The Twenty-One

The only women to graduate from the Michigan Agricultural College prior to the Women’s Course

When Williams Hall was completed in 1869, the Board of Agriculture decided the dormitory could accommodate female students in some of its first floor rooms, and ten women were enrolled in 1870. They only remained in school for that year—by 1871 the Board quietly rescinded this decision, for reasons that were not overtly stated. (Perhaps the Board did not take into account that the hall lacked certain niceties, such as indoor plumbing.)

As a result, none of the first ten women at M.A.C. were graduated, and over the next twenty-five years the only women to attend the school were either local residents, professors’ relatives, or both.

While Madison Kuhn says “Women were admitted in 1870 and twenty-two had graduated by 1895 from the agricultural course,” he does not give their names nor any reference for this count. After multiple readings through three different editions of the M.A.C. Catalog of Officers and Graduates (1900, 1911, and 1916), I can name only twenty-one. It’s possible that Kuhn might have also counted Mary Merrill’s Master of Science degree, awarded in 1886, although this degree was not technically “the agricultural course.” Merrill (1849–1921) was the first woman to earn an advanced degree at M.A.C. as well as its first female staffer, serving as College Librarian 1883–1888. The M.S.U. Archives published a biography in September 2020.¹

Here is the list of The Twenty-One, with their class years:

• Eva Diann Coryell, ’79, cousin of professors Rolla C. Carpenter ’73 and Louis G. Carpenter ’79
• Mary Jane Cliff Merrill, ’81
• Alice Weed, ’82, daughter of Rev. J. Evarts Weed, pastor of Lansing’s First Presbyterian church
• Sarah Ellen Wood, ’83
• Alice Adelia Johnson, ’84, daughter of professor Samuel Johnson
• Jennie Ann Towar, ’86; one of three siblings to graduate (including J. D. Towar)
• Carrie Mary French, ’87
• Mary Lucy Carpenter, ’88, sister of professor Rolla C. Carpenter ’73, and cousin of Eva Diann Coryell ’79
• Mary Louise Harrison, ’88, of the Harrison family
• Mary Matilda Smith, ’89
• Jessie Irene Beal, ’90, daughter of professor William J. Beal and Hannah Proud Beal
• Susanna Anderson, ’91, whose brief life is scarcely documented
• Jessie Jane Foster, ’91
• Grace LaVerne Fuller, ’91, granddaughter of pioneer settler Horace Bigelow
• Marian Weed, ’91, younger sister of Alice Weed ’82
• Mabel Ernestine Linkletter, ’92
• Daisy Edna Champion, ’93
• Lucy Merrylees Clute, ’93, daughter of Oscar Clute ’62 (M.A.C. president 1889–1893) and Mary Merrylees Clute
• Katherine Cook, ’93, daughter of professor A. J. Cook ’62
• Jennie Mae Cowley, ’93
• Mary Lilian Wheeler, ’93

Biographies of each are in work, but in the meantime some general statements can be made. After graduation, many of the women pursued careers, often as librarians, schoolteachers, or nurses. Daisy Champion became a school principal, and Mary Wheeler worked as a research assistant for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But then, all but one married—many to fellow M.A.C. graduates—and left their professions to raise families and support their husbands. (The lone exception, Alice Johnson, never married; she returned to her birthplace, “Wilderness Farm,” her family’s locally famous hundred-acre property a few miles north of Dowagiac, and managed its operation for decades.)

Those husbands must have been well supported by their M.A.C.-educated wives, for many went on to notable success in their careers—too many to summarize here. Almost unanimously, the Twenty-One took on active leadership roles in their communities, many working to promote education through their service on school and library boards.

Sadly, at least four—Carrie French, Susanna Anderson, Grace Fuller, and Mary Wheeler—died before the age of forty.

Mary Merrill Carpenter later wrote to President Snyder about her education,

Reflecting upon its excellences, blaming it for none of my failures, I return to my pots and pans and my babies, very grateful to any course of study which opened to me opportunities which I could have in no other way enjoyed, and which has made life better worth living, a thousand times.

She seems happy, if a bit self-deprecating, and I can’t help but ponder the potential that was left unfulfilled by the era’s expectations and mores.

Finally, in 1896 the Board instituted the Women’s Course, enabling the College to set out a separate dormitory and classroom space for women to study Domestic Art and Science. After that, women’s enrollment at M.A.C. swiftly grew, but only within that department—sisters Mary Camp Baker and Bertha Bigelow Baker (both M.A.C. ’98) were the last women to complete the agricultural course (or any other outside of Domestic Arts) for at least the next two decades.

1. Kuhn, p. 220. ↩︎