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Transcript

INTRO

Hi, my name is Sophie Penniman, and I’m in the class of 2019 at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.

I’m the product of 7 years of public, all-girls’ schooling, and I’ve always held women’s education really close to my heart. So, as a high school senior, I was elated to learn that my soon-to-be college was one of the first schools in the country to admit women alongside men. Plus, we’d consolidated with a pioneering women’s college! Surely that illustrious history of female empowerment was present everywhere at Lawrence!

And then I got here, and sure, Lawrence is a great place, but I have to admit, I was a little disappointed in the lack of common knowledge about our early history as a coeducational school. And that’s not to say that Lawrence isn’t an amazing, socially aware place. The legacy of women at Lawrence, and of our shared history with Milwaukee- Downer College, is evident in a few places on campus—like the Milwaukee-Downer room in the library, Lucinda Colman Hall, Mary A.P. Stansbury Theatre, or Hawthornden. But, if you ask an average student what they know about the history of women’s education here, the answer, is, well, not all that much. Montage.

I’m taking a class right now called the History of Lawrence University. We’ve learned a bit in class about the early coeducational history of Lawrence, but before this term, I barely even knew anything about the history of women here. I wondered—what was it really like to be a woman during the early years of Lawrence University?

So, as part of my research for the class, I decided to learn more. With the guidance of my professors- University Archivist Erin Dix and Associate Professor of History Jake Frederick, I spent, uhm, a LOT of time in the archives looking at newspaper clippings, journals, records, scholarly articles, and more. Along the way, I discovered a pioneering, resilient community of intelligent women. Clandestine sleigh rides. A… mysterious death. I found that despite the limitations imposed on them both by society and by the institution, Lawrence’s first female students and professors were able to achieve on a level equal to or even above that of their male peers. Most of all, I uncovered a lot of amazing stories. And… well, that’s something that I’d like to share.

THEME MUSIC

I’m Sophie Penniman, and this is Ubiquitous and Pushing Maidens.

THEME MUSIC

Before we begin, I’d like to point out that this is by no means a complete or exhaustive portrayal of the experience of every woman in the history of Lawrence University. I’ve endeavored to tell as full of a story as I could, but it’d be impossible to tell every story. For one thing, the early stories of women at Lawrence that I’ve found are mainly the stories of white women. A few women of color did attend Lawrence in the years before the 1920’s, but their lives are much less well documented. That doesn’t mean, though, that these pioneering women of color weren’t here, or that their stories and experiences aren’t valid.

And also, I should take a moment to let ya’ll know that I have a stutter, and that there are places in this podcast that reflect that. Thank you for understanding, and for being patient.

INTERLUDE

So, before we can look at what it was like to be at Lawrence as a woman at the turn of the century, we need to get some background first about the college’s founding. I’m just going to be focusing on Lawrence for this podcast, and not Milwaukee-Downer, because the stories I want to tell really focus on coeducation. Also, the podcast is definitely long enough as it is, and adding in a whole other college would just be too much. The condensed version, then, is that Milwaukee-Downer was a trail-blazing all-women’s college in Milwaukee. Milwaukee-Downer consolidated with Lawrence in 1964, and we inherited 49 of their students, 21 professors, and many traditions, including class colors. However, Lawrence’s history of educating women goes back way further.

Lawrence first came about when Amos Adams Lawrence, a Boston merchant, donated ten thousand dollars to found a Methodist school on his property in Wisconsin, with the stipulation that Methodists in the Midwest raise another ten thousand dollars. [1] Lawrence was chartered as a preparatory institute in 1847, and it was organized as a university in 1849. The first university classes started in 1853. From the very beginning, women were admitted to both the college and the preparatory department. Lawrence’s first class graduated in 1853, with three women and four men. The first female faculty members were appointed in 1849—Miss Emeline Crooker, who served as Dean of Women and taught Music, Drawing, and Painting from 1849-1851, and Miss L. Amelia Dayton, who taught Modern Languages from 1849-1850. [2]

While Lawrence is often cited as the 2nd oldest coeducational college in the country, that figure is actually more like anywhere from 11th to 14th place. [3] There’s a lot of conflicting information about the order in which colleges became coeducational, so it’s hard to know for sure. But still, out of hundreds and hundreds of colleges founded before the civil war, top 15th place is still pretty good. And we definitely were the first coeducational college in Wisconsin.

