... was descended from Nicholas Wadham, who with his wife, Dorothy, founded Wadham College at Oxford, England, in 1610.

The history of basketball in Crystal Falls High School dates back to the year 1904. This was the year in which Miss Agnes Wells, then Principal of the school, started basketball using girls' rules. Although there were no records kept for that year, a game was played with Norway High School at the Opera House in Crystal Falls.

The Zenith, the annual publication of the Duluth Central High School, was issued today ... it is a decidedly fine piece of work and reflects credit on the student staff. The Zenith is dedicated to Miss Agnes Wells of the high school faculty.

Miss Agnes Wells will go to Saginaw Friday afternoon for a few days visit before leaving for her European trip.

The Thalian society of Central high school will give a dinner this evening at 6 o'clock in the lunch room of the school in honour of Miss Agnes Wells of the mathematics department, who will teach next year at Carleton college.

The Thalian society held a farewell banquet in honour of Miss Agnes Wells on Friday evening at the Washington building. Miss Wells will complete her work at Central in June and will go to Carleton college in the fall to continue her professional work as an instructor of mathematics.

A study of the positions and proper motions of one hundred and fifty stars of the Pleiades group measured on photographic plates taken at the Goodsell Observatory was undertaken in order to determine the positions of many of the faint stars up to the fifteenth magnitude near Merope and between Merope and Alcyone; and to compare the results for stars up to the ninth magnitude with those for forty six stars, whose positions had been well determined at Königsberg, Ya1e, Columbia, Paris and Oxford. The work was begun at Goodsell Observatory, Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, in 1915. Two photographic plates were taken in December 1915 and were measured and reduced during the spring of 1916.

At the University of Michigan in 1918 Dean Wells helped to found Mortar Board when representatives of women's honoraries at Swarthmore College, Cornell University, Ohio State University and the University of Michigan met at Syracuse, New York, to form a national honorary for senior women. At Indiana University she helped to found the chapter of Mortar Board there in 1921 and served as an adviser until her retirement.

... faced criticism for her strong views. In the late 1920s, she caused quite a controversy after implementing a 'no bloomers, no classes' rule that required women to wear bloomers under their skirts and dresses at all times. Though faced with ardent backlash from students and newspapers across the state, Wells continued to enforce the rule.

Knees
"All co-eds must wear bloomers reaching to the tops of their hose at all times," decreed Dean Agnes Ermina Wells, Indiana University. It all started when a pretty co-ed crossed her legs in the library. An admiring student wrote a note, mentioned knees, and asked for a date.

For 20 years Miss Wells has been more than Dean of Women. Not only has she discharged the routine duties of her office with extraordinary skill and great success, but she has worked diligently to further the program of education here and elsewhere. The beginning of our dormitory system is generally attributed to her farsighted and energetic leadership. Throughout all her administration she has maintained standards of scholarship and character of very high order.

A woman of vision and great resolve, she was an active leader in many professional and women's organisations. She founded a $1 million fellowship fund for the American Association of University Women and also campaigned for world government.

She belonged to Daughters of the American Revolution, the National Society of the Daughters of 1812, Business and Professional Women, the American Association of Deans of Women and the American Association of University Professors. She held life memberships in the Michigan Alumni and Alumnae Association. Other organisations to which she belonged included Phi Beta Kappa, national scholastic honorary; Gamma Phi Beta, social sorority; Sigma Xi, national scientific organisation; the National Education Association, Indiana University Alumnae Association, Indiana Academy of Science and the YWCA.

In 1949, she became chairman of the National Women's Party. She always stated her objectives and hopes for women's equality in a clear, straightforward manner. Dr Wells lamented at the legal restrictions and discrimination once operative against women. Dr Wells used to point out that it not only was tasks that women couldn't do well which were made inaccessible to them through legislation but also positions for which they had the capacity and skill. She felt this kept many women from administrative positions. She used to say that those who argue about the woman's place being in the home often overlook the unmarried woman, who unless she has wealth, must go out and earn her own living.

The National Women's Party has a militant past: connected with the passage of the woman's suffrage constitutional amendment, picketing the White House when Woodrow Wilson was President, imprisonment for disturbing the peace, hunger strikes, and forced feeding. As president of the National Women's party, Dr Wells carried on an effective but less militant spirit for the "equal rights for women" amendment.

Dr Wells once commented on a newspaper editorial which advised women to look at the 14th amendment to the constitution which doesn't mention sex but which does say that all persons born or naturalised in the United States are citizens, that their privileges cannot be denied or abridged and that they shall be equal before the law. Dr Wells asked the question: "Women are persons, aren't they?"

"World government is the only key to world peace," she once said. "Until we achieve that we should not stop worrying. World union may look like an immense task, but so did national union appear to the 13 American colonies who put as much stock in their states' rights as we do by national sovereignty."

She was the national first vice president of the American Association of University Women and was the second state president of the AAUW Indiana Chapter.

Agnes E Wells was a most talented woman with considerable scientific ability. However, she devoted most of her professional life to the guidance of college women students and the improvement of women's status in our complex American civilisation. A woman of great integrity and deep sincerity, she left a lasting influence for good in the lives of the many thousands of humans with whom she worked.