Project Summary

One of my recent projects was cataloguing photographs that were digitized, but which did not have extensive, relevant, and helpful metadata. In addition, the images were not yet uploaded to our database, Alma Digital. My task (alongside my fellow work-study intern) was to create or record the needed metadata for the images, so that we could then ingest and link them properly. I learned and observed many things during the course of this project. However, there was an aspect of women’s history that particularly jumped out at me, especially when I began working on this post during Women’s History Month

Setting the Stage

Drexel’s College of Medicine is known for being the successor to the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (later Medical College of Pennsylvania), the first degree-granting medical school for women. Many projects the Legacy Center has been involved in focus on highlighting women and their accomplishments. This can be far from easy to accomplish, especially when it comes to photographs, as even marginal documentation identifying the subjects can be absent. The common trend of erasure or absence of women from historical records is often a result of their lack of documentation. And this is with Drexel having more photographs with documentation than the norm and a focus on uplifting women’s history

High Society in Philadelphia – Not Immune to Women’s Erasure

Reeves Wetherill, Peg Biddle (granddaughter of Anthony J. Drexel Biddle), and Arthur C. Kaufmann at opening of costume display event of costumes in "Happiest Millionaire" film, at John Wanamaker department store.

In the mid-to-late 1960s, Philadelphia high society—including recognizable names as Biddle, Cramp, Drexel, and Wetherill—organized a benefit around the release of The Happiest Millionaire (1967), a fictionalized depiction of Anthony Drexel Biddle, Sr. and Philadelphia high society of the Nineteen-teens. The movie was the last that Walt Disney had an active hand in developing. While this clearly has a great deal to do with Philadelphian history, the reason that the Legacy Center possesses records relating to the benefit and premiere of the film is that one of the beneficiaries of the money raised was the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (which would go co-ed in 1970). 

"Happiest Millionaire" luncheon to plan benefit for Medical College of Pennsylvania and California Institute of Arts. L to R: Arthur Kaufmann, Mrs. Tamara Biddle, Mrs. Roberta Pew, Mrs. Anthony Drexel Biddle, ?, J. Liddon Pennock

One would think, in this context—particularly since the the author of the book that inspired the film was one of these same society women—that the wealthy philanthropic women who undoubtedly spear-headed these events would be centered on these records. These are by definition some of the most privileged women in the United States.

Their full names are not even recorded on the back of the photographs I cataloged.

Some of them have not even been that marginally identified, with no information on the verso side of the photograph. This is a common problem with photographic records. The first names of a few women were included—Peg Biddle, (Mrs.) Tamara Biddle, and (Mrs.) Roberta Jennings Pew, though this did not make it easier to identify those subjects conclusively. Three women were not identified at all.

Three unidentified benefit committee members

Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania bulletin, 1966-1967

This was an extremely common phenomenon even by the end of the 1960s, despite there being cases where women were referred to by their full names. On that note, it was extremely challenging to identify women subjects based primarily on their husband’s names. Indeed, some of them were not possible to verify within the time I had, considering that I spent over half an hour attempting to identify each woman.

 Where I did manage to confirm the identity of these women, the tools and references I used themselves allow for pointed observations. Let us use two of my successful identifications as examples.

Margaret (née Atkinson) Loughborough Biddle Robbins

The woman born Margaret Atkinson played numerous significant roles in her life. The photographs in this collection confirmed that she played a leadership role in organizing the benefit. Bulletins for the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP) confirm that she was a member of the college board for at least two consecutive academic years. Earlier in her life, according to the New York Times, she was a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) aide (The New York Times, 1946). Undoubtedly, she had other accomplishments I didn’t have the time to research. Margaret died in 2013, and was buried in Arlington Cemetery, next to her second husband (Army Cemeteries Explorer, n.d.).

Despite this, the collection photographs identified her only as Mrs. Anthony Drexel Biddle, Jr. The tool used to verify her burial in Arlington confirmed her name and dates of life, but showed only Anthony Drexel Biddle Jr.’s headstone with only his information in the accompanying photographs. The New York Times announcement regarding her third marriage contained four pieces of information about her life that were not in relation to her second husband, one of them being a description of her wedding dress, and none of them about her own accomplishments (The New York Times, 1969).

Mae Gouverneur (née Cadwalader) Worrall Hollenback

Mrs. James Gowan and Mrs. (Mae Gouverneur Cadwalader) J. Harrison Worall, likely committee members for the "Happiest Millionaire" benefit.

The information on Mae Cadwalader proved even more difficult to confirm in a limited time, beyond the collection establishing that she was involved in the organization of the benefit. There, she is identified only as Mrs. J. Harrison Worrall, Worrall being her second husband.

According to a photograph on her FindAGrave page, she was a Trustee Emeritus at Drexel University and received an honorary doctorate in 1967 (Zwicker, 2016).

Comparing the two photos verifies that this is the same woman, but the information about her honorary degree and involvement in Drexel University remains less reliable. It is possible the University Archives at Hagerty Library may have more information in that regard.

Drawing Conclusions

The majority of these women had connections to the Drexel family, Drexel University’s legacy institutions, or Drexel University itself. None of them had information easily accessible through any of the three Drexel archives, let alone the Legacy Center itself.

These women are the kind of women, with their privilege, wealth, and influence, we might expect to have–and so find–more substantial records and visibility. Furthermore, 1967 was just under sixty years ago. This is not ancient history. The younger subjects in the collection may still be alive. Mae Cadwalader died in 2000, Margaret Atkinson in 2013.

And yet, it took me thirty minutes to several hours each to find any viable references for the majority of these women, let alone reliable, verifiable sources.

These women are white, wealthy, and married to influential men, often influential in their own right and coming from equally influential and wealthy families. The kind of women the historical record is more likely to have retained their existence and identity, and yet they are subsumed into the identity of their husbands, getting their own names only in their obituaries—if I could find them.

Citations

Army Cemeteries Explorer, U. S. Army. Arlington National Cemetery: Search Results: Biddle Robbins, Margaret. Retrieved January 26, 2026 from https://ancexplorer.army.mil/publicwmv/index.html#/arlington-national/search/results/1/Cg5CaWRkbGUgUm9iYmlucxIITWFyZ2FyZXQ-/.

Cook, N. (2026). The Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania: Bulletin 1966/1967 – The WMCP College Officers & Board Members for the 1966/67 Academic Year [Photograph]. iPhone photograph. Unpublished.

Greenleaf, S. & G. O. Parker, Jr., Family of. (2011, Jan. 15). Memorial page for Mae Gouverneur Cadwalader Hollenback (31 Jan 1923–18 May 2000), Find a Grave Memorial ID 64249816. Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/64249816/mae_gouverneur-hollenback.

The New York Times. (1946, Jul. 11). COL. A.D. BIDDLE JR. TO WED IN GERMANY; Ex-Envoy Will Marry Today in Frankfort Mrs. Margaret A. Loughborough, UNRRA Aide. The New York Times Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1946/07/11/archives/col-ad-biddle-jr-to-wed-in-germany-exenvoy-will-marry-today-in.html.

The New York Times. (1969, Jan. 2). Special to the New York Times: Col. Edwinston Robbins Weds Mrs. Biddle in Philadelphia. The New York Times Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1969/01/02/archives/col-edwinston-robbins-weds-mrs-biddle-in-philadelphia.html.

Zwicker III, E. (Contributor). (2016). This photo taken at a Drexel University function where she was a Trustee Emeritus at the university founded by her Great-grandfather. She received an honorary Doctorate in 1967 [Photograph]. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/64249816/mae_gouverneur-hollenback#view-photo=137207061.