• Became interntional secretary of the YWCA
• Was a member of the first-ever Bluffton High School graduating class - 1881
• Classmate at Columbia University with Jane Addams of Hull House
Helen Barnes may be Bluffton’s most traveled woman of all time, crossing the Atlantic by boat 13 times and traveling three times around the world during her YWCA years. And the Bluffton News stated that at the time of her death at age 90 in 1953, she was the only Bluffton woman whose name has appeared in “Who’s Who.”
Dr. Helen F. Barnes
Bluffton High School graduate of 1881
International Secretary of the YWCA
Born: March 9, 1863
Died: Dec. 30, 1953
Dr. Helen Barnes, the first woman to receive a Bluffton High School diploma rose to the top of her profession, eventually becoming international secretary of the Young Woman’s Christian Association (YWCA).
Given the barriers women faced during her lifetime, her accomplishments, views expressed and worldwide friendships she made paint a picture of a very strong, impressive and successful woman.
Dr. Barnes may be Bluffton’s most traveled woman of all time, crossing the Atlantic by boat 13 times and traveling three times around the world during her YWCA years.
Yet, in her mind, she never left Bluffton. A 1944 Bluffton News article states: “Miss Helen Barnes of Findlay…who will preside at the alumni reunion here on Wednesday night of next week will be an overnight guest of Mrs. Fred Zehrbach, as usual. She is well remembered by older Bluffton residents and frequently attends high school reunions.”
A 1946 Bluffton News article reports: “Although Dr. Helen F. Barnes is a university graduate and bears the title of doctor, a Bluffton High School diploma is the only one that hangs in her study, and she is probably the most noted woman ever to claim residence in Bluffton.”
That decades-old claim remains accurate today.
As a member of the first-ever Bluffton High School graduating class – the year was 1881 –
she is also no doubt the first-ever Bluffton High School graduate to receive a diploma, if diplomas were handed out alphabetically.
And the Bluffton News stated that at the time of her death at age 90 in 1953, she was the only Bluffton woman whose name has appeared in “Who’s Who.”
Here’s her story:
Helen F. Barnes was born March 9, 1863, in Ottawa, Ohio, to Rev. Adam Clark and Harriet Barnes. The family moved across northwest Ohio, and for a time lived in Bluffton where Rev. Barnes pastored what is today First United Methodist Church. The Barnes family eventually settled at 432 W Sandusky St., Findlay, around 1905.
In 1885, Helen attended Ohio Normal College, now Ohio Northern University, where she obtained a 12-month teaching certificate. Then, in 1889 she received a degree from Ohio Wesleyan University. In 1892, she completed a master’s degree there.
Enrolling in Columbia University in 1907, she took a special course in sociology, receiving an L.L.D. degree in 1920. Among her Columbia classmates was Jane Addams of Hull House.
Dr. Barnes began her teaching career in Napoleon, Ohio, before teaching Latin and Greek in Mansfield, Ohio. In 1891 she joined Ohio Normal College, teaching literature and rhetoric.
While in Ada, she was offered a position by a Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) representative, which she accepted, and her career blossomed.
Her world expanded through the YWCA as did that organization under her direction, where she counted among her greatest achievements as organization of YWCA’s in New Zealand, Australia and Tasmania.
She traveled all over the world over the next decades. Among her duties included
raising funds for World War I, and for National Relief during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Her acquaintances extended to noted world figures, including the former Queen Mary of England, the three Chinese Soong Sisters when they were students in Southern Methodist College at Macon, Georgia, one of whom later became Madam Chiang Kai Sek, wife of the Chinese generalissimo and nationalist leader.
Other friends included Helen Gould and Margaret Slocum Sage, at one time rated as the first and second wealthiest woman in the nation, as well as Fannie Gable, wife of the prominent Cincinnati soap manufacturer, and other of whom were liberal contributors to the YWCA movement.
In a letter written in 1925 to a young woman asking Barnes’ opinion of who is the most interesting woman in American, she replied: “I have just finished reading “A Woman of Fifty,” [by Somerset Maugham] and think no woman now living in our land could write a more interested varied story than the one told by Mrs. Rheta Childe Dorr, so I vote for Mrs. Dorr.”
Expanding this view, Barnes wrote: “It seems to me no one tells the life story of her fight for what seems inborn in her nature: namely personal freedom to live her own spiritual and literary life, and to include in her efforts the whole group of womanhood everywhere.”
Relocating to Findlay following her retirement, her work never stopped. She became president of the Hancock County Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the Findlay Federation of Women’s Clubs, and was a member of the William Shakespeare, Symposium, Coterie and Altrusa Clubs. She was the moving force in the development of the Findlay Business and Professional Women’s Club.
Then, comes this Bluffton News account, from the early 1940s: “Seven years ago on her birthday she invited to her home everyone in Findlay with a birthday in March and organized them into a group known as the ‘Marchers.’ Since then she has received messages from Marchers each year on her birthday. She says she will have another Marcher party next year on March 9 – ‘when I am 88.’”
If all of this was not enough, picture this image of her spending many of her summers later in life at Lakeside, Ohio, where she was well known for driving her blue Packard car very slowly, when she wasn’t hitchhiking.
Bluffton High School 1881 class members
Members of Bluffton High School’s first graduating class follow. At this time the school was a three-year high school. The list of members, from a 1904 school publication, shows graduate occupations and home town.
• Helen F. Barnes, lecturer, Carey
• Lillia M. Clark (Mrs. W.V. Hutchins), Waynesburg, Pennsylvania
• Minnie Herrmann, Bluffton
• Rolla A. Hickey, bookkeeper, Corapolis, Pennsylvania
• Willis V. Hutchins, bookkeeper, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania
• Emma Lugabill (Mrs. J.A. Ferrall), Waterford, Oklahoma
Her 1881 high school class essay title summarized the teenage vision of her future, “We are leaving the bay, the ocean is before us.” Unfortunately, the Bluffton News issue, which would have included her essay no longer exists.
Helen Barnes died at Blanchard Valley Hospital on Dec. 29, 1953. She was buried in Pomeroy Cemetery in Ottawa, Ohio with her parents.
Much of this article came from material from the Hancock County Museum, Findlay, Ohio, and from The Bluffton News.
Click here for the first feature in this series – Ike Geiger, BHS 1927