University of Minnesota School of Agriculture - Agrarian Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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' ': ' , . ' . ',-4' - . '1 , . . . f HISTORY OF CO-EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE INNESOTA has the credit of having the first successful Agricultural i ' School for boys. It was also the first to admit girls and to give them a E ,Jr i special course of study. A summer school for girls was l1eld for four years before they were admitted to the regular school. This six weeks' short course was so well attended and proved so helpful that people began to consider the advisability of a longer course. Many felt there was a real need for such training for girls. Others thought that the girls could learn at home all they needed to know about housekeeping and homemaking. Some were strongly opposed to the idea of per- mitting girls to attend the school. The faculty members were heartily in favor of admitting them. Professor Brewster, in speaking of the school when only boys at- tended said, We were thinking all the time of the girls. VVe knew we were only half here. VVe knew this was only half an institution. . President Northrop, in his report to the legislature in 1890, pleaded for co- education in the School of Agriculture. He said, They can be made accomplished housewives, capable of something far better than coarse drudgery, able to minister to the comfort of their households in health and sickness alike and to add to the attraction of the homestead by skillful landscape gardening and the cultivation of Howers. There is a real demand in the state that the girls be given an opportunity to thus prepare themselves for their duties in farm homes. The VVoman's Auxiliary of the State Grange was especially interested in a girls' school. A committee of five, consisting of Mrs. A. L. Bull, chairman, Mrs. Caroline Scofield, Mrs. Mary lIcGregor, Mrs. Eliza Alexander and Miss Celeste Chowen, was appointed to do what they could to bring about the passage of a bill to provide suflicient funds to construct a dormitory for girls. Such a bill was in- troduced into the legislature in 1895, but it was pigeonholed. This however, did not discourage the zealous workers for co-education. Professor and Mrs. Haecker, who enjoyed strong personal friendship with Regent S. M. Owen, worked with him and through him helped educate the board of regents to the needs of farmers' daughters and to the duty of the State of Minnesota to these daughters. Many difficulties confronted them, but in 1897 they succeeded in introducing another bill into the legislature, providing 325,000 for a VVoman,s Building. This bill was acted upon and passed by both houses. The building was completed in the autumn of 1897. Miss Nelly Lang CMrs. Frank F. Marshallj was the first girl to register in the regular course of the School of Agriculture. She entered the school in 1896, and was graduated in the class of 1899, the first to have girls among its graduates. Two other girls, Miss Grace Andrews fMrs. F. A. Gorhamj and Miss Martha Dennison, deceased, also graduated in this class. Thirty-four girls registered the first year, eighteen of whom lived in the new dormitory. In the beginning there was not much latitude in choosing courses. All the girls were required to take most of the farm subjects, such as Farm Accounts, Study of Breeds, Dairy Husbandry, Vegetable Gardening, Poultry, etc. Wllile the boys :X K , '-f,1,51M--. V. 'V Page Nineteen 4