Emily Curtis Fisher was selected as a Wonderful Woman of Norwood because she was someone who broke barriers that often impeded women. She was well educated. She became a high school teacher and then a college professor. In Norwood, she held many leadership positions in local organizations and went on to fight for women’s right to vote.

Emily was born on May 21, 1866, in South Dedham, Massachusetts. She was one of four children born to William C. Fisher and Emily E. Atkins. Emily grew up on the family farm located at 345 Neponset St.; now Fisher Gardens, this includes the land that the Callahan School sits on today. The Fishers owned a substantial amount of farmland on Neponset St., along US Route 1, where they operated the Neponset Valley Farm for many years. 

Emily was just six years old in 1872 when Norwood became a town, making her one of the first graduates of the Norwood School system who was educated entirely in Norwood. After high school, she studied teaching at the Bridgewater State Normal School, graduating in 1887. She taught at Weymouth High School for the 1887/1888 school year, then returned to the Normal School as an instructor in English and Geometry in 1888/1889, where she and Fannie A. Comstock developed the English courses for the school. Emily then went on to study English at Radcliffe College and also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In July, 1895, Emily was granted a leave of absence from the Bridgewater Normal School for travel and foreign study for the 1895/1896 school year. Emily spent a year traveling in Europe, taking courses of study in Paris and Berlin. Her traveling companion was her sister, Nettie. When Emily returned home in the spring of 1896, she was elected secretary of the Bridgewater Normal Association (June, 1896), and over the next several years Emily’s name appears in the Bridgewater directory in many different leadership positions at the school. Emily taught at Bridgewater until 1901. She returned to Norwood, but never again to teaching.

In the next phase of her life, Emily dedicated her attention to civic affairs, eventually becoming very involved in the women’s suffrage movement. She became a well-known and sought-after lecturer, speaking all over the state whenever she was called upon. Fisher spoke at the 70th annual Plymouth County Teacher’s Association meeting in 1903, delivering an address on “The Growth of English Expression.” The following year, she was elected President of the Norwood Women’s Club. In May, 1904, she traveled by train to St. Louis to represent Norwood at the Massachusetts State Federation of Women’s Clubs biennial meeting. At the next State Federation meeting in 1906, she was elected as one of the directors, and in 1907, the Federation elected her Chairman of Civic Affairs. In February, 1907, Emily became a charter member of the Norwood Historical Society and served as it’s first treasurer. She was also a long-standing member of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England). Her interest in civic matters led to her time as a trustee of Norwood’s Morrill Memorial Library from 1907 to 1909. She also served on the Norwood School Committee for many years, where she argued for higher salaries for teachers, estimating that the hidden expenses teachers faced based on her own years of teaching far exceeded their current salary. In June of 1912, Emily hosted the Deliverance Munroe Chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution of Malden at her home. A delegation from the Hannah Balch Chickering Chapter met them on their arrival and escorted them to the house, where Emily gave an address on the history of Norwood and the community, which was very well received. In 1914, the Hannah Balch Chickering DAR Chapter named her historian. 

Emily Fisher was very involved both locally and nationally in the women’s suffrage movement. In early 1913, her friend, Grace Hodges Bagley, invited 51 women - members of the Norwood Woman’s Club and other wealthy like-minded women - to meet at her house on Beech St. to listen to addresses on woman’s suffrage by Mrs. Maude Wood Park, secretary of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association, and Miss Mary Gay, corresponding secretary of the Massachusetts Woman’s Suffrage Association. A committee was formed, and it was voted to organize the Equal Suffrage League of the 10th Norfolk District, including Norwood, Westwood, and Walpole, and to affiliate with the Massachusetts Woman’s Suffrage Association. Emily Curtis Fisher was elected treasurer. In the summer of 1913, Mrs. Bagley, her daughter Elizabeth, and Emily Fisher, went on an auto tour to obtain signatures for a petition to Congress for a woman’s right to vote. By 1914, Emily was extremely busy with the Massachusetts Woman’s Suffrage Association. In July, she delivered a speech in Boston, entitled “Why Women Need the Vote and Why They Should Have It.” In the summer, she participated in the Suffragette Auto Tour, planning to visit several stops in Bristol County to give speeches. In October, Emily addressed a large audience at an open-air meeting held by the Boston Equal Suffrage Association. In November, she attended the 46th annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association meeting in Nashville. By 1915, the Massachusetts Woman’s Suffrage Association had over 58,000 members. After the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920 gave women the right to vote, the Massachusetts Woman’s Suffrage Association became the Massachusetts League of Women Voters.

In her senior years, Emily enjoyed traveling….a lot! Perhaps her European trip she took in 1895 and her train trips to St. Louis and Nashville gave her a taste to explore the world. Immigration records show she traveled to Europe around ten times, mostly in the 1920s and 1930s. She also visited Canada at least three times in the 1920s. It is not known how many trips she took by train in the United States, but she surely would have visited other parts of the US. Perhaps her most infamous trip occurred in 1937 when she hired a cab to take her and three of her friends to Mexico City. Emily had taken a similar, successful trip the year before to attend the World’s Fair in Chicago. The Mexico trip lasted a month, the group stopped at tourist attractions along the way and once they arrived in Mexico City, they spent five days exploring the town. Records indicate this was the last big trip Emily took. It seems that by the time Emily was in her 70s, she finally slowed down and retired.

Whatever Emily Curtis Fisher decided to do, she wholly threw herself into it. First it was teaching. She sought out opportunities to improve her knowledge on the subjects she taught and became very involved in school matters. Next, her focus was civic affairs, where she took leading roles in practically all of the organizations she joined, not to mention the years she diligently worked for the Massachusetts Woman’s Suffrage Association promoting a woman’s right to vote. Then it was travel, where Emily spent 20 years seeing the sites of the world. In 1940, she was still living on the Neponset St. family farm. Emily died in 1943 in Medfield. Although an obituary has not yet been found listing all her accomplishments, we can safely say that she improved the lives of her students who went on to teach, thus improving the lives of students she never met. She improved Norwood by devoting so much time to its organizations. She assisted women in getting the right to vote. She saw the world. So, let us just say,  Emily had a life well-lived.

This article draws on this essay by George Curtis:

https://norwoodhistoricalsociety.org/emily-curtis-fisher/

Read our full series on the Wonderful Women of Norwood:

https://norwoodhistoricalsociety.org/tag/wonderful-women-of-norwood/