Biography: Science and Academia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography This article is supported by the science and academia work group (assessed as Low-importance).

Linguistics Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Linguistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of linguistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LinguisticsWikipedia:WikiProject LinguisticsTemplate:WikiProject LinguisticsLinguistics Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Women writers Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women writers, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of women writers on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Women writersWikipedia:WikiProject Women writersTemplate:WikiProject Women writersWomen writers Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Largely removed from article due to concerns over use of primary sources:

Caroline Agnes Brady was born in October 1905 in China.^[1][2][3] Her father was Col. David John Brady, an engineer, and her mother Annie Lucy Maude Brady (née Short).^{[4][5][6][7][8]} The two were married on 10 May 1904 in Shanghai.^[7][8] On 16 May 1910 the three arrived in San Pedro, California on the steamer^[9] Bessie Dollar,^[10] and by 1911 they were living in Cranbrook, British Columbia.^[1] A sister, Frances Barbara Brady (or Frances Maud Brady^[11]), was born on 10 April 1915.^[6][12][13] In 1917 the family returned to the United States, settling in Los Angeles.^[12]

David Brady died in late January, 1953,^[5] and his wife, now going as Maud Short Brady, on 23 November 1959.^[14][15] Caroline Brady was referred to as "the late Caroline Brady" in 1983.^[16][17] Frances Brady, by then Frances Brady Ackley, died on 14 December 1993; her obituary mentioned only cousins among her survivors.^[18]

• "A L Short in the U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936–2007". Ancestry Library. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
• "Annie Lucy Mande Short in the UK, Foreign and Overseas Registers of British Subjects, 1628–1969". Ancestry Library. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
• "Annie Lucy Maude Short in the UK, Foreign and Overseas Registers of British Subjects, 1628–1969". Ancestry Library. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
• "David J Brady in the California, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882–1959". Ancestry Library. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
• "Caroline Brady: Canada Census, 1911". FamilySearch. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
• "Caroline Brady: United States Census, 1920". FamilySearch. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
• "Carol A Brady: United States Census, 1930". FamilySearch. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
• "Caroline Brady: United States Census, 1930". FamilySearch. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
• "Caroline A Brady: United States Census, 1940". FamilySearch. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
• "Frances Barbara Ackley: California Death Index, 1940–1997". FamilySearch. Retrieved 22 October 2017.
• "Maud Short Brady: California Death Index, 1940–1997". FamilySearch. Retrieved 22 October 2017.
• "ACKLEY, Frances Brady". Obituaries/Funeral Announcements. The Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, California. 15 December 1993. p. A24.
• "Bessie Dollar's Crew is Closely Watched". Los Angeles Herald. Los Angeles, California. 23 June 1906. p. 8. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
• "BRADY, Col. David John". The Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, California. 28 January 1953. p. 17. Retrieved 21 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
• "BRADY, Maud Short". The Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, California. 24 November 1959. p. C7. Retrieved 22 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
• "Contents". Anglo-Saxon England. 11. Cambridge University Press: v–vi. 1983. doi:10.1017/S0263675100002519.
• O'Donoghue, Bernard (May 1986). "The Old English Elegies. New Essays in Criticism and Research by Martin Green". The Review of English Studies. XXXVII (146). Oxford University Press: 237–238. JSTOR 516977. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• "U.C. Language Instructor Leaves for Eastern Session". The Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, California. 26 December 1938. p. 30. Retrieved 21 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.

