Jessica Garretson Finch

Jessica Garretson Finch (August 19, 1871 – October 31, 1949) was an American educator, author, women's rights activist, founder of the Lennox School for girls, and founding president of Finch College.

Finch was born on August 19, 1871, the daughter of Congregational minister Rev. Ferdinand Van De Vere Garretson and Helen Philbrick Garretson. When she was 12, the family moved from New York, where her father was rector of Grace Chapel on West 22nd Street, to Franconia, New Hampshire. She attended Dow Academy and the Cambridge Latin School before entering Barnard College. Finch received her A.B. from Barnard College in 1893, the first graduating class of the new, women's college. She applied to attend law school at Columbia University, and was formally refused on the grounds that the Law School did not admit women. She earned her LL.B. from New York University School of Law in 1898.

She was a well-known suffragette, president of the New York Equal Franchise Society. Finch was an advocate of careers for women. Although in 1912 she self-described as an "orthodox Socialist", her views shifted and she was later described as a political "liberal".

She gave paid, public talks on the subject to young ladies as a part-time job to help support herself when she was a college student in the 1890s. She continued to lecture to young ladies on a range of topics, and also worked as a tutor in subjects including Greek after graduating form college.

She was a founding member of the Colony Club and was an author, penning such books as Mothers and Daughters, Psychology of Youth, and Flower and Kitchen Gardens.

In a February 1908 talk that Finch gave at the Civitas Club in New York City, she said:

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