Bertha Smith was born in Kennebunkport before the Civil War, to Horace and Mary A. Murphy Smith. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1881 and taught in local schools during the 1890s.

Miss Bertha Smith, Mrs. Gertrude Hanson, Mrs. Hope Littlefield and Miss Annie Merrill went for a ride together on their bicycles. On their way home they stopped near the Iron Bridge school house and had lunch. Bertha finished first and was up gathering flowers in the field for her botany pupil, Louise Wheeler. The ladies started talking as they watched and decided that they too wanted to learn Botany from Bertha. The group met every Saturday through summer and fall. Their last excursion for botanicals, in 1901, was on the day the Savannah was launched at David Clark’s Shipyard.

Even after all the flowers had gone by for the season, their little group hated to be separated. Annie Peabody Brooks, the librarian, gave them the use of a small furnished room for their meetings. Their society adopted the name The Olympian Club with Bertha as their President. Their winter course of study in 1901 would be classical mythology. Their textbook, Bullfinch’s Age of Fable with side lights from Hawthorne, Tennyson, and Mrs. Browning.

They resumed their study of botany when spring flowers returned in 1902. Author, Margaret Deland invited members of the established Olympian Club to meet at her house to learn about flying insects. After the meeting, members enjoyed a tour of Margaret’s Garden by the river. The club members were later invited to a mushroom party at the home of Mrs. Rice of Kennebunk Beach. A variety of mushrooms were brought in for study, and a dainty lunch of mushrooms was served.

In 1921, when women finally had the right to vote at town meeting, the ladies of The Olympian Club conducted programs to prepare the town’s female voters to execute their new responsibility. I would have loved to learn with these women!

Did any of your ancestors belong to The Olympian Club?