Union Church - Ellen H. Swallow Marries Robert H. Richards June 4, 1875

Originally named the Union Congregational Church, the church was completed in 1870 and is located a few blocks from where Ellen lived with the Blodgetts. On June 4, 1875, Reverend Henry. M. Parsons, one of the church’s first ministers, married Ellen Henrietta Swallow and Robert Hallowell Richards.^3.10

In 1948, the Union Congregational Church merged with the Old South Church. A new congregation purchased the building and re-dedicated the space as the Union Church in 1949.^1,7

Unlike most 19th-century women, Ellen Swallow preferred to focus on her education and career, not marriage. In an 1866 letter to her cousin Annie, she writes, "[T]he young or old gentleman has not yet made his appearance who can entice me away from my free and independent life.”⁹ In 1871, however, a gentleman appeared who would offer marriage in 1873 and encourage her career throughout her lifetime: Robert Hallowell Richards.

Born in 1844 to a wealthy, prominent Boston family, a reluctant Robert seemed destined to follow the men of his family to Harvard University. However, as he prepared for the entrance exams, his mother suggested he attend the new scientific school her cousin, Professor William Barton Rogers, was opening. Robert applied and became the seventh student to enroll at MIT. “The method of teaching was completely new to all of us. We found ourselves bidding goodbye to the old learn-by-heart method, [...] We learned from experiment and experience. [...] Education ceased to be a plague spot and became a delight.”¹² Robert graduated from MIT in 1868 and started work at MIT the same year as an Assistant in General Chemistry the same year.⁴ By 1871, when Ellen Swallow began at MIT, he had been promoted to Professor of Mineralogy and Assaying.⁵

During Ellen’s studies at MIT, the two maintained a professional relationship. Ellen’s address does not appear in Robert’s diary until June 1873, several pages after his list of MIT students, including Ellen, who earned degrees on May 31, 1873. In his autobiography, Robert wrote, “I had no idea of what a wife ought to be to me, or what I ought to be to a wife, but I knew that Ellen Swallow’s aims in life were along the lines which mine had seemed to follow. I admired her pioneer spirit, as I think she respected me for the hard work which I was doing. The inevitable happened, and one day in the laboratory (June 6, 1873), shortly after she had received her B.S., I asked her to become my wife. She wished to think it over for a little, and to my everlasting joy, she decided to accept my offer.”¹²

Ellen would “think it over” for months. First, Robert must quit smoking, so he did. Then, she needed to complete the water survey work she had begun with Professor Ripley for the Fifth Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts, published in 1874. Robert had proposed not just a marriage but a partnership. Finally, in June 1875, they were married.

After the ceremony, they set out for their newly rented home at 32 Eliot Street, Jamaica Plain. After a week together at the Eliot Street house, the newlyweds joined Robert's mining engineering class trip to Nova Scotia: “We have visited the Albert mine, the famous Joggins and the Arcadia Iron mines. I have been the botanist of the party. We are just in time for the early Spring flowers. [...] We have not exactly lived in clover, but have not been very badly off yet.”⁹

Ellen & Robert’s marriage was far from traditional for the 19th Century. Many women of the time pursued scientific research only under the auspices of a male family member. Caroline Hunt wrote, “[Ellen] saw no reason, however, why women should lose their individuality in marriage. It is becoming recognized that woman has a personality that is not in her husband's control, that the mere fact of marrying him does not make her his devoted slave."⁹ Although Robert and Ellen often collaborated on projects, he encouraged her pursuit of an independent career as an instructor at MIT and a Chemical Analyst. Robert believed, “One of the most important lines which came her way and which she took up successfully was the founding of the New England Kitchen.”¹² - even though the new facility annexed space from Robert’s Metallurgy and Mining Department.⁸

Almost one hundred years later, Theodore Nadelson and Leon Eisenberg (husband of MIT’s first female Dean of Students, Carola Eisenberg) would express a sentiment similar to Robert’s: “We have had - and continue to have - a quite extraordinary experience of marriage, not one we were perceptive enough to seek when we fell in love nor even one we welcomed fully when its depth-first became manifest but one with unique meaning for our own growth: the experience of living with a complete woman.”⁶

1. “Boston, Massachusetts. Union Congregational Church. Records, 1822-1948 | Congregational Library & Archives.” Congregational Library & Archives, Apr. 1988, https://www.congregationallibrary.org/sites/all/files/BostonMAUnion0031.pdf. Accessed 11 Apr. 2021.
2. Clarke, Robert. The Woman Who Founded Ecology: Ellen Swallow. First Printing, Follett Publishing Company, 1973.
3. Caro, “Union Church,” Omeka at Brandeis. https://omeka.lts.brandeis.edu/items/show/151. Accessed 27 Sep. 2022.
4. Course Catalogue of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1868 - 1869. https://dome.mit.edu/handle/1721.3/82712. Accessed 11 Apr. 2023.
5. Course Catalogue of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1871 - 1872. https://dome.mit.edu/handle/1721.3/82559. Accessed 11 Apr. 2023.
6. Nadelson M.D., Theodore, and Eisenberg M.D., Leon. “The successful professional woman: on being married to one” The American Journal of Psychiatry, Volumen 134, Issue 10, October 1977. Published Online:1 Apr 2006, https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.134.10.1071 Accessed 22 Apr. 2022.
7. “Our Story | Union.” Union | Dynamic Worship. Radical Welcome. Progressive Witness. https://unionboston.org/our-story/. Accessed 11 Apr. 2023.
8. President’s Report 1893, “The Lunchroom.” https://libraries.mit.edu/archives/mithistory/presidents-reports/1893.pdf#page=56. Accessed 20 Dec. 2022.
9. Hunt, Caroline Louisa, 1865-1927. The Life of Ellen H. Richards. Boston: Whitcomb & Barrows, 1912, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t3513ww21. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022.
10. Massachusetts, U.S., Marriage Records, 1840-1915. New England Historic Genealogical Society; Boston, Massachusetts; Massachusetts Vital Records, 1911–1915. Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Marriage Records, 1840-1915 [database online]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.
11. Robert Richards diary, 1873 March to July. Robert H. Richards papers, Box 2. Department of Distinctive Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
12. Richards, R. H. (Robert Hallowell). (1936). Robert Hallowell Richards: His Mark. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company.
13. Swallow, Pamela C. The Remarkable Life and Career of Ellen Swallow Richards. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.