<p>Anyone know how the college got its name?</p>
<p>Mini, are you baiting these poor students?</p>
<p>No - I actually really want to know (my head is filled with all kinds of trivia, but there is a blank space here just waiting.....)</p>
<p>the school is in wellesley massachusettes</p>
<p>Okay, HB, but for whom was Wellesley, MA named? (I'd have to pull out the literature...I think it ultimately links directly to the school as well but my memory may be fogged.)</p>
<p>Mini, the reason I suggested same is that aforementioned foggy memory says it's not a "Mrs." Wellesley at all...though I now have some gathering doubts.</p>
<p>Actually, Mini is right. The town is named after the school: "One of the businessmen attracted to this pretty, restful place was Henry Durant, who in 1875 startled the countryside by founding Wellesley College, a college for women which has become one of the most respected colleges in the country, on its beautiful lakeside campus. He named the college to honor his next-door neighbor, Horatio Hollis Hunnewell, a wealthy businessman and town benefactor whose mansion was named "Wellesley" in commemoration of his wife, whose maiden name was Welles." </p>
<p>More information can be found at <a href="http://www.ci.wellesley.ma.us/history/%5B/url%5D">http://www.ci.wellesley.ma.us/history/</a></p>
<p>named after?.... (Williams is in Williamstown, but Williams is not named after the town, but the town after Williams, the man - Ephram Williams. Swarthmore is in Swarthmore, but the college is not named after the town, nor after a person, but after a building in northern England - Swarthmore Hall. Amherst is in Amherst, and it IS named after the town and NOT after Lord Jeffrey the genocidal Indian killer.) Brown is named after Nicholas Brown, Jr., slave goods and shipping merchant. Yale is named after Elihu Yale, who was NOT the founder of Yale (and barely contributed to it at all) - Thomas Dummer was founder of Yale, and Yalies really should be called "Dummies".</p>
<p>So who was Mrs. Wellesley? (sounds like there was probably a bit of 19th century "hanky-panky".) </p>
<p>There there is the tail (tale) of Miss Pamona....</p>
<p>Elihu Yale did not "barely" contribute to Yale. He contributed a lot, except most of his donation was lost when he sent it to the school under Yale's OLD name. So Yale University didn't receive much of his donation. This is what one of my Yale friends told me-I think it's funny.</p>
<p>The "story" I've got (told to me by a former Dean) was that they named the college after him in hopes of getting a major donation, but he died before it ever materialized. Funny either way. Anyhow, both Dummers and Brown made enough money from donations from the slave merchants and the mercantile spinoffs that in the long run it didn't matter.</p>
<p>Hmm. I need to go digging. When D was applying to Wellesley, I ran across something with a direct but distant link to Arthur Wellesley, who is better known by another appellation.</p>