The only women who were graduated 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 They only remained in school for that year—by 1871 the Board quietly rescinded this decision, for reasons that were not overtly stated. (This author suspects that 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), this author can name only twenty-one. 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. Biographies of each are in work.
- Eva Diann Coryell, ’79
- Mary Jane Cliff Merrill, ’81
- Alice Weed, ’82
- Sarah Ellen Wood, ’83
- Alice Adelia Johnson, ’84
- Jennie Ann Towar, ’86
- Carrie Mary French, ’87
- Mary Lucy Carpenter, ’88
- Mary Louise Harrison, ’88
- Mary Matilda Smith, ’89
- Jessie Irene Beal, ’90
- Susanna Anderson, ’91
- Jessie Jane Foster, ’91
- Grace LaVerne Fuller, ’91
- Marian Weed, ’91
- Mabel Ernestine Linkletter, ’92
- Daisy Edna Champion, ’93
- Lucy Merrylees Clute, ’93
- Katherine Cook, ’93
- Jennie Mae Cowley, ’93
- Mary Lilian Wheeler, ’93
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.
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