So, why WAS Lawrence founded coeducational?

Well, Lawrence was really part of a larger trend in the Midwest towards coeducation. It wasn’t until the westward expansion era of the mid-1800’s that coeducation first started to become a thing. Before that, essentially all of the existing colleges on the East Coast were single-gender, in keeping with the European tradition. We’d like to think that the founders of schools in the Midwest chose coeducation entirely because they believed in women’s empowerment and the equality of sexes, but really, a big reason that coeducation caught on was because it was cheap and easy. [4]

Putting a college in a new town raised that town’s profit values, and it was way more practical and cost-effective to educate both sexes together than to build one school for each gender.

Unlike in the East, where families tended to be more established, the early settlers of the Midwestern territories were extremely mobile. Families would frequently settle near a college or seminary in order to supervise their children’s education. For example, Lucinda Darling Colman, a member of Lawrence’s first graduating class, recalled in her memoirs that her entire family packed up and moved from Racine to Appleton when it was time for her to start school.[5] And, well, if you’re gonna be moving your entire homestead to be close to your children’s school, and you have both sons and daughters, you’re going to want a school that will take both. Even in cases where students moved away to school by themselves, coeducation still made a lot of sense. Parents were apprehensive about sending their daughters far away from home by themselves, so oftentimes brothers and sisters would go off to school together. The brothers made sure their sisters were safe, and sisters took care of their brothers by doing things like sewing for them or treating them when they were sick. Also, there was the fact that small, struggling Midwestern colleges often required mens’ as well as women’s enrollments to survive.

So, while Lawrence’s founders did embrace coeducational education, they were also conforming to a growing trend in the Midwest.

Amos Lawrence, coming as he did from the East, actually wanted the college to be all male. But, the Wisconsin Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church had to raise $10,000 in the Midwest, and they knew that meant that the college had to appeal to actual Midwesterners. The faculty and staff, most of who had worked at or attended a coeducational college, agreed. So, the midwestern founders proceeded to just go behind Amos Lawrence’s back and admit women anyway without telling him. [6]

William Harkness Sampson, Lawrence’s first principal, later remarked that the East and the West both “gassed” the institute to their respective audiences—in the East the school was praised for attending “to the wants of the Uneducated and Uncivilized West”, and in the West it promised to offer “equal advantages to both sexes”. [7]

INTERLUDE

Overall, the student accounts I found were pretty positive about coeducation. They ranged from simply accepting the practice as being completely normal, to passionately arguing for it. One really good defense of coeducation I found came from an 1868 editorial published in the Lawrence Collegian (which was the student paper the preceded the Lawrentian). In it, Lyman Junius Nash, of the class of 1870, responded to an article published in Beloit Monthly that essentially argued that all a coeducational college was good for was that it prepared its graduates to “engage in matrimonial felicities”. Interestingly enough, Lyman was actually a guy—proof that there were male as well as female students who enthusiastically supported coeducation.

Lyman writes “It seems that [the author] had been troubled with a chronic disgust for coeducation, contracted in the nurseries of old nations and had resolved to annihilate the innovation, and forever bring into disgrace the modern idea of the co-education of the sexes. Strange as it may appear to the advocates of the “old idea”, our graduates have, like the Beloit graduates, found their way to other institutions to perfect themselves in those studies pertaining to their own chosen professions. Our last class, like all preceding it, is now divided up between the ministry, the law, and other avocations. We believe the average number of years from the time of graduation to the date of marriage is as great with the Lawrence alumni as with those from Beloit. Only one of the class of ’68 is now married, and if we may be allowed to judge, his college course delayed the assumption of this relation for years. We know nothing of the hopes and fears of the remainder of the class.”[8]

TRANSITION

So, what was it like to be a female student at Lawrence in the earliest days? Well, for its first few decades Lawrence was governed by “numerous and explicit” coeducational by-laws that lowered the status of women below that of men, and severely limited the contact that opposite sexes had with one another. Male and female students sat together in classes, but they weren’t treated equally.[9]

