Memorial Room Preserves Records
of Richmond Female Institute

Alumnae Group of Old Woman's College
Guards Treasures of Pioneer Southern Institution

By E. M.

Now that we are well into June, when brides share honors with the "sweet girl graduates," the public is certainly "college conscious" and practically all eyes are turned campusward. So it is a good time to tell the story of the evolution of a college--or, just in case some of the fundamentalists do not like that word, maybe we had better say the growth and flowering of an ideal, and the genealogy of an institution.

It may seem a far cry from the sedate and hoop-skirted ladies of the sixties attendant upon a "female institute," or the Mid-Victorian gay nineties, to this year's crop of co-eds, but in reality they are even closer than sisters under the skin. A few days ago we had the pleasure of being personally conducted through the Woman's building at Westhampton by a delegation of the "Old College," headed by Mrs. Jack Epps.

After a cursory glance at all the magnificence of the new building, which is after all pretty much of a pattern of all such buildings, we came to the heart of its real interest, and they let me into their own secret treasure-trove, the "Memorial Room."

This belongs to the alumnae of the Richmond Female Institute and Richmond Woman's College, and establishes for Westhampton "a birthright dating from 1853." Here are stored all the relics, souvenirs and records, including the minute books of the trustees from the very first meeting down to the date of merger of the old into the inception of Westhampton--old catalogues, old stock certificates, annuals and similar volumes.

Tablet of Pioneers

On a wall facing the door is a bronze tablet, "to commemorate the history of a pioneer institution in the field of education for women of the South," and on a table near by is a lamp made from the newelpost of the original institute building, a gavel block of the Literary Society of 1884, a gavel made from the handrail of the old staircase, and a single brick taken from the walls of the old building when it was demolished. This brick carries a bronze tablet telling what it is, and we can take it from Mrs. Epps that understanding the einstein theory is relatively simple in comparison with the problem of getting a bronze tablet fastened onto a single brick.

There are old diplomas, with the original design--a very elaborate, ornate engraving, showing an angel with wings outspread over a group composed of the muses, in orthodox Greek robes, instructing little 1860 children dressed in quaint "befo' de war" costumes. The earliest one on record is that of Emma M. Wiglesworth, mother of Clifton Miller. This is dated June 29, 1858, and cites graduation in French, mathematics, natural science and moral philosophy. The next, of June 26, 1860, belonged to Miss H. Fannie Peters, mother of Dr. Prince.

There is a faded pasteboard-bound song-book, "Institute Melodies," which belonged to Alice M. Garnett, mother of Dr. Garnett Ryland of the Richmond College Faculty. This was "especially compiled for the use of Female Institutions, by Nathan B. Clapp, principal of the music department of Richmond Female Institute" and was printed in 1858. It is amusing to note the title--patriotic, sentimental, religious--many of the old-time revival hymns. Neither "America" nor "Star-Spangled Banner" are indexed, but "Hail, Columbia!" seems to be the patriotic anthem of the period. There are many songs for various special occasions--Fourth of July, commencement, etc.--and "Some, Boys, be Merry (Strange for sedate young ladies of a female seminary)--"come to Our Trysting Place" (instructions which seem to have been gladly met and to have gotten some of the embryonic medicos into trouble with the dean in later years--but we are getting ahead of our story); and, in view of the date (1858) one of tragically ironic implications, "Long May this Union Stand."

Soiree Banquet's Copious Menu

We skimmed through a perfectly fascinating collection of programmes and invitations--one dated June 29, 1859, to a "soiree musicale"--and there were lots of those--one to a "collation" (formal banquet to you), and a class luncheon back in the gay nineties which has a simply startling menu. It was held in the old Rueger Hotel and included six courses: Little Neck clams, boullion, soft shell crabs on toast, half spring chicken, sweetbread croquettes--and each course included its own array of at least two vegetables and fancy breads; ice cream, cheese and crackers. Evidently no caloric counting back in those days of curves and pulchritude, and in spite of the tradition that a college boy or girl can always consume more food than a circus elephant can imbibe water, that was quite a hefty amount of food for one sitting. Dance programmes are conspicuous by their absence in these early items, but by 1905 the annals show a "German Club" listed along with various State clubs and a "Cupid Club," whose records were apparently secret.

One of the most interesting items in the programme for the first commencement, and we are devoutly thankful to read about it instead of having had to set through it. It began with "an address from Rev. John A. Broaddus," pastor of the First Baptist Church where the exercises were held, included 11 essays, and an address by the president. Old letters give an account of the girls,"the juniors dainty in white dresses and pink sashes, and the seniors in white dresses and blue ribbons, with crowns of ivy leaves and bouquets of magnolias and fish-geraniums.

