Ava Milam Clark was the Dean of the School of Home Economics for over 30 years, and through her frequent visits abroad, was instrumental to the development of home economics in multiple countries. After serving in many high-profile leadership roles in multiple organizations, including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, she married J.C. Clark late in life and died in 1976.
Ava Milam and her twin sister, Ada, were born November 27, 1884 in Macon County, Missouri to Mary Louisa McGinnis Milam and Ancil Milam. Ava graduated from Century Academy in Macon County in June 1903. She was then employed at Blees Military Academy in Macon, Missouri for a short time before entering the University of Chicago in 1906. At the University of Chicago, she studied under a number of faculty who were pioneers in home economics and domestic science in the U.S., including Marion Talbot and Sophonsiba Breckenridge, who would become lifelong friends to Ava. She graduated from the University of Chicago in June 1910 and went on for graduate study, leaving with a Master of Arts in 1911. She came to Oregon Agricultural College in 1911 to be a faculty member in the burgeoning Home Economics department. She assumed the deanship of this school in 1917, and oversaw the school until her retirement in 1950.
A central focus of Ava Milam's career was the development of home economics in other countries. In 1922 she made her first trip to China, visiting towns and villages all over the country to observe homes and schools, and to learn from Chinese teachers and homemakers. She conducted a survey of Chinese students and citizens on this trip, including questions about the type and size of family, family customs and social life, housing and sanitary standards, the mother's and father's responsibilities in the home, the care and feeding of children, and industries in the home. She later published the results of this questionnaire in 1930 in a book titled
In 1931 she travelled again to China, Korea, and Japan on sabbatical to establish a scholarship program for home economics students in these countries in her work for the American Home Economics Association, and to work as a consultant for home economics programs in Asia. She was also able to visit the Philippines, Singapore, Burma, India, Egypt, Palestine, Italy, and London on this trip. In 1932, she was made Director of Home Economics for the Oregon State System of Higher Education, and coordinated the work in home economics at University of Oregon, Oregon State College, and other schools in the state. Ava Milam led a home economics study tour for OSC students, graduates, and faculty with Alma Fritchoff in the summer of 1937, visiting China, Japan, and Korea to observe homes and visit tourist attractions. This tour was held up in China by the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, and the tourists escaped from battle areas just before major destruction occurred.
In 1938-1939, Ava Milam continued work towards her Ph.D at Columbia University. During World War II, she chaired a large statewide committee responsible for the Nutrition for Defense Program. In 1948 she conducted a survey of the Christian colleges in the Philippines for the Foreign Missions Conference of North America. This resulted in a report recommending the establishment of independent departments of home economics within Philippine colleges to teach dietitians, nutritionists, hotel and restaurant managers, and home demonstration agents to recover the country from widespread destruction occurring during WWII.
In 1950, Ava Milam retired from Oregon State College and was made Dean Emeritus. In 1951 and 1952, she served as a home economics advisor to the governments of Syria and Iraq for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, pioneering improvements to home economics education for women in these countries, surveying vocational education opportunities, and setting up teaching-training programs. She also visited Lebanon and Egypt in this role, attending the World's Young Women's Christian Associations Council Meeting, and the World Council of Churches Conference on the Middle East Refugee Problem.
In 1952 she was reacquainted with Jesse Claude (J. C.) Clark, whom she had met in China in 1922 while he was heading the Young Men's Christian Association in China. After a brief courtship, J.C. and Ava were married on November 1, 1952. J.C. and Ava traveled extensively during their short marriage, visiting many countries that she had traveled to throughout her career, and spent time at Ava's beloved summer home on the McKenzie River,
The bulk of the collection was donated by Clark's estate in 1975. Additional materials were transferred from College of Home Economics in 1994. Correspondence from Alice Ravenhill to Ava Milam Clark was transferred into the collection from the College of Home Economics Records (RG 141) in 1994.
The collection was fully processed in April 2016, and the Jesse C. and Ava Milam Clark Photographic Collection (P 152) was formally dissolved and integrated with this collection at that time.
The J. C. Clark Papers were separated from this collection in 2016 and described separately.
The collection is open for research.
Ava Milam Clark Papers (MSS ClarkAvaM), Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.
An oral history interview and a lecture delivered by Clark are held in the
Other materials pertaining to Clark and home economics are available in the
Other OSU faculty who participated in international post-WWII reconstruction efforts include
The Ava Milam Clark Papers are arranged into five series: Series 1: Correspondence, 1903-1971; Series 2: Home Economics at Oregon State University, 1889-1970; Series 3: Home Economics Abroad, 1922-1961; Series 4: Adventures of a Home Economist, 1909-1972; and Series 5: Personal Materials, 1856-1970. Materials are arranged alphabetically or chronologically within series.
The Ava Milam Clark Papers are comprised of materials representing the professional and personal life of home economist Ava Milam Clark. The collection includes correspondence, historical documents related to the administration of home economics programs at Oregon Agricultural College and Oregon State College, materials related to her work overseas, sources used in the preparation of her autobiography, and personal materials. These materials represent Clark's role in shaping home economics as a field of study in Oregon, the United States, China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Syria, and document her lifelong emphasis on a research-based approach to home economics. These materials broadly reflect her belief in the power of a scientific mindset applied to the home, and her advocacy for home economic courses that emphasized applied elements of biochemistry, physics, chemistry, psychology, and sociology.
