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Photograph of Ella Lyman Cabot on the ground of the Lyman Estate in Waltham, Massachusetts. This image is in the collections of Historic New England. Please click on the image to visit their website and learn more.
​Ella Lyman Cabot is one of the only women depicted in a memorial plaque along the walls of King's Chapel. She was born into the wealthy Lowell and Lyman families in 1866, and dedicated most of her adulthood to education and her career. After studying at Radcliffe College, she took graduate courses at Harvard College, but was not able to receive a degree for her work due to her gender. As an educator, Ella taught ethics, psychology, and philosophy courses, and she also was the director of King's Chapel's Sunday School for 12 years, having restructured the program to better serve the students. She published several books on ethics and wrote extensively about philosophy, but she did not receive formal recognition for many of her contributions as a woman in a male-dominated field. She served on a number of boards including Radcliffe College and the Massachusetts Board of Education. In 1939, her husband Robert Clarke Cabot established a trust in her honor to aid individuals in effecting positive change in the world. The Ella Lyman Cabot Trust still exists today.
What would you do if you received funding from the Ella Lyman Cabot Trust?
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What can you do to effect positive change in your community?