Francis and Doreen Reid established the Reid Female College in 1854. Northern educated with a staunchly southern heart, Francis adopted a mission to introduce his compatriots to “the fine arts and modern discoveries” whose mention so impressed denizens of drawing rooms to the north, while imbuing such subjects with “the delicacy and good manners distinctive to the southern bearing.” To this end he tirelessly transversed Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee, helping to establish many institutions of higher learning before he married Doreen, and devoted his later years to “preserving the gentile traditions of these guardians of our moral heritage.” –quotes taken from promotional materials.
The Female College would publicly uphold this doctrine throughout its 100-year history, as opposed to Reid’s male institutions, that necessarily advertised adjustments to their educational model to suit the new order after the war. This was deemed necessary in the women’s case as Reid fashioned these institutions to improve the parlor conversation and cotillion manners of a leisure class. The colleges, in their original mission, conveyed little guidance as to business matters, omitting career track courses such as economics, engineering, and the regional prevailing industry, agriculture, as trifles their students could pay others to concern themselves with. With the loss of their labor force after the war, the landowners needed a more thorough understanding of their industry to restructure and the universities adjusted to answer demand. The Female College, lacking such incentive, remained, with few modifications, a social improvement institution.
The college originally employed six instructors, three males to teach religion, writing, and music, and three females to teach societal propriety, physical decorum, and domestic roles. In developing the faculty, Doreen carefully selected female instructors from the matrons of approved families qualified for the role. She chose only those with the highest standards, good taste, spotless reputations, and well-polished daughters to prove her abilities. Francis generally recruited the male staff from his social circle, which accounted for the number of professionals in residence as opposed to men of the cloth who dominated similar institutions.
While the female instructors usually remained in the Reid’s employment until retirement or death, the small school struggled to retain the male teachers, especially during the war when much larger male institutions were forced to close their doors for lack of instructors or students. Female schools, predominantly administered by clergy or church foundations, also forsook education during war in order to provide the troops with a place of lodging and a cadre of nurses to care for the wounded, but Reid justified the college’s perseverance by declaring that his “girls can better advocate their cause by preserving the ideals so threatened by the invasion.”
However, few male instructors who respected their profession were willing to abridge their disciplines to accommodate the young ladies’ tender sensibilities while their comrades embarked on such a monumental enterprise. After the initial rush in 1863 cost the school two of their three male teachers, an especially astute woman named Anna Simon, whose twin sister had married a Frenchman, presented her excellent letter writing skills to Mrs. Reid as qualification to assume the expository post. A favorite of Doreen’s since childhood, she earned overwhelming approval. The departure of the music teacher to the Confederate band led to the hire of Betsy Monroe, whom Doreen discovered at a fundraising cotillion where she praised in a letter to her husband, “This Miss Monroe tirelessly led every dance on the violin or piano, matching song in time. Though her timbre left listeners praising her deft fingers instead, she never wavered out of key.” Thus the music and writing departments survived the war. Students even employed these talents to see the troops off with song or help pen their last letters home.
Though more secular than her sister schools, Reid was by no means without religion. In addition to mandatory attendance at church every Sunday, they also employed the nearby pastor to preach an extended grace during mealtimes. At breakfast, luncheon and dinner, he shared a brief sermon or bible study with the girls, and then joined their tables to discuss the teaching of the day. Interested students could also opt for a private counsel in the library during the half-hour recess that followed.
With the exception of the President and priest, the sole male instructor remaining during and immediately after the war was the humanities professor John Tomlin, who joined the school in 1862. Disqualified from service for a nervous condition in his legs that prevented standing for any extended length of time, he taught the humanities by title only. His teaching style would eventually inspire the specialized instruction technique later employed by all Reid teachers in that he selected by preference information he felt would enrich the specific student. Two lifelong friends and graduates of Reid Female College recalled later that one had only studied natural sciences under professor Tomlin while he heavily imbued the other with geography and politics.
The limited enrollment afforded Tomlin this luxury. The campus never accommodated over 48 students at its full capacity, which consisted of a large main house, a smaller secondary residence of comparable comfort, and a dairy converted into a general space where students gathered for meals, dance lessons, and school-wide assemblies. Alumni recount the typical superstitious mysteries ascribed to the former plantation, but the limited history on the estate suggests a familiar emigrant’s tale.
Campus Lore
In 1810, a young fellow of what was believed to be Austrian origin arrived in the region looking for land to buy in advent of his family’s arrival. He came accompanied by six well-dressed professed laborers. He did not provide a name of his own but claimed lineage to what the documenters of local lore supposed to be the Margrave of Lusatia, for which he bought a tract of land. The certainty of the nobility in question remains a mystery as language barriers and various misunderstandings inscribed the deed into the name of Marcus Luther. The records are a palimpsest of many spellings and erasures of this name previous to the compromise. The purchase of the deed terminates the factual history of this visitor and all accounts from this point forward flow from heresy, heavily peppered with suspicious county gossip, describing a tale of indeterminate accuracy.
We know the Austrians immediately set to work constructing the dairy, as neighbors carped on the makeshift camp of tents erected on the property while workers focused on housing the cows. Merchants’ notes reported that Luther exhibited surprise at the scarcity of milking cows in the central market, when he inquired about procuring 40 at once! This number may be an exaggeration. The merchants returned the awe when he expressed willingness to settle for goats instead. This led to rumors of unchristian religious rituals being performed by the foreigners.
