Sherwin, Belle, 1868-1955

Belle Sherwin was born on March 20, 1868 in Cleveland, Ohio. She was the oldest of three daughters of Frances M. (Smith) and Henry Alden Sherwin, a founder of the Sherwin-Williams Paint Company. BS received her primary education in Cleveland, attended St. Margaret's School in Connecticut and graduated from Wellesley College in 1890. She taught history for a short period at St. Margaret's and in 1894-1895 did graduate work at Oxford University. For the next several years she taught at a girls' school in Boston. In 1899 she returned to Cleveland and began her long involvement with voluntary civic and women's organizations.

During the first years of this century BS was most active with the Visiting Nurse Association of Cleveland, serving on its board until 1924, and with the Cleveland Consumers' League, which she had organized in 1899. During World War I BS coordinated the activities of Cleveland's womens' organizations. She was named chairman of the Women's Committee of the Mayor's Advisory Board in 1917 and later in the same year was appointed Ohio Chairman of the Women's Committee of the U. S. Council of National Defense.

As a result of a visit by Maud Wood Park to Cleveland in 1910, BS joined the College Equal Suffrage League. In 1916 she organized the Women's City Club of Cleveland. After the War (1919) she became president of the Woman Suffrage Party of Greater Cleveland and a supporter of Carrie Chapman Catt. She became chairman of the Cleveland League of Women Voters (LWV) and was elected vice president of the National LWV in 1921. At the National League's fifth annual convention, 1924, in Buffalo, BS was elected president. She moved to Washington, D.C., where the League had its national headquarters, and served as president until 1934.

Under the leadership of BS the League initiated many of the methods and programs still followed today. Adult political education efforts were intensified. The League increased the number of its round tables and schools of citizenship, added many publications, and in 1928 inaugurated the Voters Campaign Information Service, a series of weekly radio programs presenting without partisanship questions of public interest. The League continued to lobby the Congress, participated in the Conferences on the Cause and Cure of War (including the first, held in 1925), exhibited at the Sesqui-Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia (1926), and presented planks that included women's rights issues to both political party conventions in 1928 and again in 1932.

During this period BS was also active in the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship and led the United States delegation to the Paris (1926) and the Berlin (1929) congresses.

In 1934, Marguerite Wells became the third president of the League. BS continued to live in Washington and remained active in a variety of organizations. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her to the Consumers' Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration and to the Federal Advisory Council of the U.S. Employment Service (1934). Her other activities included the following: vice-president of the National Municipal League, member of the General Advisory Council of the American Association for Labor Legislation, and vice-president for North America of the Inter-American Union of Women.

BS's interest in and involvement with Wellesley College continued throughout her life. She was first elected a trustee in 1918 and served until 1952. In 1950, the 75th anniversary year of the college, she was awarded an honorary LL.D. She also received honorary degrees from Western Reserve University (1930), Denison University (1931) and Oberlin College (1937).

In 1942 BS returned to her family home in Cleveland, where she enjoyed her hobbies of gardening, reading and double crostics. She died in 1955.

From the guide to the Papers, 1880-1955, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)