CARLISLE, Pa. - As Amanda Crowley crossed the stage to receive her Dickinson College diploma on May 22, she carried a major branch of her family tree inside her 95-year-old graduation gown.

Crowley's great-grandmother bought the wool gown for her own commencement at Wellesley College in 1910 and passed it down to each of her children as they graduated, an effort meant to save money during the Great Depression.

Her act of thrift has since evolved into a family tradition, transforming the garment into a scholarly family heirloom. It has now traveled around the country and survived being worn by four generations of college alumni.

To mark each occasion, white fabric tape with each graduate's name, alma mater, and year of graduation is sewn inside the gown. Crowley, who received a bachelor of arts degree in sociology, became the 22nd family member to experience this rite of passage.

The 21-year-old was honored to keep up the tradition, especially since her grandmother, Mary Lee Brooks, who wore it for her Wellesley College graduation in 1936, suffers from Parkinson's disease and was unable to attend Dickinson's commencement.

"I felt like she was here. That in and of itself really made the day for me," said Crowley, of Goldens Bridge, N.Y., about 40 miles north of New York City. "It definitely was a lot to bear, to have my family history on my back, but it's a great feeling."

It all began with Bertha Cottrell Lee, who was born and raised in Mount Vernon, N.Y., as a member of a middle-class family that valued higher education, according to Crowley's mother, Lynda Crowley.Lee's father immigrated to Boston from England as a boy in the mid-19th century, and he later established a book-publishing business."There was definitely a culture of learning in that her family believed a successful democracy presumed an educated public," Lynda Crowley said.Lee studied botany at Wellesley, but also had an active social life, as evidenced by a number of dance cards, calling cards and invitations to faculty teas that Lynda Crowley has preserved in a scrapbook she recently compiled on the gown."They were raising well-bred young ladies, and they were educating them to be very proper wives and mothers," she said.Within a year or two after graduation, Lee was married to a chiropractor and starting her own family. Money was tight as each of her three children graduated from college in the late 1930s, so she loaned her gown to each of them and began the practice of stitching the names inside.Since then, it has traveled as far north as the University of Maine in 1961 and as far south as Southern Methodist University on May 14. And a few family members had the privilege of wearing it again upon earning graduate degrees.Lynda Crowley acknowledges she didn't feel terribly sentimental about wearing the gown to her 1971 graduation from Connecticut College, where she earned a religion degree, and did so mainly to please her mother and grandmother.But more recently, she has noticed that her children, nieces and nephews are very interested in participating in the tradition."It wasn't until this generation that it became an honor. The kids fight over it now," she said.