After establishing dairy operations, the growing camp of Austrians then set to work on the main house, the exterior for which they thankfully integrated regional architectural themes into what otherwise could be compared to an eastern European Chateau. A solid block of a house with wings flocking out to the side and winding around to the back, with a central courtyard that was later roofed, it resembled many others from the facade with the addition of porches and columns and the exception of the height and interiors. The immigrants did not employ one local hand in the affair however, and had no need as neighbors recounted the almost daily arrival of additions to their clan, of which one or two representatives stationed themselves in the marketplace to buy every cow or goat up for bid. The main house went up in record time and then work began on another. Within five years of Luther’s arrival, these habits had escalated the neighbors’ closed-door censures into full condemnation. Not only had the Austrians completely rebuffed society, they never attended church services and had a monopoly on cows. And worse, when the poor flocked to their dairy begging for milk they assented, which one neighbor angrily reproached in a letter to the local paper “for encouraging the tramping of these ragamuffins through our fields.”
Though the colony’s population count as estimated by their objectors is sure to be a gross exaggeration, (they started in the 100s) considering the student accommodations available, surely the Austrians never numbered more than 50, which would require a dormitory-style sleeping arrangements. As the agricultural plantations in the county were of more modest means than their counterparts situated near larger bodies of water, these numbers would comprise a far larger enterprise than any one family employed nearby, which alone fomented enough outrage aside from the livestock. Neighboring landowners complained of runaway cows in their crops and the Austrian’s refusal to fence. The local papers also described an oppressive smell emanating from the plantation in general. Neighbors ascribed a range of affectations to this smell, from withering crops to croup, and the accusations of witchcraft rallied around this odor. Published letters and editorials as well as records retained from the neighbors all called for action to extricate the commune, but the factions argued opposing techniques of doing so. Thus, before they could take any action Mr. Luther approached the nearest neighbor and offered a parcel of their adjoining field for purchase. The neighbor accepted the offer. Not long thereafter Luther made a similar offer to his northern neighbor, and then to those to the south, reducing the land to its current dimensions of 46 acres. Around that time a glut occurred on the dairy market of what the press described as “the most putrid cheese of memory, with acrid sourness on the tongue and a bitterness in the rind reminiscent of lye.” The cheese went unsold. When a matter of months later the Austrians attempted to sell the cows that somehow produced such a calamity, they revealed that their noble master had changed his mind and the party was recalled to Austria. They disbanded soon thereafter without bothering to sell the land. The County eventually foreclosed on the property in payment for back taxes.
Admittedly, the tale of the reclusive Austrian dignitaries inspired the imaginations of many girls inhabiting the drawing rooms of curling cornices and vaulted mirrors. The interiors exhibited a craftsmanship unaccounted for in a land dependent on unskilled labor, yet only the interior framework of the main house exhibited such touches. Some rooms featured frescoes of cherubs hiding their nakedness with blooming flowers of indistinct genus and the main stair’s handrail displayed intricate carvings of more flora. But while angels and flowers adorned some of the 15-foot tall doorways and windows, others were conspicuously bare. The round rooms, however, most impressed the residents. That someone would carve a round room out of a house that appeared as a solid block from the outside strained their comprehension of why anyone would go to such a bother. Doreen Reid used these rooms precisely to answer this question.
Reid students aged from 14-18 and all hailed from rural families of some prominence for their regions. Reid’s families included landowners, business owners and merchants, all firmly ensconced in the top 15% of society, with the exclusion of the top 5% leisure class. This last caveat is important to note because it belies Reid’s forth most impasse at it’s inception, the fact that families above a certain social level would not entertain the notion that their daughters required finishing, and those graduates who most benefited from Reid, escalated into such families. Those lucky graduates, of which Reid assured were plentiful, would neither admit to receiving the instruction nor consent to send their daughters there, thus the school lacked the alumni pride necessary for marketing. Beauty, grace and intelligence were of value only if effortlessly acquired.
That established, many already pert, pretty and pious young ladies of such upper-middle, or lower-upper class families counted among the absent sisters of Reid students. Only when parents feared their daughter would not attract a husband in her current state did they consider the finishing option. Parents’ desires for improvement weighed heavily in fashioning each student’s instruction. Often some parents had a certain suitor’s preferences in mind when making such distinctions. The Female College rejected any applicant with extenuating discipline issues, and expelled, without hesitation, those responsible for any that occurred while enrolled. The faults parents wished to emend, as quoted from entrance interviews and noted on each students’ file, fell within the predictable categories of: willfulness, bad posture, insolence, jealousy, gluttony, not mindful of manners, not mindful of hygiene, overly inquisitive, tomboy traits, verbose, restlessness. Whereas grounds for rejection included: questionable virtue, swearing, smoking, sinning, disrespect for authority, heedlessness, excessive tomboy traits, rejection of school tenets.
The tenets themselves underwent numerous unannounced revisions, but they outlined the general intentions: to practice the utmost of delicacy in language and gesture; to accept only the most refined examples of sustenance, arts or company; to preserve the dignity of womanhood by accepting her responsibilities to husband and family and performing them with grace and exactitude; to hold oneself blameless under the eye of God and share the good word to others; to know one’s place in the fabric of society.
Throughout their tenure, Francis held the post of President and Doreen of Headmaster, and a like structure prevailed until Walter Seacrest retired from his post as President in 1883, and Nancy White, the Headmaster at the time, accepted the President’s role in addition to her duties. This oligarchic usurpation received discreet headlines in the press and evoked outraged whispers across the state. Had Mrs. Reid taken similar measures after her husband’s sudden death, hardly anyone would have disputed it, as long as she retained an attorney or business manager, of which everyone knew her son would provide adequate. But Mrs. Reid, in a demonstration of her expertise in social matters as well as business, recruited none other than the former head of domestic/family affairs, Al Holzer to command the role of President. Former graduates and advocates of Mrs. White’s appointment assert that Holzer carried ceremonial weight around the campus through florid speeches at orientation and commencement and a conspicuous absence in between. They also ascribe these attributes to his successor Walter Seacrest. Though Seacrest maintained visibility throughout his tenure, the imperceptible transition to Mrs. White’s leadership suggested he had little hand in day-to-day affairs.