In an essay she wrote for the 1900 Ariel, Mary A.P. Stansbury, of the class of 1859, paints a picture of early Lawrence as a place where women were considered inferior to men. “Coeducation at Lawrence—like other natural processes—has been a gradual evolution. In the fifties, it had scarcely passed, so to speak, the simian stage. [10]Those were the times of the “Ladies’ Department”, little other than the old-fashioned “female seminary” set down, an unwelcome and disturbing alien, in the midst of the time honored and traditional college for men. Then was the “Ladies’ Course”, an elegant and refined curriculum, from which had been religiously eliminated the higher mathematics and such other hearty mental pabulum as seemed unsuited to the intellectual assimilation of the weaker sex. The “Ladies’ Exhibition” was an interesting annual event, when the girls donned white muslins, and read blue-ribboned essays upon strictly lady-like themes, since to have appeared upon the same platform with their brothers would have been a revolutionary measure utterly subversive of all established proprieties.”[11] In other words, this lack of equal rights wasn’t just the fault of the school—it was firmly engrained in society. Lawrence’s early administration wasn’t pushing any boundaries in their treatment of female students, but nor were they being particularly discriminatory for the time. They were just following the status quo.

I think a really good example of the way women were treated during this time was in their graduations. Lucinda Darling Colman, a member of the first graduating class of 1857, recounted in her memoirs that: We three girls had to come on with our graduating essays the night before, at the end of a preparatory program. It will be more dignified on commencement day to have only men on the rostrum. They deliver their orations. It looks as through all of Appleton has turned out to hear them. Even the galleries—on three sides of the chapel—are crowded. We girls are permitted to go on the rostrum with the men to receive our diplomas.[12]

Mary A.P. Stansbury, who, I should mention, has become like my personal hero, says pretty much the same thing as Lucinda.[13] Was it to be wondered that all Senior girls were not eligible to regular class-honors: that no special place was reserved for them in the stately procession which, to blare of trumpet and beat of drum, escorted the men of their class on the proud graduation-day; nay, that even class-pictures were taken in separate groups, lest the high standard of masculine scholarship be lowered by so much as a shadow in the eyes of the uninitiated? Nay, verily, for had not the President himself repeatedly cautioned the ubiquitous and pushing maidens to keep to their place, since they were merely a “co-ordinate branch”, and as such, allowed only “on sufferance”? [14][15][16]

INTERLUDE

So, Lawrence is a coeducational school, but in this world of strict coeducational bylaws, the two sexes were kept pretty much separate. So, how did male and female students interact?

Well, they couldn’t really connect out in the open without facing the threat of demerits—too many of which resulted in a public reproof in front of the student’s assembled peers. Instead, men and women communicated for the most part with, in the words of Mary A.P. Stansbury “eloquent glances, winged words, and a spiritual telepathy which defied bolts and bars”.[17] But that isn’t to say that men and women never crossed paths. Mary Stansbury says that for some events, such as public debates, class exhibitions, and spring walks, the rules against intermingling were less strict. Lucinda Darling Colman recounts that one of the by-laws stated that “in the case of rain, if a young man has an umbrella, he can walk with a young woman. So, one student had the habit of carrying an umbrella and calling himself a ‘rain-beau’”.[18] And that’s b-e-a-u.

Lucinda Darling Colman also tells a story of one… interesting way that boys and girls would see each other.

So, Lucinda’s walking out of the building at the end of the school day when one of her friends stops her and says,

“Oh, wait a minute! We girls are going to have a sleigh ride tonight. Mr A. is going to take us with his horses and sleigh. We’ll call for you about seven thirty.”

So, Lucinda goes home, tells her parents she’s going out—

“there are no objections—just girls!”

— gets all bundled up, and waits. Her friends come to pick her up, she gets in the sleigh, and they’re all headed off towards Menasha when, well,

“Bang! Slam! Sudden stop! What is the matter! Another sleigh beside us! Half the girls are jumping into that sleigh! Boys are filling the vacancies here! I do not move, but am fortunate as far as company is concerned. I say to him, “what is that circling around in the snow?” Sure as can be, it’s Professor Kellogg’s black pony! Kellogg is standing up, looking at us!”

