The Margaret Elliott collection, arranged alphabetically, pertains to her professional career. Most of the papers focus on her research of women's roles in business and professional careers in the World War II era. The papers provide valuable insight into the way women viewed their role in higher education and the workforce in the 1930s and 1940s. One folder in the papers, "Dissertations and thesis critiques," contains interesting information about the topics students were choosing for their dissertations in the World War II era. This file is closed to researchers for seventy five years from the date of creation because it contains personally identifiable student information.
Margaret Elliott was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1891. She received her A.B. degree from Wellesley in 1914, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Radcliffe in 1921 and 1924, respectively. Her dissertation was titled Earnings of Women in Business and the Professions.
Margaret Elliott was an instructor at Abbott Academy, Andover, Massachusetts from 1915 to 1917, and was appointed as an assistant professor of Personnel Management in the newly organized School of Business Administration at the University of Michigan in 1924, after she received her doctoral degree. In 1929, she was promoted to associate professor in both the business school and the Department of Economics in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. She was promoted to full professor in 1931 in both departments. Margaret Elliott was the first woman to be a full professor at the School of Business Administration.
Margaret Elliott was an active member of several organizations, including the National Federation of Business and Professional Women, and the American Association of University Women (AAUW). After she retired from her work with the AAUW, a national fellowship was established in her name.
Margaret Elliott married Professor John Evarts Tracy of the Michigan Law School in 1933. The couple had no children of their own, but they did raise his sister's children after her death. John Tracy died in 1959. Margaret Elliott Tracy died in 1978 at the age of 87.