Mrs. White’s only stanchion with the dowagers of propriety was her blessing from Mrs. Reid herself, who after falling into ill health, tirelessly interviewed candidates for her replacement. Mrs. Reid’s nurse recounted that her mistress called Mrs. White to her for four interviews, each an hour or longer in duration.
Nancy White was always a divisive figure. Born Natalie Bennett in New Orleans in 1845, little is known of her before her presentation to society on the arm of Scott White, of steamboat fame. According to Nancy’s son Gordon, his maternal grandmother died in childbirth, and her father, captain of a merchant fleet, left her with varying acquaintances during each stint at sea. When his ship failed to return to port after the hurricane of October 1852, Mr. Bennett’s will stipulated that he set a sum aside sufficient to board and educate his daughter at one of the finer lady’s academies, none of which have any records of a Natalie Bennett in attendance though many were badly damaged in the war, and much was lost. Natalie Bennett’s name first appeared in any legal sense as a teacher of languages at the Temple Academy for Girls in St. Louis. The newsletter that included notice of her hire advertised her as a former student. However, though their records remain intact, this newsletter represents the first appearance of her name anywhere in the school’s records. They list her age as 29. No trail remains of her credentials upon hire, but some suggest that she acted as governess to Scott White though none connected with the family would confirm the validity of what some might deem an accusation. Two years before his wife’s death their two daughters transferred to Temple, where Natalie taught. Within two years after the first Mrs. White’s death Natalie Bennett legally changed her name to Nancy White with marriage.
Wherever she received her schooling, White’s intellectual acuity suggests top rate education on par with all-male universities, though she may have later studied from a mentor. White was fond of quoting foreign phrases in their own tongue, and wrote and conversed fluently in Spanish and French. She exhibited the most modern in business sense for a woman of her time, though she may have gleaned this from her successful husband. White kept clear and precise ledgers, and in one of her most controversial actions, addressed her girls twice each day, before breakfast and after dinner with a well-composed speech of which she carefully archived. The pastor at the time, Maynard Jefferson, evidently unhappy at this development, cut his sermons to take place through lunch only, which was extended. Though he accepted it with the piety of his station, his wife had little compunction to express her misgivings in her diary, which she donated to the library upon her death. On December 18, 1883 she wrote:
Maynard spends far less time composing his lessons since the advent of Mrs. White’s daily lectures. From once he penned late into the evening, now he says he concentrates on responses to what he suspects are cryptic criticism of his teachings. He does not say so much but to insinuate that Mrs. White’s speeches clog these girls’ heads with cotton through which The Word struggles to plant its seed.
The archives of these speeches seem to contain little more than to weave the schools’ tenets into everyday practice. For example, this is the lecture given the morning of the pastor’s wife’s journal:
Dressing for cold weather: Once the temperatures dip to invite evening frost one must make sure to safeguard the skin from frostbite foremost without compromising one’s delicacy. Cloaks of bulk are strongly discouraged as, with the inclusion of a cold weather bonnet, one may not discern your womanhood when viewed from a distance! Layers are recommended, starting with silk or cotton undergarments and thick stockings, one must wear stockings as thick as possible without slouching. With this foundation one may display a fine cotton or wool dress with a fur mantle without concern or concealment. While gloves suffice to protect the hands, muffs of a light color, such as white rabbit or red fox provide the most ideal option for it encourages others to perform tasks for your benefit so that you do not need to expose your hands.
In addition to these lectures, White also took an active interest in her students’ education with regular evaluations to check progress on the girls’ individualized lesson plans. Though negative opinions of White’s tenure had plenty of company among public opinion, inexplicably, enrollment and student retention rose under her watch, and interviews with the descendants of graduates suggests the first evidence of outspoken pride in their alma mater.
To account for this incongruity, we may assume that this shift in student sentiment passed from word of mouth through drawing room conversations lost to time and not retained by the conventional press or the diary scribers of the day. While the motivation for this positive acknowledgment requires examination, conjecture cannot deprive White from credit. With the exception of her lectures and individual student conferences, White changed little in the curriculum of the school. The teachers, subjects and tenets remained little altered and nothing suggests any drastic attempt at reform. However, even when she served as headmaster, White worked to improve something that her predecessors had protectively shielded…the students’ visibility.
Previous Reid administrations took steps to conceal the identities of their students in keeping with public sentiment of the school’s remedial purpose. White identified the reciprocal nature of this practice and sought to reverse it.
Little other evidence remains to account for the school’s success in the face of growing approbation. The school did not send representatives to recruit from public schoolhouses and kept advertising to 3 x 4 inch ads in popular magazines such as Southern Lady’s Home Journal and the Market Times, ads that stated the school’s name and purpose only. White, however, believed the girls advertised themselves more effectively. A retired gentleman named Edward Erte chronicled life from the vantage of his well-situated porch from 1873 until his death in 1911, and left many writings of little interest but included among the weather reports and domestic complaints, he penned this description of the girls on an outing.
Old Howard was goading that mule again to market with even a larger stack than yesterday, making little progress but to frustrate every driver and rider alike in his vicinity, because nobody wanted his wares anyhow and he would have to kick that plug back home in a matter of hours. Mrs. Morris and Mrs. Oscar with their flurry of domestics before them were approaching coming from the market when in the other direction behold, a cloud of angels! They flowed in rather than walking, moved without bouncing, yet their skirts showed not a speck of dirt from the road, all white, all laced and tucked with waists one hand could wrap around. They could have worn halos their hair framed their faces so without one stray in the wind, which somehow swirled all else around them. They looked ahead as if at a destination far beyond the pearly gates, and moved in silence, not one saying anything to another or noticing those in the mortal world like Old Howard or the domestics who gaped in awe of the coming brigade of beauties. Mrs. Morris and Mrs. Oscar feigned disregard on their frowning faces, shooing their domestics like sheep.