Usernameunique, where is your reference in the article for the statement that "Brady began work at Harvard around 1952"? Gatoclass (talk) 18:42, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Good point Gatoclass, I've changed it to "around 1953". In September 1953 she is listed at "19 Garden St., Apt. 38, Cambridge 38, Mass." in the PMLA members list, and a 1955 review of one of her works stated that "Miss Brady has now been working for some time at Harvard". The 1952–53 Talbot fellowship, which followed an apparent gap in teaching positions (assuming she didn't do anything after leaving the Oregon community college in 1949) may imply that she took up her Harvard position in 1952, but there's nothing that definitively says so. --Usernameunique (talk) 19:00, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The reason I asked Usernameunique is because reference 41 states that she was working at the University of California, but I just noticed that this source is from the 1930s yet is being used to support the statement that she was living in California in the 1950s, so this looks like an erroneous cite to me. Gatoclass (talk) 19:15, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Gatoclass, references 40 and 41 work together to support the statement that "in 1952 [Brady] was also listed as living at her parents' California address." 40, from 1952, lists Brady as living at "132 S. Laurel Ave., Los Angeles 48, California". 41, from 1935, is used to show that this address was her parents address ("Miss Brady was accompanied by her sister, Miss Frances M. Brady. They are the daughters of Col. and Mrs. D. J. Brady, of 132 South Laurel avenue, Los Angeles."). --Usernameunique (talk) 19:20, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks for the clarification. I am going to have to continue revamping this article tomorrow, as converting the references has turned out to be a more difficult job than I anticipated. Gatoclass (talk) 19:34, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your work, Gatoclass. I think I've finished formatting the references to the extent practical. --Usernameunique (talk) 20:05, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That this article asserts she died "before 1984" is surprising. One would expect anyone who died in the early 1980s to have at least the year, if not the day, recorded of her death; doctors are usually in attendance to provide a time & cause of death. Is there a reason this article states that, such as she was discovered dead weeks, if not months, afterwards? Or is this just an interim workaround until the date of her death can be found? -- llywrch (talk) 04:17, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Llywrch, an obituary would clear up many of the uncertainties in this article, but so far I haven't been able to find one—what she did after 1955 is also missing. As far as her year of death goes, it's probably 1980. The journal issue in which her 1983 article was published terms her "the late Caroline Brady", while a signed offprint of her 1979 article (offprint may have been issued in 1980) indicates that she was alive in 1979 and maybe 1980. Ancestry.com lists a "Caroline Brady" (3 Oct 1905 – November 1980) in the Social Security Death Index, and a "Caroline A Brady" (abt 1905 – 5 November 1980) in the Washington State Death Index; that's probably her. --Usernameunique (talk) 12:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So it's an interim workaround. I understand. But I am a little surprised her death information isn't easily found. I have seen a number of one-page death notices for academics published in periodicals they were frequently published in, so maybe one she published in contains one. (BTW, I did a quick search thru JSTOR between 1979-1983 & found nothing.) Maybe AAUW has the info; I'd cite their database as a source before Ancestry.com, & I remember a dispute some time back about using SS records as a source. (Sigh.) Hope my hints help in finding this bit of info. Good luck. -- llywrch (talk) 17:57, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

