Beatrice Bartlett

1928 - 2024

Beatrice Bartlett
10/4/1928 - 4/1/2024
Beatrice (Betsy) Bartlett, retired Yale professor of Chinese history, died on April 1, in Branford, Connecticut, after a long illness. She was 95.
Betsy was born in New Haven in 1928 to Emilie Daggett Bartlett and Russell Sturgis Bartlett. She was part of a long line of Daggetts who called New Haven home, including Judge David Daggett in the late 1700s/early 1800s.
After graduating from Smith College in 1949, Betsy taught at The Brearley School in New York City for 12 years before pursuing graduate work in Chinese history, eventually spending ten years in Taiwan doing research. She received a PhD in History from Yale in 1980, and soon after joined the Yale faculty, where she was one of the first women to achieve tenure. She retired in 2006, but continued her research and publishing for many years after that.
Betsy developed a lifelong love of hiking and the outdoors from her father, who took her and her younger brother on long treks in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. With her younger sister, she bought a small house on Brandy Pond in the town of Naples, Maine, and spent many happy summers there with family.
Betsy is survived by three nephews, Russell Bartlett, Michael Bull, and Thomas Bull; four nieces, Sharon Sage, Martha Ann Rountree-Paris, Mary-Ellen Yeomans, and Rodanne Bartlett; as well as several great-nieces and nephews.
The Bartlett family and Yale will hold a service in her memory at 1:30 p.m. on October 19, 2024, at Battell Chapel, 400 College Street, New Haven.