Where formerly, the students would depart the school in closed carriages only on the occasion to attend church on Sundays, remaining on school grounds all hours of other days, White clutched any excuse for a field trip. If a young lady asked how a printing press worked, White would approach the nearest printer to arrange a tour. While educating her students on the outside world, this direct contact melted prejudices, as Mrs. White inspected the dress and decorum of each student that left the door for the minute imperfections that even the most well bred ladies would let lapse for a simple trip cross-town. Thus, the Reid girls charmed and impressed all those susceptible to them. These earned sympathies may account for the mounting outrage of the others. Witness the following from Gertrude Weston’s (wife of Thomas Weston, proprietor of the Westing Mill) diary:
Pauline’s suspicions prove correct, and I regret to have doubted her. If I have failed to mention the fact previously, Pauline believes that those Reid girls are taking over the town! What ridiculousness of course, and I told her so. Still, every day when she arrived home from one outing or another she recounted another encounter with a whole gaggle of those prosy fools. I disbelieved her of course due to Pauline’s inventiveness, and because I never saw the students outside of church. Pauline pointed out that I do not go out but to go to church, and I will lend credence to that assertion if only here. Today, Thomas arrived home with a sanguine cheer, and I endeavored to make conversation about it. He told me those girls had been to the mill! Of all places! Mrs. White had approached him early in the day and asked him if he could show the little ladies around and he agreed! Of course I castigated him vituperously. He said it did no harm, they asked only the silliest of questions and were gone within an hour.
White also caused scandal by allowing her girls to go courting if a young gentleman called between classes. Previously the school did not allow non-faculty or family men on the premises. White claimed to instate the change by the request of the parents on the rationale that most wives met their husbands between the ages of 14-18, thus, if the schools’ objective aimed to fashion the ideal mate, such a rule ruined graduates’ chances of doing so as many of the most eligible would have married others more available in the meantime. Plus, she established that couples court under the observance of a Reid chaperone, a coach to the young lady on ways to improve observed conduct to her benefit. Initially, one perceptible downside of this concession resulted in many girls marrying before graduation. However, the marriage rate rose so high, it too improved the schools image in the eyes of prospective students or parents.
From 1883 to 1909, Reid Female College flourished, all the while with White at the helm. Then a host of social changes swept the school into the oblivion of reminisces, namely, the women’s suffrage movement and the rise of the middle class. The rise of the middle class in the area destabilized the brand of propriety that reinforced the Reid Way. The encroachment of sprawling cities and industry introduced a newer wealth that relied more on innovation than tradition. Initially a boon for the school, wealthy bachelor industrialists combed the grounds for a proper lady to display to society, and would later replace these girls with their daughters seeking to validate their line, but later the infiltration of middle class eventually lowered standards for all. The suffragists would capitalize on this.
The largest quantity of recovered writings by White span from this time, for the most part letters to her longstanding antagonist, suffragist Abigail DePaul. White, then in her 60’s and long widowed, finally exposed through these correspondences, the philosophy that drove her and the school to success.
Abigail DePaul was born in 1861 outside of Louisville, Kentucky. Her father was a criminal court judge, well respected by society for keeping the lower classes in line through swift judgments, less law-based than religious or intuition-based, as assessed through his decisions’ vast number of appeals. Some suggest that one of these questionable sentences recommended his transfer to Wyoming territory, where lawlessness at that time reigned and the popular mail and carriage routes needed protecting by strict enforcement. (Note: the area had no plans to build a jail.) Frank DePaul traveled west in 1863. Three years later, Abigail’s mother boarded her brother in school, and brought Abigail out west with her. In her writings and speeches, Abigail asserted that the freedom she found in Wyoming spoiled her for polite society. She described her transformation in this abridged excerpt of her biography, which she used in her lectures:
I spent the ages from 5 to 15 in a log cabin on the edge of a great wilderness. The nearby town huddled around the exchange station down in the valley, not too far a walking distance for my delicate mother to brave to buy her supplies at the local stores and visit the respectable homes of the other ladies stranded there. When we first arrived, she would tote me along, but as a child of 5, I would so fidget and whine, that she developed the habit of leaving me at home, which better suited all involved. I found friends in the squirrels and birds and even ants and snakes. I built swings and forts out of twigs and leaves and climbed trees and dropped pine needles on unsuspecting folks below. Because I always messed up my dresses my mom bought me boys clothes for these outings and I would frolic unsupervised all day until she came home as the light began to wane and call me from the front door and I would show up half frostbitten or sweating and thoroughly smudged over with dirt with a new rip to be patched and mother would send me to the washing where I would scrub myself pink and then put on my dinner dress. This was necessary to receive my father.
