Sweet Briar College - Briar Patch Yearbook (Sweet Briar, VA)

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BRIAR patch s torrt Briar f|ouse Ij X tlie late seventies and early eighties of the last century one of the family homes of Amherst County. Virginia, formed a center of the cultured, pleasant, country life which is almost a synonym for the -)! M Old Dominion. There a Mr. and Mrs. James H. Williams, widely read and widely trayeled. gathered about them at Sweet Briar and Lynchburg lovers of literature and lovers of music. There their cherished and only child was horn, and there, amidst stately woodlands and broad fields sheltered by low-lying hills, she lived out a life pathetically short, but a life which was destined to have a rebirth in the college founded in her honor, and thus to become a permanent factor in the educational life of the country and in the intellectual and moral development of thousands of women. The old home, sunk into decay during the long, lonely years of sorrow, has been restored. About it stands the century-old box; the spruce, the yew. and the magnolia keep green the thought of the child of long ago who played beneath their branches. On an eminence the buildings of the college, now more than twelve in number, command a view of fields and woodlands sheltered by the hills of the Blue Ridge. Tin- campus of three thousand acres is unsurpassed by that of any other place of learning. The will of Indiana Fletcher Williams provided simply that all her properties should be placed in the hands of trustees for the purpose of founding an institution, the general scope and object of which should be to impart to the stu- dents such education and sound learning and such physical, moral, and religious training as shall, in the judgment of the directors, best fit them to be useful members of society. According to her wish and that of her late husband, the college was to be a perpetual memorial to Maria Augusta Williams, affectionately called Daisy by her family and friends. No gift could have been freer from coercion in regard to its educational policy. Although three of the original four of the trustees were Episcopal clergymen, the directors at their first meeting determined that the institution should, as they expressed it, be untrammeled by denominational control, and that it should not only give to its students the training in sound learning offered by such colleges as Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, and Bryn Mawr. but should also so shape the curriculum that college training should not he divorced from life, that the courses offered should IS

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BBIAR ' CM up. He came one night to Sweet Briar. The Williamses were away, so lit- asked Logan to go with him to Mrs. Mosby ' s at Mount St. Angelo. There Mr. Lucian Fletcher told of his hard luck and asked his sister for some money. She gave him a shot bag with a handful of coppers in it. He looked at them for a moment, then threw them disdainfully on the floor, and. turning on his heel, left the house. Per- haps Mrs. Mosby felt that already he had had money enough, for. besides running through his own fortune, whenever lie needed anything he went to Tuseulum. Mr. Sidney Fletcher ' s place, and took it. If he wanted a horse he opened the stable and led it out; if a ham. he broke open the smokehouse and carried a nice shoulder away. He was a big man. and something of a fighter, so no one cared to stand in his way. Uncle Logan is fully convinced that there is hidden gold at Sweet Briar. One night, after both Daisy ' s and Mr. Williams ' death, Mrs. Williams asked Logan to go with her to the big pine tree which is situated on the hill across the lake. Sin carried two tin boxes with her. and she and Logan carefully buried them. No one has ever seen those boxes from that day to this. There is just one more quotation I want to add from Daisy ' s diary, so that when we enjoy the delightful spring days at Sweet Briar we can think of her and her love of this place and its surroundings: May 3. The most beautiful day 1 most ever saw. The mountains are clear and deep blue, and the air is sweet with mock orange. ' ' Uncle Logan said to me: Chile, you come to see me sum Sunday when 1 ain ' t got nothin ' to do and I ' ll set all day and tell you bout Miss Daisy and the Williamses so you kin write a great big book bout em. There ' s a heap to tell. Unfortunately it was not Sunday. and only a few extracts from that great big- book of the future can be given here. I hope that some one will soon devote a great many Sundays to the pleasant task of editing Uncle Logan ' s garrulous memoirs.

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BRIAR PATCH clarify and interpret the individual and social life of women. Thus, in its earliesi statement of educational policy. Sweet Briar anticipated the best thought of to-day on the relation of all education of life. The first decade of the history of the college has been spent in developing the physical plant, that is. completing the necessary buildings and re-creating from worn-out farm lands a source of small endowment, and in fixing standards. The .secondary schools of our country, particularly in the South, where money has been scant and where a double system of schools imposes a heavy burden, have not always been able to meet the demands of the college in the matter of preparation. Sweet Briar, like other colleges, has had to contend with the difficulties of inadequate preparation on the part of the students. The institution, with its wonderful campus, its outdoor life, its ideal climate, has a distinct charm, which drew to it students in large numbers. It was difficult to resist the popular demand for low-admission standards and easy courses, hut it has been done. Through patience, hard work, and high purpose on the part of the faculty and the former President, Dr. Mary K. Benedict, the college has been placed on a firm basis of sound endeavor and good scholarship. In the past ten years Sweet Briar has steadily advanced its standards and strengthened its curriculum. To-day its degree is a hard-won honor; its gradu- ates are influential as teachers and as graduate students of Cornell. Columbia, Johns Hopkins, etc. Sweet Briar College stands at the beginning of a new decade. The work of the past has been to establish; the work of the future must be to enlarge. Its curricu- lum, though high, has been inelastic. It has been able to realize one part of the program laid down by its directors; it remains now to carry out the other part, to enrich the curriculum, to relate it more closely to the needs of our complex modern life, to bring the college into firm and vital relationship with educational and com- munity centers. The physical isolation of most of our smaller women ' s colleges, makes the problem of educational and community cooperation more difficult for them than for others of the larger institutions, but to-day the demand of community and educational responsibility is imperative upon private foundations as well as upon state-supported institutions. This responsibility entails the training of stu- dents, too. in political and social science, in the problems of housing, in the needs of cities and rural communities, m the laws controlling the activities of the schools and of homes. It demands from the faculties not only teaching of a high order, but also research, production, and extension work. No one person can enter into 19