Edith G. Stedman

Stedman was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the family later moved to Belmont, Massachusetts where she attended high school.[1] Stedman enjoyed high school, writing, "I think I worked harder and got more academic pleasure out of some of my work in high school than I ever did in college."[2] She went on to Radcliffe College where she graduated in 1910.[3]

After school, she worked for a time at the Framingham Reformatory for Women until her brother convinced her to quit in order to run the family's candy store, a job she later discovered she hated.[3] After two years, she quit and went to Europe with the YMCA to help the war effort there in 1917.[3][1] She was a canteen worker in France and Germany working for the YMCA until 1919.[1] Back in the United States, Stedman did not find work that interested her.[4] Stedman then traveled to China in 1920, where she worked as a medical social worker in Hankou at an Episocopal Mission.[5][6] She stayed until 1927, returning to Boston where she started working as an executive secretary for the Judge Baker Foundation.[6][1]

Ada Louise Comstock invited Stedman to come for the Appointment Bureau at Radcliffe in 1930.[1] Stedman developed vocational programs for women in the 1930s.[1] Undergraduates and graduate students were both helped by Stedman in finding employment.[7] She created and directed the Training Course in Personnel Administration and supported professional training for women.[8] Stedman worked as the director of the Training Course until 1941.[1] Students could be awarded a fellowship grant in her name.[9][10] Stedman stayed at Radcliffe until 1954, when she retired.[1]

As a retiree, she worked as a volunteer in different capacities. Between 1955 and 1959, Stedman volunteered at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.[1] In 1959, she started spending half the year living with friends at the Manor House, Dorchester.[1] Stedman created a group, the American Friends of Dorchester Abbey, which raised money for both the Abbey and the surrounding gardens.[1] Stedman also wrote during her retirement.[1]

Her last years were spent living in Sherrill House, a nursing home in Boston run by the Episcopal church.[1] She suffered from Menieres disease and had deafness.[1] Stedman died in Boston on July 16, 1978.[11]

Stedman was awarded as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1976 for her work supporting the restoration of Dorchester Abbey.[11][12] She was given the award at the British embassy in Washington, D.C.[13] A stone carving of Stedman is located above the west door of the Abbey.[14]

• A Monastery Guest House Cook Book. Dorchester Abbey. 1965. OCLC 15133614.
• A Yankee in an English Village. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Creative Editing. 1972. OCLC 50066675.
• Finger Prints. Boston: Friends of Dorchester Abbey. 1977. OCLC 61723030.