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© 2003 Smith College. All rights reserved.
2nd Lt. Margaret P. Breed (Marsh)
at the Plattsburgh Barracks, 1945
Margaret Post Breed was born in Boston, Massachusetts on June 21, 1920 to Laura Post and Stephen Alec Breed. She attended the May School in Boston, Class of1937, and graduated with honors from Smith College in 1941. She joined the Women's Army Corps (WAC) in 1943 and remained on active duty until 1946. Her responsibilities included conducting interviews and foreign language tests, and she also took army administrative classes. She traveled a great deal to various army bases in the United States.
After the war, Margaret Breed married Paul Marsh and they had two sons, Alec and Alan. She held a variety of jobs, including teaching and serving as an admissions officer at Radcliffe and Wellesley Colleges; working at Polaroid Corporation as a security supervisor and as a buyer of raw material for battery manufacture; and acting as president of a small family company, North Atlantic Dragline and Shovel Service. She also served on the staff of the Lighthouse Preservation Society, and as Deputy Assistant Tax Collector in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
The papers date from 1942 to 1946 and consist primarily of correspondence between Margaret Breed Marsh and the Breed family, especially her parents. She wrote letters home almost daily from various posts in California, Georgia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana. They provide a vivid description of the living quarters, mess halls, and bureaucratic mishaps that she observed there, as well as the professional duties and personal activities associated with wartime army life. Photographs of Marsh and her fellow officers are included, highlighting WAC military dress. Marsh's keen sense of humor and occasional political insight offer a compelling and vivid picture of what life was like for one of the estimated 150,000 WACs who served during World War II.
SERIES I. CORRESPONDENCE (1943-46)comprises the bulk of the collection and contains Marsh's letters home.
SERIES II. PHOTOGRAPHS AND MEMORABILIA (1942-46)consists of one folder of snapshots of Marsh, her army colleagues, and the various army bases she visited, as well as miscellaneous pamphlets, brochures, and clippings pertaining to subjects of interest to Marsh.
This collection is organized into two series:
The papers are open to research according to the regulations of the Sophia Smith Collection.
The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to unpublished works created by Margaret Breed Marsh. Copyright to materials created by others may be owned by those individuals or their heirs or assigns. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights. Permission must be obtained from the Sophia Smith Collection to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use."
Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:
Margaret Breed Marsh Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA
Margaret Breed Marsh donated her papers to the Sophia Smith Collection in 2002.
Processed by Noella Natalino, (intern) and Burd Schlessinger, 2003. Finding aid revised 2006.