The curiosity of my parent’s marriage formed the first link in a chain of questioning that has led to my current convictions. The character, mores, values and preferences of my father directly contradicted that of my mother’s, and how they formed a happy marriage confounded me. Many considered my father (as he did himself) to be the paragon of justice, the defender of the right from the wrong and so on…a thinker, contemplator, hard worker who valued such pluck in others. If this holds true, then what did he find to recommend my mother? My mother…bless her heart…was an idiot, a beautiful simpleton with no higher ambition than her own comfort. For this reason, my mother entirely lacked the faculty for a conscience. She knew my father would disapprove of his girl swinging from trees like a monkey but she never bothered to ask how I got so dirty. She only knew that I must be clean and pretty for my dinner. Years passed in this bliss until, just as I turned 15, my father asked my mother if she had introduced me to society. I can still picture the confused contortion on my mother’s face. She looked at me and she looked at him and asked, “What society?” My father gave her the benefit of assuming that the few dignitaries of the region fell far below what someone my mother would consider as society, so asked casually, “Oh, the Smiths and the Lloyds, perhaps the Greenes, you know the hens you cluck with?” My mother always found my father’s references to her as a chicken or a ‘silly goose’ funny, and giggled like a schoolgirl. “Oh no,” she responded lightheartedly, “She would be so bored in their company.” My father considered this for a moment and then cut his meat, but he did not bring it to his mouth. Instead he said, “Charles Lloyd was surprised to hear that we had her here. They thought we brought Henry. I can’t imagine she would find society less confining than this tiny little room?” He too, apparently never lent a thought to what I did all day.
We had moved to the territory as a temporary assignment. My father’s job was to legally hang those necessary for the lawlessness prevalent in the area, and to dissuade citizens from the vigilantism that ruled other mountain towns. We always expected to depart within two years hence. Thus our ‘temporary lodgings’ consisted of one room, but my playground extended for miles. The only time I enjoyed the cabin took place at the end of the day when my father would teach me my lessons. After dinner he would open up a law book, any one he happened to have on hand, and use the cases to teach me reading and writing, and whatever else came up, answering my prodding questions and employing the page numbers to teach me simple arithmetic. My mother knew only how to read the words she knew, and the effort taken to compose a sentence on paper so taxed her that my father or I would write her letters. My father never bothered to improve her. He never saw a need. She was taken care of. Me, however, I would learn the motivation for my schooling in time.
Heeding to my father’s insistence, my mother started threatening to bring me to town with her, but she always found excuses for delay. She would return home with trimmings for a new frock or combs for my hair or such other styles that she said would make it easier for me when the day came. At the time I still wore a child’s frock and counted a hairbrush as my only grooming tool. Months passed while my mother dawdled with my new clothes. Then one day father came home announcing that our post would host a reception for a special group of speculators passing through. I believe some were in government, but nobody bothered to explain the exact circumstances to me. It took place in the home of the governor Mr. Fulton, who invited all gentile society for miles. Since Mrs. Fulton counted among the ladies my mother visited on her errands, my father expressed surprise that I had not yet been introduced to her. My mother apologized quickly for it. Father got stern as if continuing a long dormant argument and declared that we would attend the reception as a family.
The realization of our parents as humans always comes as a shock. My mother and I had long sustained a relationship of convenience; this now came to an end. My mother no longer took pains to conceal my inconvenience to her. She started criticizing my posture, my hygiene, and my manners. Her anxiety reached its peak the afternoon of the reception as she squeezed my stays until I cried. I gasped that I could not breathe, and was taken aback by her unsympathetic response “Good, then you won’t be able to talk. I don’t want you saying anything but ‘how do you do?’ and ‘nice to meet you.’ Oh, and if anyone asks tell them you are 13.”
The reception presented the beginning of the end of my innocence in not as traumatic a sense as one might imagine. Both my father and I noticed the surprise on many faces at my introduction, but only I took note of the pause that followed. My mother would talk about the dress she made for me and all the ladies would compliment it and ask her what materials and stitching she used, and then they would fall to gossiping about the newcomers, complimenting the wife of so-and-so as ‘charming’ and ‘graceful’ or ‘dowdy’ or exchanging suspicions of what scandal brought so-and-so out here. At one point my father introduced me to the leader of the expedition, praising my penmanship and love for nature. “If you need a scribe for your correspondence, just send them through the station here and we can have her compile your reports,” he said, “a natural secretary that one.” They all guffawed in good cheer and for the first time I felt somewhat important, but when the conversation changed to the details of the expedition my father turned, surprised to see me still there and, apologizing to the speaker for interrupting, asked me to rejoin my mother’s circle. As I scanned the room for her I caught many ladies’ eyes quickly divert themselves, suppressing smiles. My mother when I found her, on the contrary, scowled.
Though some visitors set out for their destinations the next morning, many stayed in town, and all week my father pressed my mother to take me to whatever salon hosted the ladies that afternoon. Within that one week, all the ephemeral lessons stored in my head came rushing into application and I began to form real opinions. The most important, and controversial of which, I learned with growing exposure to Mrs. Fulton, the Governor’s wife.
The dynamic that exalted Mrs. Fulton puzzled me at first. Mrs. Fulton herself was a very ugly woman. Her whole body hung in drooping folds, which she accented by drooping folds of only the best clothes. She wore long drooping necklaces and drooping cuffs and hats that drooped in the corner. I fancied that she held herself with such rigidity because she feared that any relaxation of her muscles would release all her skin to fall to a puddle on the floor. So she sat clenched. She clutched her teacup with precise fingers; she held her mouth clamped shut and only spoke with decision, sparing no one with the benefit of a doubt. She would remark on the slightest scuff on one’s stocking and reserved her utmost condemnation to anyone not glowingly beautiful, which confused me as she herself would qualify in that category, but no one would ever venture to rebut her, my mother and her friends revered the rudeness allowed for her alone, everyone else was permitted only praise and optimism to emit from her lips. If anyone mentioned the suggestion of an indelicate idea Mrs. Fulton would either nod with upraised brows or sadly shake her head with tightly closed lids. Only she reserved the right to passing judgment, and her judgments held weight enough to cripple others socially. She once declared that the occupants of the coach to pass through that evening were performers bound for San Francisco. Come nightfall, when an inconspicuous group of travelers appeared, the innkeeper refused them lodging and the station master forced them to move on through though they would not reach the next station until dawn. Mrs. Fulton’s suspicions were never confirmed.
