Rhea Maxine deCoudres collection (Ms.2024.013)

Biographical/Historical Note

Rhea Maxine Bosworth deCoudres Peterson was born on November 5th, 1906, in East Hartford, Connecticut to Minnie Mary Bosworth and Thomas Hart deCoudres, Brown University class of 1890, who served as the superintendent of schools in East Hartford and Putnam, CT, respectively. DeCoudres has one younger sister, Ruth deCoudres (Holingworth).

DeCoudres and her family moved throughout New England during her childhood, including to Grafton, Massachusetts, Bristol, Rhode Island, and Putnam, Connecticut. DeCoudres studied at home until 1920 when she entered Putnam High school as a Sophomore. She entered Pembroke College in Brown University as a "special student" in approximately 1925, completing a non-degree bearing two-year course of study in 1927.

During her time at Pembroke College, deCoudres lived as a "city girl" - or someone who lives off campus - in a local apartment with her mother. She is noted as having won an academic award for excellence in French in 1926-1927, sat on the Brun Mael yearbook and Sepiad board, served as Chairman of the 1927 Spring Day Committee, played tennis, and was a notable poet. Her picture appears in the Brun Mael yearbook with the graduating class of 1927.

In 1931, deCoudres married Dr. Thomas H. Peterson, who became an orthopedic surgeon at Mass General Hospital. Together they had four sons; Hart, Bruce Bigelow, Mark Bosworth, and Joel Quentin Peterson.

DeCoudres was a stay-at-home-mother as well as a writer who worked as book reviewer for the Providence Journal Co. Her reviews centered children's literature but also included adult fiction and non-fiction titles. She furthermore published original poetry in the Providence Journal and was a prolific poet in her private life.

DeCoudres lived with asthma, survived breast cancer, and endured ill health due to long standing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). She later died from complications stemming from COPD and other age-related ailments on January 12, 1986.

Her children discovered her papers after her death and subsequently donated the collection to the Pembroke Center Archives in 2023.