Ruth Standish Baldwin
Ruth Standish Baldwin was the wife of railroad tycoon William Henry Baldwin Jr. and a cofounder of the National Urban League. Her father was Samuel Bowles III. Her daughter married a painter.
She graduated from Smith College in 1887.
She married Baldwin in 1889. They had two children, Ruth Standish Baldwin and William Henry Baldwin III. Her husband died in 1905. The same year she joined with Frances Kellor, a social worker and attorney, to form the National League for the Protection of Colored Women in order to protect women migrating to the north who might be "easy targets for con men who could lead them into prostitution". The NLPCW organized to steer women into safe employment instead. She founded the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negros with George Edmund Haynes in 1910.
She commissioned architect Ehrick Rossiter to design the Standish House, later renamed Edgewood. She is credited with influencing her nephew Chester Bowles.
She helped found Highlander Folk School at the end of her life. She was friendly with Booker T. Washington
and they wrote to each other.
