The Remarkable Life and Career of Ellen Swallow Richards: Pioneer in Science and Technology

Chapter 1

Ellencyclopedia

“Each town was a small but perfect republic, secluded in the New England wilderness as the Swiss cantons among the Alps.”

~ George W. Curtis (1824–1892)

Inside the wood-frame farmhouse, Fanny Taylor Swallow gave birth to her first child. It was December 3, 1842. Fanny was twenty-five, small and delicate, and perhaps not built for delivering a baby. Peter Swallow and his widowed father, Archelaus, had done their best to help the exhausted Fanny bring the tiny baby girl into the world. She was named Ellen Henrietta Swallow, but they called her Nellie. She would be the only child Fanny and Peter would have.

The little dark-haired child had eyes “that sparkled with life,” fitting for a girl whose name meant light. She would one day light the way for other women and she would do remarkable things to improve the lives of generations to follow.

But no one imagined then what the future held for Ellen. She was small and in delicate health. At a time when almost one-third of children died before age five, frail children were in even greater danger. No cures existed for most life-threatening diseases, such as measles, polio, scarlet fever, typhoid, and diphtheria. Use of antibiotics was still over 100 years away. The Swallow’s local doctor cautioned Ellen’s parents to protect her as much as possible from contagious illnesses, so Fanny and Peter decided to keep her close to home.

Home for Ellen was a three-story, white clapboard Massachusetts house with a large attached ...