The Wolfe Collection
The Wolfe Collection of antique clothing was donated to Bucknell University by the descendants of Martha and Mary Wolfe. The collection features the clothing of these two women spanning the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century.
Martha M. Wolfe was a prominent Lewisburg community member who graduated from the Bucknell Women’s Institute in 1863. Her grandfather and uncle helped to found Bucknell in 1846. Five years after her graduation from the Institute she married the late Charles S. Wolfe, later State Senator and one-time candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania on the Prohibitionist ticket. Martha was an active civic member, who was a leader in the Daughters of the American Revolution, past president of the Bucknell Alumnae Club, and a member of the Lewisburg Civic Club, Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and many church groups.
Martha M. Wolfe Obituary
Dr. Mary M. Wolfe was the eldest daughter of Martha and Charles Spyker Wolfe and a proud Bucknillian. She received both her BA (1896) and MA (1900) from Bucknell University. While at Bucknell she was captain of the women’s basketball team, Business manager of he women’s edition of “The Bucknell Mirror” and won the registrar’s prize in junior oratory (Bucknell Mirror). She continued on to graduate with honors from the College of Medicine at the University of Michigan (1899). An active member of the women’s suffrage movement, she served as chair of the finance committee of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association (1912).
Best known for her work as a psychiatrist, she became assistant physician in the women’s department of the Pennsylvania Hospital at Norristown and was promoted to chief physician of the women’s department, which she served from 1901-1909. in 1914 Wolfe lobbied the state to establish a publicly funded center for women with intellectual disabilities (The Laurelton Center), where she served as superintendent.