Marcia C Noyes

Artist: Udell Photography Studio; Colorized digital image on Canvas

Marcia Crocker Noyes was born in Saratoga, New York in 1869. She was educated at Hunter College and the Normal School of the City of New York, moving to Baltimore about 1895. She worked at the Pratt Library, coming to the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland as librarian in 1896, on the recommendation of Dr. Osler, who was at that time a member of the Library Committee. 

Dr. J. A. Chatard, said, speaking of Miss Noyes, that she had “created a reality of the hopes and dreams Dr. Osler formulated while he was at Hopkins. She caught the spirit which impelled him to see that the library was rescued from oblivion, properly housed and made available to readers through the employment of a full-time librarian.”

Miss Noyes has lived in the building with the library for fifty years, actually on 24 hour duty. Beginning in 1925, she was not only Librarian but Executive Secretary of the Faculty. She was also the first woman president of the Medical Library Association, which still gives out a yearly award in her honor.

Miss Noyes also ran Camp Seyon (Noyes spelled backward) in the Adirondacks. Miss Noyes' summers were dedicated to the camp and her girls. Marcia had the Main House floated down from an island in the Narrows on a barge; the Camp was, then, a virtual island.

She wrote of herself, “If I have accomplished anything, let that speak for me, as while making a living, I have tried to make a life.”

It is said that Miss Noyes’ spirit still resides in the MedChi buildings, and that any mischief that happens is her doing.