointed to the faculty of Vassar College as a professor of English and European history. Initially a specialist in English history, she received recognition for works such as Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, Secretary of State to Charles II (1915), which earned her the Herbert Baxter Prize from the American Historical Association. Fifty years later, it remained the standard work on the subject. Midway through her career, Prof. Barbour switched her specialty to Dutch economic history. In 1925, she was the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. It funded her research on Anglo-Dutch commercial rivalry, which led to her book Capitalism in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century, published in 1950. The book was used by the University of Amsterdam to teach Dutch students the basics of their own economic history. Prof. Barbour was a member of the American Historical Association, the Economic History Association, and the Conference on British Studies, and was a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in the UK.
She was also a beloved teacher and active member of the Poughkeepsie and Vassar community.