The girls who planned the trip decide that since they were probably going to get in trouble anyway, there was no reason not to finish their sleigh ride. So, they all continued on to Menasha and back. The next day, “faculty meetings on the subject of ignored coeducational by-laws postponed our classes. Finally a paper is presented for us to sign—acknowledging our fault in joining in a clandestine sleigh ride. I sign my name. But it occurs to me that I am not clear as to the meaning of the word clandestine. I look in the dictionary. Then I go to the Professor and tell him that I had nothing to do with the clandestine part—and get my name erased. Others may have done something.”[19]

INTERLUDE

As strict and archaic as the mid 1800’s seem, keep in mind that Lawrence was really ahead of its time! As one of only a handful of coeducational colleges at this time, Lawrence was actually pretty progressive. But, we should keep in mind that women were not always given equal rights and opportunities here. And we should use this to keep us pushing forward.

And, despite their criticisms, those two early women were ultimately positive about their experiences. Lucinda Darling Colman, writing 60 years after her graduation, had primarily good things to say about her time at Lawrence. And despite obviously (and understandably) being a bit salty about the treatment of women during her time at Lawrence, Mary Stansbury concluded in 1900 that there were no hard feelings. “The little hurts were all healed long ago. The laws of nature outrank even college regulations, and between men and women, young and old, there can be no abiding jealousy. The friendships and loves of forty years ago—how many of them live and blossom in perennial beauty, and for the rest, lingers there even in their cerements the faint, illusive fragrance of rose leaves and lavender?”[20]

Overall, college kids are going to be college kids, and at the end of the day the time period you live in or your gender don’t do all that much to alter that. Or, as Mary Stansbury quite floridly says, “As long as the lot of men and maids shall be cast together in the blossom-time of life, so long will there be mirth and merry-making, wooings and winnings, innocent coquetries and harmless jealousies. Nor does the relative laxity or strictness of school discipline matter over much in this connection”.[21]

TRANSITION

By the turn of the 20th century, as society became more progressive, those rigid coeducational bylaws had loosened significantly. For the most part men and women were able to interact pretty freely, and women were eligible for many of the same privileges that men were. However, while the Lawrence women of the early 20th century had more rights and opportunities than their 19th century sisters, they still weren’t equal in all respects to male students. Men still held much of the social influence on campus as a whole. For instance, a large chunk of the Lawrentians I looked at were dedicated to men’s sports—in fact, the Lawrentian periodically published a special issue just dedicated to football. Meanwhile, the limited amount of women’s sports at the time are almost entirely absent from the papers.

The majority of references to women in student publications that I saw just placed them within groups they belonged to on campus—as Ormsby Hall residents, YWCA members, and sorority sisters—not really as representative of student life as a whole. Women were present on campus, but their experiences were seen as pertaining only to other women. Meanwhile, men’s experiences were perceived as the norm.

For example, I found a list of class composites in the 1899 Ariel. It outlined ten stereotypes of Lawrentians at the time, such as The Typical Student, The Bigot, The Athletic Crank, and The Popular Student. There were both male and female caricatures, but when I looked closer I noticed something interesting. The “Typical Student” was portrayed as being “a true gentleman, an ambitious, brave, sincere boy”. In fact, with the exception of the Ormsby Hall Girl and the Do-Nothing Girl (who is portrayed as being so frivolous that all she does is spend her days making fudge), all of the composites were explicitly male. [22]

INTERLUDE

Something I just assumed going into this was that the boys in each class in the early days of Lawrence would have vastly outnumbered the girls. However, I was surprised to learn that this wasn’t actually the case! Lawrence’s first class had four men and three women. In 1893, the first year with a yearbook, there were 5 women and 9 men. [23]The class of 1900 included 12 women and 3 men. The class of 1905 had 16 women and 12 men. The class of 1910—32 women and 15 men; the class of 1915—35 women and 27 men. You get the picture. [24]

Something interesting I did discover while going through old yearbooks was in each classes’ officers. Most, if not all, of the class vice presidents, treasurers, and secretaries I looked at were female. But in all but two cases, the class presidents were always male. Women made up the majority of the class, and they were getting involved in leadership roles—but the top leadership spots still went to men.