One of the families passing through that memorable week resembled my own in that the father had brought his wife and daughter out from Boston to enjoy the success of his mining enterprise. Though introduced at the grand reception, I was able to more closely observe them at their farewell party a number of days later. Another mixed affair, the men stood in a circle discussing business while the women sat and gossiped. Unwelcome or uninterested, by and by I found myself seated off to the side with the young Boston girl. Both she and her mother wore strangely fitted clothes that evinced a fashion that had yet to find its way west, and all present praised their beauty, though the girl exhibited no charm at all, just the cold stare I had witnessed on the faces of other female emigrants. Mrs. Fulton adored the mother, pampering her all week long with praise and attention, inspiring jealousy among the other women present. The mother said little initially, and neither did her daughter, who not so much as looked at me the entire time we sat side by side. By then, I had learned to tolerate these events by concentrating on sitting up straight and smiling with my hands in my lap, which consumed most of my attention because before long I would find myself swinging my legs or leaning on the backrest or other such improprieties. On this occasion, as I had the vantage of resting between the two parties, I had the benefit of observing another contradiction. As if I attended two entirely different parties, I listened to two presentations of the same story. The men lauded the Boston speculator, coaxing him to repeat his life story threefold as new guests arrived. He described how he was raised into a shipbuilding family that extended in the trade back to Wales in the middle ages, he became interested in the westward expansion while in college and decided to take a year to work the speculating bug out of his system, after which he planned to return to the comfortable shipbuilding existence. However, he quickly turned one lucky speculation into a mining enterprise. The men crowded about him in fascination of his endeavors, prolonging his tale with a litany of questions, adding their own little quips of experience to prove their qualifications to do so.
Meanwhile, a contrary conversation was taking place on the ladies’ sofas. Once Mrs. Fulton finally succeeded in coaxing the Boston woman to share her thoughts, she never ceased to complain, about the dust of the plains, the insects, the lack of refinement, the water, and her worries that her daughter would pick up bad habits with exposure to the Indians. She described near tears how her kinsfolk, once proud that she had married into the family of famous shipbuilders, felt betrayed by her husbands’ lack of family fidelity. Throughout this testimony, I perceived that the body beside me began to shift and squirm and detected a soft mutter of incoherence.
When the party began to depart and all stood to collect their families for the formal farewell, the Boston girl suddenly sprung from her seat, hooked herself on my shoulder, and hissed into my ear, “Don’t believe her selfishness,” she implored, “My father is the most respectable man alive but he will never please her and her stupid family. He only wants to do what’s best for us but she only recognizes as good things with maker’s marks from Europe!” And then she slid from me.
I should thank my mother, for leaving me free for long enough to escape what slowly became evident to me as the self-repression of female society. Had we remained in Kentucky I would have attended school with little choice but to submit to these restraints early enough not to question them, but by the age of 15, with the help of my father’s law books, I had more familiarity with male society. Like his daughter, I too thought this man who chanced out on his own without resting on the accomplishments of his ancestors deserved praise and peer recognition. However, it also occurred to me, that a woman could never endeavor such a feat without inviting ruin. A woman, like this Boston woman and my mother’s society, viewed any diversion from the assigned roles as an affront to her way of life, and while men have as much to lose from her enfranchisement, the main enforcers of this creed are women themselves.
My mother, enamored by Mrs. Fulton’s opinion of this Boston woman, started to repeat almost verbatim, her complaints against the territories to my father, and eventually coaxed him to request a transfer back to Kentucky, where my mother immediately enrolled me in a finishing academy.
Though too long to quote here, DePaul’s experiences at a Kentucky school very similar to Reid solidified her convictions that while men protect a social structure advantageous to them, women themselves conceive and reinforce the most oppressive policies dictating strictures in nuance that men little care to notice. Recognizing women, mainly matriarchs like Mrs. Fulton and Nancy White, as the main hurdle to women’s enfranchisement, she started her crusade to close finishing schools across the south through a novel technique of open confrontation. This brought her various levels of success among male presidents and headmasters. Some respectfully conceded to her argument that the industrial workforce could benefit by educated women and conceded to add more practical classes to their curriculum. Others ignored her entirely. Female headmistresses, of which more existed now than since Mrs. White first assumed the position at Reid, almost always responded swiftly and negatively, though many never graced DePaul with more than a second letter. Only Mrs. White pursued the debate.
The first letter sent to Mrs. White from Miss DePaul was dated February 4, 1909. It reads thusly:
Dear Mrs. White
President and Headmaster of the Reid Female CollegeWith utmost respect I submit this proposal for your approval. As the goal of any learning institution purports to improve the prospects of the young people under its care by vesting them with the wisdom of their elders, institutions must also adapt to changing circumstances. Where once, young people had no choice but to marry to progress or maintain stature within the limited leisure society of their county, now, equipped with a quality education in practical applications, any man or woman may earn gainful employment in one of the many growing industries of today’s cities. While greatly valuable to men of modest means, this alternative also provides the capability to free a woman from dependence on her family prior to marriage. Once educated, she can earn her own way until she meets the proper suitor. By removing the necessity of immediate marriage, hopefully this may circumvent the disgrace that often comes from a compromise. Let us be rational creatures not bound to outdated traditions. Let us work to improve our society together. Everyone knows that southern ladies possess wit and charm, now let us show them that we are capable as well.
FACT: The southern states grow 90% of the cotton in the country.
FACT: Though the southern states outpace the north in cotton mill production, the north still produces the finest garments.
SOLUTION: Colleges that educate women in skills both employable and profitable while also teaching necessary life skills such as money management and business sense, will help create a region of greater wealth.