11 Graduates in 1855

There were 11 graduates in that first class of 1855, one from Mississippi and one from Maine. Within a year, two of them were teaching in their alma mater and two were married. Another, Miss Caroline Thomas, daughter of one of the original trustees, became Mrs. Josiah Ryland, mother of Miss Cally Ryland, Richmond's own first and most outstanding woman journalist-columnist-author. Josephine Ryland, daughter of Dr. Robert Ryland of Richmond College, married Rev. A. B. Knight, college president, of Shelbyville, Kentucky, and was mother of Dr. Ryland Knight, who was for 30 years pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, this city. Others in that first class were Misses Lulie L. Carter (Mrs. Pollard), Lizzie M. Chase (Mrs. Palmer), Mary C. Lathrop, Jean L. Mitchell, Josephine Ragland, Mary Ella Snead, Isabella J. Starke, Fannie E. Taylor, and Mary Ella Thomas.

Among so much of interest one flounders and a selection is hard to make from so much fascinating material, but perhaps we had best go back and begin chronologically, so that our genealogy may be clear.

Thackeray's visit to Richmond occurred the year before the founding of the Richmond Female Institute, and some contemporaries seemed to think that stimulated an already-growing interest in education. One of our most interesting sources of information is in the memoirs of Mrs. Cassie Moncure Lyne, who attended during those early years of the institute and who wrote, as she said, "Looking backward from my eightieth year." As she points out, Virginia had always encouraged higher education either by sending her sons to Oxford and Edinburgh, or by importing excellent tutors of high scholarship. Every manor house had its school, and equal privileges were there given the daughters of the household if their bent of mind desired it.

Now, in 1853, "the enthusiasm, in regard to female education, which has been spreading and heightening around us, is neither unreasonable nor untimely, and "an institution for young ladies, assuming a position analogous to that which our noble State university does with regard to young men, would be of incalculable benefit to Virginia." By act of the Legislature, a charter was issued, March 2, 1853, to J. B. Jeter, R. B. C. Howell, B. Manly Jr., Robert Ryland, John G. Carter, James B. Taylor, John P. Ballard, Albert Snead, Charles T. Wortham, Wellington Goddin, George E. Dabney, Archibald Thomas and James Thomas, Jr.

The last name, by the way, is the wealthy tobacconist who went on President Davis' bail bond, and who built the lovely old mansion now known as "The Rutherford House" and just now much in the public eye for the very sad reason that it is going the way of so many lovely old landmarks, and is so soon to be torn down.

They were given power to name their successors in office, and authorized to raise, by joint stock subscription, a necessary sum not to exceed $100,000, and to "confer such diplomas and literary titles as they may think best calculated to promote the cause of female education." Work was begun immediately and instruction began
October 1, 1854.

The site of the"old Gwathmey mansion," on Tenth Street between Clay and Marshall, was chosen. The building was four stories high, with basement and sub-basement. On the first floor were parlors, apartments for the president's family and the "principal room for the collegiate department." The basement housed the preparatory department, dining-room, store-rooms and "bathing-rooms." In the subbasement were the kitchen, fuel rooms, and furnaces.

On the second floor were the library and music rooms; on the third, lecture rooms "with adjoining rooms for the apparatus and for chemical manipulations." The rest of those two floors were bedrooms, "all carpeted and furnished in the best of style." The fourth floor, with its attic skylights, formed the studios and the "recreation room." It would be fun to compare that with the modern gymnasium in the Woman's Building and see the contrast.

As to the course of study, it was desired "to afford the pupils of this institute opportunity to learn all that a well educated young lady ought to study . . . The object from beginning to end of the course, is to train the pupil to think for herself, to think forcibly, correctly and usefully. The principle adopted is that education is not bare information, but the formation, development, expansion, and discipline of the powers of the mind."

There were three branches, collegiate, preparatory and "Ornamental Branches." The latter included vocal and instrumental music--organ, piano, harp, and guitar--and "fine arts: skill in drawing, painting, embroidery, ornamental needle-work, etc." The preparatory department gave instruction in the three r's, spelling, geography, grammar, French and "mapping."

