by Leah Kanik
ACHA Summer Intern
This month’s #ACHACollections will also feature one of our past presidents: Dr. Annabelle McConnell Melville, the first woman to serve in the position. She served as vice president in 1960 and 1985 and eventually as president herself in 1989 after 69 years of all male presidency. There have been ten female presidents in the time since Dr. Melville, including Mary Dunn who is currently holding the position. As a historian, educator, and author, Dr. Melville has made great contributions to the study of history and is a “solitary exemplar of women historical writers … on the basis of both her academic credentials and her scholarly monographs.”[1]
Annabelle Melville was born in New Jersey on February 3, 1910 and began her life as a Catholic after converting in 1936.[2] She would go on to become a notable Catholic biographer who was passionate about Catholic and historical research as evidenced by her distinguished career in academia. After receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University at Albany and doctorate from CUA, she taught at St. Joseph’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland then moved to Massachusetts where she taught at Bridgewater State University from 1953 until her retirement in 1975.[3] Dr. Melville’s success in academia is recognized by her honorary degrees from Stonehill College, the Catholic University of America, and Bridgewater where she was also named a Commonwealth Professor.[4]
She is the author of Elizabeth Bayley Seton 1774-1821, a comprehensive biography on the first canonized saint that was born in America. What started as an assigned paper evolved into her dissertation and a published book that became one of her most significant biographies; Melville even had the pleasure of attending the canonization of the saint she spent so much time researching in 1975.[5] It was this work that initiated her career in writing, specifically in the field of Catholic history. Although briefly traversing fictional literature by writing a mystery novel during a waiting period in the midst of crafting another biography, Melville described Church history as her “first love” and it was to this that she dedicated most of her study.[6] Thus, she also wrote biographies on Bishops John Carroll, Jean Lefebvre de Cheverus, and Louis William DuBourg who were the bishops of Baltimore, Boston, and Louisiana respectively. Her biography on Bishop Carroll, John Carroll of Baltimore: Founder of the American Catholic Hierarchy, won the ACHA’s John Gilmary Shea Prize in 1954. She credits The Catholic University of America where she earned her doctorate in 1949 and their Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award in 1964 as the “one institution [that was] largely responsible” for making her an author.[7]
No less influential was prominent Church historian Monsignor John Tracy Ellis who served as her advisor for her dissertation. It was he who suggested Melville write about Mother Seton after citing their similarity as converts and married women and proposed that she be the one to write about the saint’s life after he had declined the opportunity due to preoccupation with his own research on James Cardinal Gibbons.[8] Ellis, in his obituary for Melville after her death in 1991, lauded her writing style, approach to historical research, and her kind personality.[9] She exemplifies what members of the ACHA, man or woman, strive to commit to today, notably a study of Catholic history driven by a love of its richness.
[1] Dolores Liptak, “Women Church Historians: First and Second Generation,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 104, no. 1/4 (1993): 19-20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44211200.
[2] John Tracy Ellis, quoted in “Notes and Comments,” The Catholic Historical Review 77, no. 3 (1991): 562. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25023630.
[3] John Tracy Ellis, quoted in “Notes and Comments,” 562.
[4] John Tracy Ellis, quoted in “Notes and Comments,” 562.
[5] Annabelle Melville. “Writing A Saint’s Biography,” U.S. Catholic Historian 10, no. 1/2 (1991): 74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25153942.
[6] Annabelle Melville, “Annabelle McConnell Melville,” CatholicAuthors.com.
[7] Annabelle Melville, “Annabelle McConnell Melville,” CatholicAuthors.com.
[8] Annabelle Melville. “Writing A Saint’s Biography,” U.S. Catholic Historian 10, no. 1/2 (1991): 72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25153942.
[9] John Tracy Ellis, quoted in “Notes and Comments,” The Catholic Historical Review 77, no. 3 (1991): 562-563. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25023630.