12/13/2025
She was 65, deaf, and unmarried. Everyone expected her to leave her fortune to male relatives. Instead, she wrote a will that changed history for every woman who came after.
Hatfield, Massachusetts, 1861.
Sophia Smith sat alone in the house where she'd lived her entire life, facing a question no woman of her era had the freedom to ask:
What should I do with a fortune of my own?
She was 65 years old. Deaf since age 40. The last surviving member of her family.
And suddenly one of the wealthiest women in New England.
Her father, a prosperous farmer, had died in 1836 leaving substantial wealth to his children. Her sister Harriet died in 1859. Her brothers Joseph and Austin—the latter a shrewd investor who had multiplied his inheritance—both died in 1861.
Sophia, who had never married, inherited everything.
Nearly $400,000. A fortune equivalent to about $12 million today.
Society had clear expectations for unmarried women with money:
Make a few polite charitable donations.
Leave the rest to male relatives.
Die quietly.
Women in the 1860s couldn't vote. Couldn't serve on boards. Weren't encouraged to think beyond the margins society drew for them.
But Sophia Smith refused the script.
She'd spent her life reading voraciously—poetry, history, newspapers, political commentary. Her formal education had been meager—a few terms in local schools, twelve weeks in Hartford when she was fourteen.
She knew what she'd missed. What every woman was denied.
So she turned to her young pastor, Reverend John Morton Greene, with a simple, dangerous question:
"How can I make my fortune matter?"
Greene, a graduate of Amherst College, suggested several options. Donate to Amherst. Support Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (where his wife had studied). Fund a school for the deaf—something Sophia initially favored given her own hearing loss.
But in 1868, the Clarke School for the Deaf opened in nearby Northampton.
That project was covered. Sophia reconsidered.
Greene proposed something radical:
"Build a college. For women. A real college—not a seminary, not a finishing school. A college that gives women an education equal to what men receive."
The idea ignited something in Sophia.
She'd been told her entire life that women didn't need higher learning. That their minds couldn't handle it. That algebra and philosophy were "unfeminine."
But she knew better.
She'd watched brilliant women—including herself—denied opportunities simply because of their s*x.
For the next two years, Sophia worked on her will.
She consulted lawyers. Refined her vision. Made sure every word reflected her intention.
In March 1870, she finalized it:
Every dollar of her fortune—$387,468—would build a college where women received "an institution for the higher education of young women, with the design to furnish them means and facilities for education equal to those which are afforded in our Colleges to young men."
Not separate. Not softer. Equal.
Three months later, on June 12, 1870, Sophia Smith died.
She never saw the campus. Never met a student. Never knew if her gamble would work.
But her will stood firm.
Smith College was chartered in 1871. It opened its doors in 1875 with 14 students.
And those 14 women studied the exact same rigorous curriculum as Harvard men:
Latin. Greek. Mathematics. Natural science. Philosophy.
Critics warned this would damage women's brains. Ruin their health. Make them unmarriageable.
The students proved them wrong with every exam they passed.
Sophia's gift arrived at the perfect moment in history.
If women were to become doctors, lawyers, scientists, leaders—they needed the education men had monopolized.
Smith College became the door they'd been waiting for.
The ripple effects never stopped.
By 1900, Smith had over 1,000 students.
By the 1920s, it was one of the legendary Seven Sisters—the women's colleges that educated generations of American leaders.
The graduates transformed America:
Betty Friedan, whose book "The Feminine Mystique" launched the modern women's movement.
Gloria Steinem, journalist and feminist icon.
Sylvia Plath, poet whose work still haunts and inspires.
Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan, both First Ladies.
Julia Child, who taught America to cook.
Thousands more who shaped law, literature, science, politics, medicine, and culture.
All because Sophia Smith—a deaf woman from a small Massachusetts town who'd been denied the education she deserved—used wealth she couldn't take with her to build opportunity she'd never live to see.
Her unmarried status, once viewed as a social limitation, gave her complete legal control of her fortune.
She turned it into a foundation for women who would change the world.
Today, Smith College has educated over 50,000 women. It remains one of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in America.
The Sophia Smith Collection at the college is now one of the largest repositories of women's history in the world.
And every student who walks through those gates walks on ground Sophia planted in 1870.
She couldn't attend college.
So she built one.
She watered it with her entire life savings and trusted future generations to bloom.
More than 150 years later, they still are.
Sophia Smith (1796-1870): The woman who couldn't go to college—so she built one for every woman who came after.