Correspondence in Series 1 is dense and varied in content, and demonstrates the reach of her influence and impact on the field through many letters with notable figures over a forty-year period. The materials in Series 2: Home Economics at Oregon State show her efforts to bring an international element to the program, and are rich in documents showing the evolution of the curriculum. The largest and most diverse series, Series 3: Home Economics Abroad, show her work to establish and reform home economics as a field in Asia, the Middle East, and the Philippines. Materials in Series 4: Adventures of a Home Economist, include source materials used in the preparation of her autobiography, and multiple drafts of nearly every chapter. Series 5: Personal Materials reflect Clark's family life, religious beliefs, and long-time friends.
The collection is particularly strong in sources related to her work abroad. Evidence of the impact of these travels on her life appears in each series. A notable gap in the collection occurs between the years of 1940-1948, when correspondence and other types of documents are limited.
This series contains both personal and professional correspondence spanning the life and career of Ava Milam Clark. Comprised of both sent and recieved letters, this series contains hundreds of letters from Clark's colleagues in the field of home economics all over the world. Much of the professional correspondence is related to Clark's work abroad and her role as Dean of the School of Home Economics at Oregon State College. Of particular note in this series are the many long "diary letters" written by Clark to friends and family in the U.S. while she was traveling. These lengthy narratives give detailed, rich descriptions of the countries she is visiting, and include abundant information related to what she was seeing related to cultural customs, homes, manners, food, sanitation, as well as descriptive vignettes of the landscape and people and anecdotes of her travel. These can be found in correspondence folders for each of the years that Clark traveled abroad, but letters from her 1922, 1937, and 1948 trips to Asia are particularly detailed. Also of note in this series are letters from many pioneers in the field of home economics and social sciences, including Jane Addams, Marion Talbot, and Sophonsiba Breckenridge, and letters from Arthur B. Carson of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions describing post-war Manila in detail.
This series includes internal department documents, newsletters, and outreach materials related to the School of Home Economics at Oregon State College over several decades. Particularly unique documents in this series include accounts of Oregon State's presence at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, as well as student reports of a 1937 home economics study tour of Asia. Dean Milam's speeches and radio talks on home economics are a primary feature of this series, including a radio series for KOAC on home life in foreign countries, including China, Japan, Korea, Burma, India, Egypt, and Palestine, and interviews with home exchange students from Finland and South Africa. This series also includes more than 100 letters sent from OSC home economics alumnae to Dean Milam on the occasion of her retirement.
P152:35
This series is comprised of notes, reports, surveys, newsletters, and manuscripts related to Ava Milam's work abroad in the countries of China, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. These materials document Ava Milam's work to begin programs of home economics in each of these countries. Her work at Yenching University and her survey of student homes in China are extensively documented, as is her sojourn in the Middle East as a home economist for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Of particular importance in this subseries are lengthy, detailed letters from the President of Yenching University, J. Leighton Stuart, in Peiping (now Beijing) China, to the University Board of Trustees giving detailed first-hand accounts of the Japanese invasion and occupation during the Sino-Japanese war from 1937-1946, as well as Ava Milam's detailed journal of her trip to Japan in 1922.
Includes P152:26-33
Includes multiple views of numerous tourist sites in China.
This subseries is comprised of notes, reports, and surveys related to Ava Milam Clark's first trip to China. On this trip she conducted a survey of Chinese home and family customs, which was later published in 1930. Of particular note in this suberies is a copy of the blank survey she devised, and summaries of the responses to the survey by Ava Milam.
The materials in this small subseries primarily document Ava Milam's trip to the Philippines in 1948 to survey schools and colleges there under the auspices of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, and the Association of Christian Schools and Colleges. Notable in this series are a few field surveys conducted with citizens, and copies of her final report, written with Donald P. Cottrell.
The materials in this subseries document Ava Milam's work as a consultant to the governments of Syria and Iraq in her role as a home economist in the Technical Assistance Program on the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Of particular note in this subseries are materials related to the two-week home economics workshop conducted in Syria in 1951, including course materials in Arabic and planning documents. Also of note are her monthly field progress reports from Iraq, which give detailed narratives of conditions there, and her official reports to the governments of Syria and Iraq.
This series is comprised of notes, drafts, and source materials related to Ava Milam Clark's autobiography, Adventures of a Home Economist, published in 1968 by Oregon State University Press. With co-writer J. Kenneth Munford, Ava Milam Clark wrote a compelling and detailed autobiography including excerpts from her "diary letters" of travel and other extensive documentation. The source materials in these files are comprised of correspondence, clippings, offprints, notes, newspapers, publications, transcripts, and other original documentation from the time period of the relevant chapter. Also included are drafts and notes on the manuscript in its various stages. Notable in this series are folders of correspondence from young women who were in the home economics program in 1915, when the department ran a tearoom on the grounds of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, offering their personal memories of the experience to Ava Milam Clark to assist with her autobiography. Also of note are her manuscript notes on a survey of schools and colleges in the Philippines, as well as hundreds of letters of support sent to Ava from friends and readers of the book.
This series includes notes and biographical documents generated by Ava Milam in her personal life. Of particular note are an 1856 slave deed from a distant relative included as part of her family documents, and blueprints and plans for the house in Corvallis that she designed herself. Her involvement with the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship in the years after J.C.'s death is documented in this series, including notes and transcripts from several sittings with noted psychic and spiritual medium Arthur Ford.
Includes P152:11; includes film negatives
Includes P152:22
Includes P152:12, P152:14, P152:24
Includes P152:08
Includes P152:10, P152:15, P152:16, P152:17, P152:18, P152:19, P152:20
Includes P152:09, P152:21, P152:23, P152:36; P152:37; includes film negatives
Unidentified family and friends.