SOLUTION: Currently, one worker supplies the needs of a family of four. If BOTH children receive schooling during the day while BOTH parents work for their keep, the family can earn TWICE the amount of wealth than exists currently, improving both our way of life and our institutions.
I implore you to steer your educational enterprise towards a future more fruitful for all, by vesting your young ladies with the know-how to lead rather than follow.
Sincerely,
Miss Abigail DePaul
DePaul distributed many such letters of introduction, more or less identical, with few variances in consideration of location and personal appeal. White’s initial response also exhibited features of a form letter:
Dear Miss Abigail DePaul,
Thank you for your interest in Reid Female College. Your proposal evidences your best intentions and we appreciate your endeavors. In my 40 years as an educator, I have observed and instated many changes towards bettering these fair products of our proud region, and I thoroughly comprehend your initiative to follow the progress underway in other parts of the county. I wish you well on this quest, and hope you will find no ill will in our choice to decline your proposal on the bare fact that it does not suit the purpose of this institution. Change comes in many waves at once, Miss DePaul, some find acceptance in certain circles and others prefer to let it pass. You needn’t worry about the welfare of the latter. They will not fall behind, but will embrace in time something that better suits their taste. I assure you we do not seek to fashion dainty simpletons. We adapt each student’s studies to align with her specific interests, whatever they may be. I believe the schooling you advocate is better suited to a less specialized institution, where your efforts will meet with better success if so directed.
Respectfully,
Mrs. Nancy White
Headmaster and Principal
Reid Female College
As she would respond in so many rebuttals, DePaul personally challenged White’s response immediately upon receipt of her letter:
Dear Mrs. Nancy White
Headmaster and Principal
Reid Female College,Thank you for considering my proposal. The deliberation evident in your response greatly flatters me. I trust you will not be surprised to hear that I rarely receive such cordial dismissals. While I weigh your argument (that the specialized nature of your school absolves you from adjustments) to be rational in keeping with your wealth of experience, I hesitate to suppose that all Reid students receive a balanced set of skills to advance them beyond the confines of the drawing room. I find no suggestion among the school tenets advertised in the Finney’s Lady’s Book that your girls receive a practical education. Please forgive this inference if false, but I have neither seen nor heard anything to recommend that Reid in any way diverts from like schools devised solely to prepare a woman for wifehood and nothing more. While I do not ask you to discard practices that have served you and your students well for generations, I will continue to implore you and others to consider more applicable instruction in addition to your services, however extensive they currently may be by request only. True, those graduates who benefit from a prosperous marriage may never utilize this skill set, but neither will it cause them harm. Conversely, such instruction may prove to significantly improve the prospects of many other girls who, due to a variety of circumstances, many beyond her control, must seek alternate means. My proposal only aims to introduce this option, perhaps the only saving grace to dissuade the desperate from succumbing to an unwelcome proposal. Surely you too have witnessed, with all attendant misgivings, such a situation. We cannot afford to focus solely on our successes without safeguarding our conscience from the tragedies descending from our policies.
Respectfully,
Miss Abigail DePaul
White, who never once confronted the libel or rumors that accosted her throughout her tenure, perhaps felt the need, at her advancing age, to answer her critics. She responded promptly:
Miss Abigail DePaul,
Please accept my deepest sympathies for your predicament. I too have withstood life’s challenges, and hope to instill all our students with a sense of resilience and faith in God’s ability to assign the correct path to his faithful. He may lead some to the factories, others to the schoolhouse, still others to take the habit. You may not be aware that in addition to upholding our tenets, Reid instructors divest our girls with the arithmetic formulas to help them understand that each of the 18 unmarried land-owning men of good stature in this county possess the luxury to select from ten first-rate girls for wifehood. Trust me that they can translate this ratio into percentage odds.
If I had failed to provide a thorough explanation on our program previously, let me reiterate here that the specialized nature of our curriculum evaluates each student’s concerns and goals, and advises them accordingly with the correct instruction. For example I currently have a student very interested in designing lady’s garments. I arranged for her to receive an apprenticeship under a successful seamstress in Charleston. One of our graduates showed an affinity for exotic flowers. She now presides over one of the largest garden clubs in Tennessee. You may have read that we hold delicacy among our foremost tenets. The term ‘modesty’ applies here as well. While our students do seek to improve their futures, their ambitions are modest, and they keep their achievements in like fashion. While we may agree on many things Miss DePaul, the modern idea of vesting women with the bravado of a man does not become me, and in kind, I discourage such audacity from my students.Sincerely,
Mrs. Nancy White
Headmaster and Principal
Reid Female College
Undaunted, DePaul continued to press White. With each letter, both opponents gradually clipped the rhetoric and exposed their motivations. In the letters that passed hands between those printed below and that above, DePaul dismissed the merit of White’s ‘specialized’ approach as insufficient and pushed for inclusion of her practical curriculum among the school’s tenets. She also discounted White’s suggestion that DePaul herself suffered from the difficult position she sought to aver in example. White ignored this declaration and continued to allude to DePaul as a jilted spinster. This exacerbated tensions to the fortuitous effect of abridging the letters of niceties.
Dear Mrs. White,
If your school claims, in your correspondence with me and nowhere among your advertisements, reputation, or testimonials, to impart applied sciences to your students, than perhaps you suffer from a misperception that only an adjustment in your tenets may solve. You tenets currently promote: delicacy in manner; refined tastes; the preservation of family; submission to God, and participation in society. Due to the changing climate, the young women of tomorrow would find themselves better served by amending the latter tenet to read: ‘contribution to’ society as opposed to the current ‘participation in.’ The semantic adjustment removes the suggestion that a woman’s inclusion in society only requires her passive presence and replaces it with an action to quantify participation by. Men may scorn idleness in their peers yet excuse such traits in women of ‘a delicate nature.’ Women only reinforce this perception of ineptitude by acquiescing to it. If you assent to this small adjustment in two words, I will spare you the many more in my letters to come.
