Mabel Smith Douglass was the first dean, in 1918 of the New Jersey College for Women. In September 1932 she retired due to ill health. On September 21, 1933, she went rowing on Lake Placid

Lake Placid (New York)

The body of water called Lake Placid is in the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York in the USA. The lake is approximately , and has an average depth of about . It is located in the towns of North Elba and St...

 and never returned. She was last seen rowing alone across the lake by servants at a camp she owned. Her boat was found capsized near the shore of the deepest part of the lake, three miles opposite her starting point. Police dragged the lake and searched the surrounding mountain trails, to no avail.
Thirty years later, her remarkably preserved remains were found by scuba divers

Scuba diving

Scuba diving is a form of underwater diving in which a diver uses a scuba set to breathe underwater....

 on a shelf about 95 feet below the water's surface.

In 1955, the school was renamed Douglass College in her honor.

Douglass is buried at Green-Wood Cemetery

Green-Wood Cemetery

Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in Brooklyn, Kings County , New York. It was granted National Historic Landmark status in 2006 by the U.S. Department of the Interior.-History:...

, located in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, New York.