AAUW is a good thought, Llywrch, just sent them an email. Washington papers seems to be severely underrepresented on newspapers.com and newspaperarchive.com (don't see anything on ProQuest either), so an obituary may be somewhere that I just haven't found. I think what hinders this is that she seems to have dropped of the face of the academic earth for a good quarter-century, before two articles at the end of her life. It's quite possible she changed careers, and in doing so lost touch with the contacts and organizations that would have noted her death (e.g., her membership in the Modern Language Association of America lapsed in the 1950s). Primary sources were certainly controversial during the DYK nomination, and a published source would be ideal. --Usernameunique (talk) 20:00, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Or she was married & raised a family. Or a family member contracted an illness & needed a care giver. Things like this derail a woman's career to a greater degree than a man's. -- llywrch (talk) 20:03, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fair point, Llywrch; the salient point is that after 1955 or so she started doing something else. I've looked for marriage records to no avail, and the fact that her sister's 1993 obituary only mentions cousins among survivors Brady didn't have children. --Usernameunique (talk) 20:13, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"The salient point is that after 1955 or so she started doing something else." -- also a fair point. IMHO, this is something that should be mentioned in the article -- that she appears to have left academia for some reason. (I can think of several: sexism, burnout, unpleasantness in her personal life, etc.) Exactly what was the reason... well, I think we can agree this might not be revealed soon. Although it definitely makes her more intriguing. (BTW, I thought of another possible angle to pursue: would the alumni organization at UCLA/UC Berkeley have any info about her?) It's beginning to look as if there is a story here that could be sold for publication. If you're interested in writing for pay, that is. -- llywrch (talk) 20:32, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Llywrch, I agree with you, although words to that effect were removed from the article during the DYK nomination due to concerns (not mine) that they would constitute original research. I'm glad you find her intriguing. There are a lot of aspects about her life that call out for more detail: her birth in China (to a military father—couldn't find his records, but may not have searched hard enough), her parents Shanghai wedding, her childhood abroad, her different academic positions, especially her months at a random community college and subsequent resignation due to "ill health" (as convincing an excuse as "personal reasons"), her many moves, and her ultimate disappearance and reappearance. You're almost certainly right that she dealt with sexism, and Kemp Malone's two(!) cutting reviews of her dissertation may be one such indication. Good suggestions re: UCLA/Berkeley. Sent both of them emails. Suppose I should do the same with Penn/Harvard, maybe their libraries could be of help. --Usernameunique (talk) 21:31, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• On the gap in her teaching and publishing, don't discount the death years of her parents. Her father died in 1953, and her mother in 1959. She may well have been caring for her mother during the later 50s. Whatever the story though, it doesn't belong in this article unless some secondary source writes about her life and mentions what she did in the gap. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:26, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Noting since it doesn't seem to have been looked for before that the University of California has her dissertation: http://oskicat.berkeley.edu/record=b15406130~S53 . That establishes it as having been accepted in September 1935. (She may well have attended a graduation ceremony in 1936.) It also attests to the von Egmont part of her name. It is possible that she had already married by that time, but it would be unusual in the US for her to adopt her husband's name as the first part of a double-barreled surname, and a double-barreled surname would be unusual in that period in any case. It's more likely that was her full birth name; universities have generally required the entire legal name on a dissertation. She was probably eager to drop the German-sounding bit in the late '30s and after. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:14, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea, Yngvadottir, just sent them an email asking them to check; I'll try to ILL it if they can't. I think "Brady, Caroline Agnes von Egmont, 1905-" may just be copied from WorldCat (the 1943 publication of her dissertation is listed similarly, but from looking at a physical copy, her name is actually given as "Caroline Agnes Brady"), but you're right that the actual dissertation is more likely to have her full name than most sources.

Thanks for prompting the discussion again. The AAUW got back to me a few weeks ago. Brady's fellowship file includes only a photograph (just asked if it's possible to use it), but the person who responded also dug up a 1952 mention of her receiving the fellowship. I'll add the source shortly, but it has some good information: that Brady was born in Tientsin, China, discussion about her proposed research, that her "place of study" was Harvard and Johns Hopkins, and that the fellowship was for $2,200. It also mentions that she was the "synonym editor" for "C. L. Barnhart, Inc., Bronxville, New York." On this information, perhaps we can surmise that she left academia for private practice after her "ill health" resignation from the community college (she's still listed until the early 1950s by the PMLA as at Penn, but that might not be correct), and that the fellowship was a way of trying to go back. It also puts her Harvard work in a different light; her time there seems likely to have been part of her fellowship, and not necessarily a teaching post. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:50, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yngvadottir, that was a great suggestion. Berkeley just sent a scan of the dissertation cover page, and the Programme of the Final Examination for the Degree of Doctor oh Philosophy. The cover page says "Caroline Agnes Brady", with an edit mark between "Agnes" and "Brady"; the program, however, says "Caroline Agnes von Egmont Brady". Per email the spine also says "C. A. V. E. Brady". I had thought the "von Egmont" was an error introduced in the Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, but this makes it look as if you may well be right that she dropped the German-sounding part of her name. --Usernameunique (talk) 19:56, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]