Sincerely,
Abigail DePaul
White, who had already dismissed DePaul’s propositions as simplistic at best, and having failed to answer the previous letter addressed to her, now renewed the vigor of her argument as sport.
Dear Miss DePaul,
I would not forsake your correspondence for such a paltry phrase. You should not sell yourself so cheap! Perhaps you would benefit from the lessons Reid is known for bestowing upon our young ladies. Idleness is only an illusion, my dear misguided one. Idleness brings nothing but boredom and trust me if our girls scorn anything its boredom. Allow me to venture a guess that your father raised you and you have a brother or brothers but no sisters. You watch the men bluster off to work and return home to complain of the day’s stresses, and you see the women promenading around the park in parasols looking pretty, and you read in newspapers about the great western expansion and the feats of engineers, and the frontiersmen fighting the Indians and you wish that your life had more promise than perambulating around the grounds and picking flowers. Oh, so misconstrued! You reject the teachings of older women as acquiescence, only because you have not trained your ear to nuance. You have the comprehension of a man who only believes what he either witnesses or practices. Poor you! I truly sympathize with anyone so blind to subtlety that it robs her from enjoying the finest pleasures in life. To speak directly, the only language you appear to understand, colleges now exist for women to study anything from medicine to art, and Reid graduates are free to pursue their desires. Yet if they retire their education here, they already possess the skills required to live a life of comfort, and to influence the world in their repercussions without ever having to submit to the toil of the working world.
Yours truly,
Nancy White
This tone continued for a number of letters, each scoring points for the views of the writer, but the stalemate eventually ended in finality. The last two letters present the inevitable conclusion:
Mrs. White,
If you fail to comprehend the repercussions of your actions, and the values you vest on your students that by example teach others, men and women alike, then maybe you should perambulate out beyond the grounds and gardens and drawing rooms of your experience and see where your high ideals have left other women who share your values but not your means. I have met three spinster sisters who sell their knitting in the market because, after their father died, they cannot afford to pay workers to run their large farm. They deem their female hands as to dainty to till the land, so it goes fallow, and they go hungry, knitting shoddy shawls is the only profession deemed proper for women to pursue in their family. I have met courtesans who, to uphold the refined tastes they would rather die than do without, shed their souls and dignity for chocolate and silk. I have met their lovers who left their finishing school wives for a more interesting substitution. You may find it hard to believe that not all men value mindless submission to their will. You may also find it interesting to learn that I have a mother that shares your tastes in society and refinement, but who respects my direction as well in the only way that she knows how, by ignoring it. Women’s leverage depends on men’s incomprehension of us. This nuance you speak of, and these subtle plays for attention that we manifest, benefits only one woman, one instance at a time, thus isolating us from one anther, and dividing our society. In an open and honest world, men and women will march forward in unison driven by open communication, mutual understanding and the respect that inspires. Only the weak need to beg for alms to survive, and as only the weak will earn the alms, the alms-beggar must remain weak in order to continue to support his livelihood. Women are caught in a similar cycle, enforced entirely by other women, seeking to sustain the influx of alms. So for all your airs, all your society and finery, you and other supporters of this system are only well-dressed hucksters, supporting the beggars, bleeding the very workers of this society for their upkeep.
Abigail DePaul
Dear Abigail,
Forgive me the offense if I feel the necessity to address you with such familiarity, but I sympathize with you as with one of my own girls, many of which have also met with hardship at the fringes of society. In time we hope they learn that the world is much larger than the limited realms of their experiences, and that opinions, like perceptions of beauty, vary from person to person. Everyone has hope, and I have faith in everyone, including you. I wish you well on your crusade. Perhaps through continued correspondence with others in our profession, you will learn that the obvious is only one version of reality, and you, and men, and shawl-knitting farmer’s daughters, (I will halt to say courtesans) will find your own way through the complexities of contention. The courtesans benefit off the spoils of the good wife just as the shawl-knitting farmer’s daughters once lived comfortably on the backs of their slaves. Choose your sympathies carefully Abigail, not all men will gladly walk arm in arm with competitors for the professional positions they covet, especially if they comprehend the breadth of your intelligence, which, though limited in experience and scope, will serve you well in poignancy and ambition. You would graduate with honors from Reid my dear.
Ever yours,
Nancy White
White penned this final letter 28 days before her death, and though DePaul sent a follow-up, her successor Eudora Craig, the humanities professor who relieved John Tomlin from the position in 1899, returned it unopened per DePaul’s request. Absent from her archives, the letter’s contents remain a mystery.
By 1917, Reid Female College had transformed into a supplemental program for girls attending the public or private schools of ‘practical instruction.’ Reid educated young ladies in music, dancing, comportment and manners, with individual crash courses offered in ‘wifehood’ to prepare the betrothed. This and the summer program would remain popular through the 20’s but closed in 1930 when the property passed back into municipal hands. It would continue to fail at many intended public uses due to the costs of upkeep. The county set it up for auction in 1954, to be purchased by a private family who enjoyed the estate for 30 years, embellishing on the original design left unfinished with the Austrian’s exodus. Upon the owner’s death, the estate became a community farm according to will’s assignations, but again upkeep issues failed the project. Jerry and Morgan Lasker purchased the plot at a greatly reduced rate in 1992, and transformed the farm into The Virginia Bed & Breakfast, a successful destination for visitors seeking antebellum splendor and fresh dairy products from the resident cows.