Susan Walker Fitzgerald

Biography

She was born on May 9, 1871, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Rear Admiral John Grimes Walker, USN and Rebecca White Pickering. Her father was a Civil War veteran, having served at the Siege of Vicksburg, inter alia. Her mother was from the prominent Pickering family of Salem, Massachusetts. She was a direct descendant of Timothy Pickering, John Pickering, and Henry White Pickering.

Following the advice and encouragement of her cousin Alice Gould who graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1889, she enrolled at Bryn Mawr and graduated with a degree in political science and history in 1893. During her time at Bryn Mawr, she founded the Student Government Association and served as her class president. Following her graduation, she worked, as secretary to M. Carey Thomas - from 1893 to 1894 when Thomas was dean, and from 1894 to 1895 after Thomas became Bryn Mawr's president.

Subsequently, Susan began working as the administrative head of Barnard College's first dormitory, Fiske Hall, in 1898. She was engaged to Richard Y. FitzGerald in July 1900 and the couple married on August 3, 1901. She took the name Susan Walker FitzGerald. Because men were not allowed into the dormitory, she changed jobs and served as head worker at the Richmond Hill Settlement House in New York City from 1901 to 1904. She was a prominent member of the first New York Child Labor Committee and was involved in establishing important child labor laws and in working for a compulsory education law. Richard Y. FitzGerald was an attorney who graduated from the University of California in 1895 and Harvard Law School in 1898 and practiced primarily in New York and Boston. He was the son of Nancy Rose McCoy and Adolphus Leigh Fitzgerald, elected to the Supreme Court of Nevada in November 1900. Richard's family owned silver mines and a water works plant in Eureka, Nevada as well as a large ranch named Clear Creek in Redding, California.