It's interesting to note that French was taught by the oral method now so much in vogue as something new, "so that it may be learned as a French child learns it." The collegiate courses list, along with other usual subjects, "use of the Globes," "parsing of the poets," and, in the junior year, the imposing array of Geometry, Trigonometry, Logic, Evidences of Christianity (whatever that might be), Natural Philosophy, Latin and French, and Chemistry. Yet some persons claimed it was only a finishing school! Well, maybe so, a course like that could finish off a good many people.

Senior year added astronomy, moral and mental philosophy, Butler's Analogy, Chemistry, Latin, French, and Aesthetics.

Young ladies who boarded in the institute "were regarded as members of the president's family . . . As to visits, attendance upon church, Sabbath school, public lectures, etc., the wishes of parents will be consulted, and their views carried out."

Quite the most thrilling chapter in the institute's history is the wartime era. It is said that this was the first building in the Confederate capital to fly the Confederate flag. Some South Carolina girls, wild with excitement at the news of Sumter, unfurled it from one of the towers. Again we are indebted to Mrs. Lyne for data. Her father was State Auditor during these exciting times, and his official position gave her opportunity to witness more of the pageantry of the times than ordinarily might be accorded a school girl. She attended the reception of President Davis, and to the Prince of Wales, who became Edward VII. She tells us "Most of the pupils rode in their own carriages, driven by colored servants who were pompous in manner and jealous for their young mistresses to shine in society. There were no street cars then and few paved streets, and the city sprawled from Church Hill to Shockoe Hill and Chelsea Hill with spacious homes after the style of the White House of the Confederacy. The location on Tenth Street was then in the most fashionable section and convenient to the First Baptist Church. The pastor of that church, Dr. Burrows, who was "Northern born," but worked zealously in the hospitals among the wounded, went to Washington, after Lincoln was assassinated, to plead the cause of the South and to assure the authorities that Virginia had no part in the tragedy.

As soon as the war had broken out, school authorities hastened to return all pupils to their homes, and the building was used as a Confederate hospital. The kitchen became the morgue, and many years later dark stains on the attic floor showed where the life blood of some Confederate boy ebbed away.

After Lee's surrender, the Federal Government seized the building and school had to be held in a rented house, known as the "Caskie mansion," and not until 1866 were sessions resumed. Like all else in the South, all the brilliant prospects were swept away, and a long, hard period of rebuilding began. There were only four boarding pupils at this time, and the rest of the building had to be rented as rooms or small apartments. The road back was rough, but how well it was traveled today's campus will show.

The presidents of the board of trustees, from foundation to closing of the institute, were the Rev. H. A. Tupper, J. B. Hawthorne, D. D.; Dr. W. E. Hatcher and J. D. Crump. Space does not permit more than a cursory mention of the five presidents of the institution itself. The first was Dr. Basil Manly, Jr. (1853-59) of Enfield, N. C., "one of the foremost preachers of the South." Armed with an imposing array of degrees, including one from Princeton, he had a distinguished career as an educator, but his chief talent seems to have been in organization, to judge by the way he made such a speedy success of this venture.

The next was Professor Charles H. Winston (1859-73) of Chesterfield County, who received his degree at Hampden-Sydney, and who is described as a scholarly teacher, an effective platform speaker and a facile writer. He left R. F. I. to become a professor at Richmond College, where he rendered long and distinguished service. He was father of Miss Daisy Winston, teacher and writer and an alumna of the institute.

Then came Professor John Hart (1873-77). He was born in Louis County and was said to have been exceptionally studious and brilliant. He held B. A., M. A. and B. L. degrees from the University of Virginia, and was considered an exceptionally fine classical student. He was later head of "Locust Dale Academy" for boys. He was father of Harris Hart, for so many years State superintendant of education.

But the really outstanding personality among the group--the one who really seems to come alive out of the years and the dusty records and stand before us not only as a real person, but one of the most fascinating personages we have met, is its only woman president, Miss Sally B. Hamner (1877-90).

Miss Hamner's father was a Baptist minister of Appomattox County, and this little daughter, with brilliant mind, was his constant friend and companion. He was her only teacher. It is deeply significant that the same system--the tutorial system--which produced the intellects of Virginia's postrevolutionary statesmen, the builders of the nation, was the system by which this woman was educated not only to a knowledge of books, but to a finish that comes from an intellectual atmosphere and background.

Following Miss Hamner came Dr. James Nelson, whose gracious manner and distinguished appearance is still so firmly fixed in the memory of Richmonders that he needs only be listed.