INTERLUDE

Looking back from a modern viewpoint, it’s easy to say that women in this era had it pretty bad. But, the main impression I got from looking at the Lawrentian and the Ariel is that these early women were just living their lives. Female students might not have been validated as much by society, but that doesn’t mean they were miserable. They attended social functions with their sororities. 30 of them went to a state Y.W.C.A. conference in 1897.[25] At least once, they performed stunts on rollerblades in the Ormsby Hall dining room on a Friday night.[26] They went to class, they had fun, and in many aspects, they had just as rich of a college experience as their male peers. Beyond some articles about the continuing fight for women’s suffrage, I didn’t find anything in the Lawrentian or the Ariel in which a female student complained about her lack of rights.

An editorial in the June 1869 edition of the Lawrence Collegian states that, “Young ladies in this institution are believed to be superior to those furnished elsewhere in this section of the country. They are admitted to the same privileges as young gentlemen in all respects, and are permitted to compete on equal terms for all the honors and prizes awarded by the University.”[27] And in the student publications of the early 1900’s, I found quite a few instances of women achieving on a level that equaled and even exceeded that of men.

For instance, in the December 23rd, 1913 edition of the Lawrentian [28], one of the front page stories announced the winners of Lawrence’s three annual Freshman Scholarships. “For the third successive time three girls have won the scholarships. In each of the two years preceding this a boy managed to claim one of the honors.”[29] Further within the paper, I found this editorial written by the Lawrentian staff.

“We extend heartiest congratulations to the three young women who are winners of the hundred dollar prizes. The examinations are very hard indeed, and only people of unusual ability are capable of getting even a fair grade. For the last three years, there has been a noticeably small number of the masculine sex numbered among the prize winners. In fact, the number has been infinitesimal—less than even one. And still there are men in school that consider women too unintellectual to be given the ballot. We are strangely tempted to make the Lawrentian a suffrage publication.” [30]

Not only were female students achieving within Lawrence, but they were successful after graduation as well. I found a study done by the Lawrentian in October of 1912, which surveyed the post-graduation occupations of the 48 members of the class of 1912. Of the 24 women in the class, 19 were teaching, 5 were at home, and 1 was pursuing post-graduate study.[31] Now, we might expect to see a graduating class filled with engineers and lawyers and doctors, but keep in mind that this was a time when far fewer women were in the workforce. Back in the early 1900’s, teaching was one of the few professions seen as socially acceptable for middle-class women. The fact that a large percentage of the female graduates were working, at all, is pretty impressive.

Writing in the 1926 Ariel, Mary Louise Brown, the Dean of Women, sums up the experience of early female students pretty well. “As civilization has grown more complex in its demands the various interests of the college women have increased in like manner. These interests have usually been expressed through organizations… While these activities vary, in order to satisfy each type of womanhood, yet the intellectual ideal has not been forgotten but has been held before all. The women have sought scholastic attainment, they have averaged even higher than the men and many women receive election to Phi Beta Kappa. The custom at Lawrence has been to afford each woman a homelike environment with a stimulus to work in intellectual fields and to give her a chance to develop individual initiative in extra curricular activities. At the same time it has been the Lawrence ideal to fuse these elements into a character which is unselfish, resourceful and upright so that Lawrence alumnae may be attractive and capable wherever they are found.”[32]

TRANSITION

So, we’ve talked about what it was like to be a female student at Lawrence, but what about a female teacher?

Well, that brings me to Emma Kate Corkhill, the first full female professor at Lawrence. I was so interested in her story that I actually had initially planned on making this podcast primarily about her. But, I realized that just talking about one professor, without providing a broader context of coeducation at Lawrence or the experiences of students, would leave a lot of stuff out.

So, who was Emma Kate Corkhill? Kate, as she was called by her friends[33], was the Edwards Alexander Chair of English Literature from 1903 to 1913. In this role, she served as the head of the English department, and taught sometimes as many as 600[34] students each year.

