Queer Places:
Wellesley College (Seven Sisters), 106 Central St, Wellesley, MA 02481
Cold Springs Cemetery, 4849 Cold Springs Rd, Lockport, NY 14094, United States

Ellen Louisa Burrell (June 12, 1850 – December 3, 1938) was born on June 12, 1850, in Lockport, New York, to prominent local citizens Myron Louis Burrell and Mary Jones Burrell. Myron L. Burrell served as a local official and the first superintendent of the Lockport public school system.. She entered Wellesley College in its initial years, graduating with her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1880. Her graduating class included notable figures who would also become her long-time colleagues at Wellesley, such as author Katharine Lee Bates and chemist Charlotte Fitch Roberts.

After graduation, Burrell spent a year as a graduate student at Wellesley (1880–1881) before taking a position as a teacher at Rockford Seminary in Illinois from 1881 to 1886. She subsequently pursued advanced studies in Germany at the University of Göttingen during 1896–1897.

Burrell returned to Wellesley College as a faculty member in 1886. She became a prominent figure in mathematics education and institutional governance at the college over three decades.

In 1897, Wellesley President Julia Irvine reorganized the mathematics program into two distinct departments: Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. This division was created in part to handle personal and ideological friction between Burrell and her fellow mathematics professor, Ellen Hayes. Burrell served as the Head of the Pure Mathematics Department from 1897 until her retirement in 1916, while Hayes headed Applied Mathematics. Following the simultaneous retirement of both women in 1916, the departments were reunited.

During her tenure, Burrell worked alongside notable mathematicians, including Helen Abbott Merrill and Roxana Vivian. She privately published classroom texts, including The Number System and Synthetic Projection Geometry.

In addition to teaching mathematics, Burrell served as the curator of the Wellesley College Herbarium, helping manage its botanical collections. She was an active participant in professional organizations, including the American Mathematical Society and the Association of Mathematics Teachers of New England.

During the 1900–1910 decade, Burrell was a core member of the Wellesley College faculty. Historians studying higher education—most notably Patricia Ann Palmieri in In Adamless Eden: The Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley—have highlighted how the turn-of-the-century Wellesley faculty formed a unique, self-sustaining female community.

At the turn of the 20th century, female academics were largely expected to forego traditional marriage to maintain their university careers. In response, many faculty members at Wellesley lived, worked, and traveled together in lifelong, cohabitating partnerships termed "Wellesley marriages." This academic network included prominent figures such as Katharine Lee Bates, Katharine Coman, Vida Dutton Scudder, Emily Greene Balch, and Helen Abbott Merrill.

In modern LGBTQ+ historical documentation, Burrell and her contemporaries from the 1900–1910 Wellesley faculty are recognized as central figures in early queer academic history. Their lives demonstrated early alternative domestic models, financial independence, and female-centered community structures before the modern concept of sexual identity was codified.

Following her retirement from Wellesley in 1916, Burrell remained engaged in civic and political life. In 1920, following the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, she enthusiastically cast her ballot for Warren G. Harding in the presidential election.

Ellen Louisa Burrell passed away on December 3, 1938, in Roxbury, Massachusetts, at the age of 88. Her personal papers and archival materials are preserved in the Wellesley College Archives.

The Burrell family plot is located at Cold Springs Cemetery, where members of her family—including her parents—are buried following her family's long roots in Niagara County.

References:


In Adamless Eden: The Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley
by Patricia Ann Palmieri

Other references:

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