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.
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