And Emma Kate Corkhill was successful by nearly every definition. She earned her doctorate from Boston University in 1893, at a time when most women only had a high school education, if that. She was an accomplished artist and musician, and had planned originally to be a concert pianist until a mysterious malady known as “split fingers” prevented it. She wrote romantic poetry. The editor of a magazine she contributed character sketches to said that her articles were among the best he’d ever received. She planned much of the social events on campus, and was highly involved in religious groups for women, including the YWCA. She was described as being “a great power in the University”, “a universal favorite”, and “an authority in all things literary”. She taught at her Iowa Wesleyan University- her alma mater, and at Simpson College, before coming to Lawrence. [35][36]

In the late 1800’s, several prominent women in the Appleton community initiated a fund to raise money for an endowed professorship, to be “filled by a woman with a distinction in literature”. The ladies raised $25,000; $10,000 of which came from a Mrs. John Edwards. Mrs. Edwards named the professorship in honor of her son, L.M. Alexander, a Lawrence trustee. [37]

Emma Kate Corkhill was the first occupant of that chair, serving from 1903-1913. In total, seven women filled the chair, ending in 1947.[38] There were female professors before Emma Kate, but they all had the title of “Instructor” or something similar. Prior to Emma Kate Corkhill, only men carried the title of full professor, which came with much more prestige.

Definitely, being a woman teaching in higher education at this time carried a set of challenges. Female professors were routinely subjugated beneath their male counterparts—both in explicit and in subtle ways. Female professors made far less than their male colleagues. Also, in the records I found, male professors were almost exclusively referred to with the titles Reverend, Doctor (if they had a PhD.), or Professor (if they didn’t). Meanwhile, female professors, regardless of their level of education, were given the title “Miss” or “Mrs”. Even Emma Kate Corkhill, who had a friggin’ PhD, was usually just referred to as Miss Corkhill. It wasn’t just students, in other words, who were subject to institutionalized sexism on campus. But! Despite all that, look at how much Emma Kate was able to accomplish! In my mind, she is the perfect example of the tenacity and capability of female Lawrentians.

Also, one of the reasons I personally find Emma Kate Corkhill so interesting is because her story ends on a mysterious note. So she’s beloved by her students, a fixture on the social scene, and a hardworking and capable professor at the prime of her career. And then, in 1913, after less than ten years of teaching, something happened. The Lawrence College Alumni Record states that “During the summer of 1913[39] she was not very strong and she was given leave of absence for the first semester of the school year, but was planning to take up her work again in February. On Thursday, December 11th, by the advice of her physician, she went to the hospital for rest, with no thought of serious illness. At early morning on Friday, she fell asleep and on Saturday morning she opened her eyes to behold the King in His beauty.” [40]Her body was brought back home to Iowa and buried. She was 47 years old. The entire Lawrence community mourned her death.

There’s a lot of speculation you can make, but the truth is that we don’t know for sure how Emma Kate Corkhill died. And frankly, that’s ok. I actually find it oddly appropriate that such a badass, trailblazing woman had a death shrouded in mystery.

Odds are, you’ve probably never heard of Emma Kate Corkhill, but if you look close enough she’s still on campus. The Athena stained glass window in the chapel, on the west side near the stage, is named in her memory. [41]

TRANSITION

Throughout ten weeks of class discussions in The History of Lawrence University, we all kept on coming back to one question-- at what point did Lawrence become, Lawrence? And, it’s certainly pretty hard to see the college as we know it in that world of separate commencement speeches and clandestine sleigh rides, or even in the assumption that the typical Lawrence student was explicitly male. But I’d argue that all of our history- both the negative AND the positive, forms the basis for what the school is today.[42]

Specifically, those bold, early female students and professors are undoubtedly Lawrentians. Lawrence celebrates its coeducational past, but yet few people are aware of the actual women who studied and taught here. And I think we can, and should, use these strong, trailblazing women as role models in our own lives. I see evidences of the first female students in my friends and professors every day, but imagine what it would be like if knowledge of our illustrious coeducational history was even more present on campus?

So, the next time you’re in Colman Hall, or Mary A.P. Stansbury Theatre, or seated in the Chapel near the Athena window, remember that there were real women behind those names. Whether you’re sitting in class, or getting ready for graduation, or heck, even sharing an umbrella with the opposite sex on a rainy day, think about all the scores of other women who came before us. And, if you particularly liked something you heard in this podcast, or you have an interesting anecdote of your own, consider sharing it with other Lawrentians!

