Jessica Garretson Finch

Jessica Garretson Finch (August 19, 1871 – October 31, 1949) was an American educator, author, women's rights activist, founder of the Lennox School for girls, and founding president of Finch College.

Early life Finch was born on August 19, 1871, the daughter of Congregational minister Rev. Ferdinand Van De Vere Garretson and Helen Philbrick Garretson. Finch was an advocate of careers for women. Although in 1912 she self-described as an "orthodox Socialist", her views shifted and she was later described as a political "liberal".

In June 1949 she was given a Doctorate of Humane Letters, honoris causa, by New York University. The citation described her as a graduate of the university's law school who had founded a women's college, "on the unorthodox postulate that every graduate should mother at least four children and cultivate a non-domestic avocation fore and aft."

Finch College and Lennox School Finch founded the Finch school in 1900 to provide career training for young women, saying that her own education at Barnard College had not given her or her classmates the skills needed to earn a living. Ironically, Finch became not a career-oriented college, but rather "one of the most famed of U.S. girls' finishing schools." She envisioned a world in which women would work until they wed, at about age 25, bear and rear children for about fifteen years, before resuming paid employment at about age 40 and working for another thirty years.

Finch founded the college as the Finch School, a secondary school for girls. In 1916 she founded the Lennox School, a primary school to prepare girls to enter the Finch School. Lennox School employed Kitty Kenney and Jennie Kenney as joint heads until they retired in 1929. The Kenney sisters had been trained by Maria Montessori. They were two of the four sisters who were leading members of the militant Women's Social and Political Union. Kitty and Jennie had run a convalescent home in London for suffragettes recovering after they had been imprisoned and force fed.

Family She was married to James Wells Finch with whom she had a daughter, Elsie; the couple divorced. who died in 1947.

Death Finch died at her home in Manhattan on October 31, 1949.