Bessie Locke

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Bessie Locke (August 7, 1865 – April 9, 1952) was an American educator who started the National Kindergarten Association to promote having kindergarten in public schools for all children.

She was born in West Cambridge, Massachusetts, to William Henry Locke and Jane MacFarland Schouler. Her father was a printer who lost his business in the Panic of 1869, and the family moved to Brooklyn, New York. Locke attended a private, English-speaking kindergarten in Brooklyn, went through public schools, and worked as a teenage bookkeeper. She studied at Columbia University but did not graduate. After working for a pastor in Brooklyn and running a hat shop in North Carolina owned by her uncle, she returned to education.

In 1892, a visit to a New York City kindergarten inspired her to start local groups: the East End Kindergarten Union of Brooklyn and later the Brooklyn Free Kindergarten Society. In 1899 she organized the New York Kindergarten Society. In 1909 she founded the National Association for the Promotion of Kindergarten Education, which became the National Kindergarten Association in 1911. The organization was based in Manhattan, first in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower on Madison Avenue and later at 8 West 40th Street near Bryant Park. Locke’s sister, May Aldrich, served as secretary and director from the start until her death in 1958.

Locke also served as a director of the National Council of Women of the United States and was an honorary vice-president of the International Council of Women. She died in Manhattan in 1952 at age 86 and was buried in Hope Cemetery, Kennebunk, Maine, beside her parents. The National Kindergarten Association continued for many years after her death, dissolving in 1976.