I hope, if you’ve made it this far, that you know a bit more now about the challenges our early female predecessors faced, and the achievements they earned. There’s an entire world of fascinating stories out there that directly relate to our experiences as Lawrentians, if only you take the time to look closer. So. Thanks for taking a closer look with me.

MUSIC

END CREDITS

[1] Charles Bruenig, A Great and Good Work

[2] W.H. Johnston, “Growth of co-education in America”. Memorandum to Mr. Millis.

[3] How Much of a Pioneer is Lawrence in Coeducation? Marguerite Schumann, Appleton Post Crescent, May 26 1967.

[4] Doris Malkmus. Small Towns, Small Sects, and Coeducation in Midwestern Colleges 1853-1861.

[5] Lucinda Darling Colman’s Memory Pictures

[6] And, adding insult to injury, they also changed the name of the school from Amos Lawrence’s preferred “Lawrence Institute” to the more grandiose “Lawrence University” before classes began in 1849. The name changed again to “Lawrence College” in 1913, and then finally back to Lawrence University after the consolidation with Milwaukee-Downer in 1964.

[7] Doris Malkmus. Small Towns, Small Sects, and Coeducation in Midwestern Colleges 1853-1861.

[8] Lyman Junius Nash, “Coeducation” The Lawrence Collegian, October 1868

[9] Lucinda Darling Colman’s Memory Pictures

[10] Simian: Ape or monkey

[11] Mary Stansbury, “Social Life At Lawrence”, pg. 136

[12] Lucinda Darling Colman, Memory Pictures, pg. 57

[13] Mary A.P. Stansbury graduated from Lawrence when she was only 16, and she’s now the namesake of Stansbury Theatre at Lawrence. Apparently, her ghost is said to haunt the theatre!

[14] Mary Stansbury, “Social Life At Lawrence”, pg. 137

[15] Co-ordinate: Equal in rank or importance

[16] Sufferance: Passive, indifferent permission

[17] Mary Stansbury, “Social Life At Lawrence”, pg. 136

[18] Lucinda Darling Colman, Memory Pictures, pg. 45

[19] Lucinda Darling Colman, Memory Pictures, pg. 51-52

[20] Mary Stansbury, “Social Life At Lawrence”, pg. 137

[21] Mary Stansbury, “Social Life At Lawrence”, pg. 137

[22] The ArieI, 1899.

[23] The Columbian Souvenir, 1893

[24] The Ariel; 1901, 1906, 1911, 1916

[25] The Ariel, 1899, pg. 15

[26] The Lawrentian. Feb. 4, 1913, pg. 2

[27] “Young Ladies.” The Lawrence Collegian. May 1869. It was May, Not June (my bad).

[28] This happened to be the issue after the one that announced Emma Kate Corkhill’s death.

[29] The Lawrentian. Dec. 23, 1913, pg. 1

[30] The Lawrentian. Dec. 23, 1913, pg. 5

[31] The Lawrentian. Oct. 1, 1912, pg. 6

[32] Mary Louise Brown, The Ariel 1926, pg. 30

[33] Florence Andrews Palm, The Arrow of Pi Beta Phi, pg. 379

[34] In the 1908-1909 school year, she taught 607 students (LU Faculty Reports)

[35] Marguerite Schumann, “Mourning Athena Window at Lawrence Memorializes Pair of Scholarly Teachers.” Appleton Post Crescent, May 5, 1963

[36] “Lawrence Loses Valued Friend”. The Lawrentian, Dec. 16, 1913

[37] You might recognize L.M. Alexander from Alexander Gym I (1909) and Alexander Gym II (1929)—he was the main donor and namesake behind both gyms.

[38] Edwards Alexander Chair records

[39] The Alumni Record actually erroneously stated this date as being 1911.

[40] Lawrence Alumni Record, pg. 133

[41] Marguerite Schumann, “Mourning Athena Window at Lawrence Memorializes Pair of Scholarly Teachers.” Appleton Post Crescent, May 5, 1963

[42] As a society, we still have a ways to go. We’ve moved on from rigid coeducational by-laws and strict rules for women, but sexism hasn’t completely gone away. The patriarchy is still alive and well, even if women can now vote and hold property in their own name. And this is especially the case for women of color, queer and trans women, and women with other intersectional identities.

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