Katharine Lee Bates
Born August 12, 1859. Died March 28, 1929, in Wellesley, Mass.
Bates Elementary School, 116 Elmwood Rd., was named for her.
Wellesley High School class of 1874
Wellesley College, class of 1880
Taught at Dana Hall School until 1886
Was a professor of English literature at Wellesley College until 1925
Lived at 70 Curve St., Wellesley.
Bates Elementary School, 116 Elmwood Rd., was named for her.
Author of the patriotic song America the Beautiful.
Has been commemorated by a series of “O Beautiful” USPS stamps.
The Shining Sea Bikeway, an 11-mile paved and level bike path stretches on Cape Cod from Bates’ birthplace of Falmouth, to Woods Hole.
Sylvia Plath
Born October 27, 1932. Died February 11, 1963
Straight-A student at Wellesley High School. Class of 1950.
Wrote for the Wellesley Junior High School paper; the Wellesley’s High School newspaper, The Bradford; and the Wellesley Townsman.
Lived at 26 Elmwood Road home (protected as a single-building Historic District house, and thus not in danger of becoming a Wellesley tear-down).
Graduated from Smith College
One of the most influential poets and leading writers of the 20th century.
Pulitzer Prize winner of Collected Poems (1982, posthumously)
Author of The Bell Jar
Died by suicide on February 11, 1963 in London.
More on Sylvia Plath’s high school years.
Anne Sexton
Born November 9, 1928. Died October 4, 1974
Attended Wellesley public schools. Graduated high school from Rogers Hall, a girls’ preparatory school in Lowell, Massachusetts. Class of 1947.
Lived at 81 Garden Rd., Wellesley
Worked at the Hathaway House Bookshop, which now holds offices.
Met Sylvia Plath at a poetry seminar at Boston University in 1959.
Attended some college, but did not receive an undergraduate degree.
1967 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Live or Die (1966).
Died by suicide on October 4, 1974, in Weston, Massachusetts