It was about this time also that changes were made in the articles of incorporation of the institute and its name changed to the Woman's College of Richmond. When the drive for a greater Richmond College was started, about 1911, attention was focused also on the woman's angle, and it was urged that Richmond College take over the Woman's College as part of its setup.

So a plan of affiliation was worked out by which it was agreed that the two organizations elect their own officers and meet as they might desire; that the president and secretary of the Alumnae Association of R. F. I. - W. C. R. attend meetings of the directors of Westhampton Alumnae Association, and vice versa, and that in each case the officers named should have all privileges except the right to vote. At least once a year the two should meet together, and the members of the affiliated association should be listed in the general alumnae catalogue.

Cicero says somewhere that if we work in marble or bronze our memorials must inevitably perish and vanish, but if we work with the material of human hearts and lives, the memorial will be eternal, indestructible. It is following this thought that this vital group of women are building their own monument while yet alive and present in person. They have not only the memorial room and its mementoes, but they have organized a college club, known as Nostrae Filiae, membership in which rates as one of the highest honors a student may have. As its name indicates, only those girls are eligible who are daughters, granddaughters, lineal descendants, nieces or greatnieces of some member of the alumnae of the "old college." Cousins, we think, don't count; it must be a closer relationship. Miss Sally Moore Barnes, daughter of Eva Agnew (Mrs. R. E.) Barnes, is president of Nostrae Filiae. Besides this, this alumnae association has founded and maintains a scholarship to Westhampton.

Officers of the Alumnae Association of R. F. I. - W.C. R. are: President, Mrs. Frank D. Epps; first vice-president, Mrs. Howard Jenkins; second-vice-president, Mrs. Cullen Pitt; treasurer, Mrs. Christine McG. McClintic; special treasurer, Mrs. Charles Krug; corresponding secretary, Mrs. Walter Tyler; recording secretary, Mrs. George Reynolds; honorary vice-presidents, Dr. Ora Latham Hatcher, Dr. Grace Landrum, dean of women on William and Mary, and Dr. Maude Woodin, Mrs. Sallie E. Smith and Mrs. Louis Michaels; advisory board, Mrs. Charles Gardner, Mrs. Basil Gwathmey, Mrs. C. R. Winston, Mrs. C. S. Fensom and Miss Isabel Harris; committee chairman, Mrs. Stiles Ellyson, ways and means committee; Miss Mary Hughes, membership; Mrs. Eva Barnes, publicity; Mrs. Parke P. Deans, scholarship; custodian, Mrs. Jack L. Epps; parliamentarian, Mrs. Hampton Fleming, who is also parliamentarian for the National Federation of Women's Clubs.

Among the faculty members, there was Miss Jane Standard, whose name, along with that of Miss Maria Blair, is traditional as a symbol of all that is fine in the cultural world of Richmond and the South. And Miss Leftwich, art teacher back in the sixties, deserved mention. During the reconstruction days, she went to Italy, where it is said "her talents rated her in the rank of Sir Moses Ezekiel." Her paintings were exhibited at the Chicago, St. Louis and San Francisco Expositions. Though past 70, during the World War, she loaned her villa in Italy to the government for use as a Red Cross hospital, and returned to Washington, where she served as a "proficient linguist" in deciphering and translating difficult official documents.

Kentucky's only congresswoman, Mrs. John W. Langley, is one of the alumna of the institute and was once its star pupil in the "elocution" department. She was Emma Katherine Gudger, daughter of Democratic Congressman Gudger of North Carolina, and she married Republican Congressman Langley of Kentucky and succeeded to his place in Congress.

In addition to those already mentioned in the list of officers and in the recital of our story, we might mention Mrs. Edith Harcum Hatcher, who has a preparatory school at Bryn Mawr and is herself a music teacher; Mrs. James H. Price, Mrs. R. E. Gaines, Mrs. B. A. Blenner, Mrs. Douglas Freeman, Mrs. Luther Jenkins, who gave the Greek Theatre at Richmond University; Miss Annye L. Allison, art teacher and poetess with several volumes of published poems to her credit; Miss Emma Whitfield, artist and portrait painter, who restored some of the valuable paintings belonging to the State of Virginia when they were damaged by fire in the Mansion; Mrs. Haskins Hobson, Mrs. John Swarthout, Christine Chenoweth (Mrs. Waverley G.) King, assistant director of the music department of the Richmond public schools and a concert singer of rare charm and beauty; Suzette Beale Tyler, who recently was elected vice-president of the Eastern Commercial Teachers' Association at their meeting in Boston, and Mary Burnley Gwathmey, who teaches commercial art in New York City.