The other Mrs. Kedzie

Starting in 1903 and continuing for many years afterward, items in the M.A.C. Record made frequent mention of an East Lansing rooming house known as “Mrs. Kedzie’s.” The assumption appears to be that everyone in that day knew who Mrs. Kedzie was. Today, even though her family name is well known, she is not. So who was this Mrs. Kedzie?

The story begins with Harriet Elizabeth Fairchild (1826–1891), who was part of an amazing family of educators. Her father Grandison Fairchild had a role in the founding of Oberlin College, and three of Harriet’s brothers became college presidents.^† Harriet graduated with an A.B. degree from Oberlin’s Ladies Department in 1847. While at Oberlin, one of her fellow students was Robert Clark Kedzie. They were married in 1850.

In 1863, Robert and Harriet Kedzie came to the Michigan Agricultural College when he was appointed Professor of Chemistry. A few years later, Harriet’s brother George Thompson Fairchild arrived to be Professor of English Literature, 1866–1879. The Kedzies and the Fairchilds lived next door to each other on Faculty Row, in № 5 and № 6 respectively. George Fairchild was also M.A.C.’s first appointed librarian, and Fairchild Theatre (part of the Auditorium Building, built 1940) is named for him. He later served as President of the Kansas State Agricultural College, now Kansas State University. (Kansas State, the first college created under the auspices of the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862, was a close sibling school to M.A.C. and will factor into this story several times.)

Although she was an important part of the M.A.C. community for nearly three decades, Harriet Fairchild Kedzie is not the Mrs. Kedzie of this story.

Robert and Harriet Kedzie had three sons, all of whom graduated from M.A.C. and became professors of chemistry like their father. The youngest, Frank Stewart Kedzie (M.A.C. ’77), succeeded his father and later—following in the footsteps of three uncles—was President of M.A.C. 1915–1921. As professor and president he was known as “Uncle Frank” to his students.

The middle son, Robert Fairchild Kedzie (M.A.C. ’71), was the first Professor of Chemistry and Physics at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of the State of Mississippi—now Mississippi State University—when that school opened in 1880. One year later Robert wed Nellie Sawyer, an 1876 graduate of Kansas State, just a few months before his untimely death from malaria.

Nellie Sawyer Kedzie returned to Kansas State to teach domestic science, earn a master’s degree, and in 1887 become the first woman to be appointed full professor at that college. She later went to the University of Wisconsin, where she was the first woman named professor emerita. Kansas State’s Kedzie Hall, built in 1897 for the domestic science department and now home to the journalism school, is named for her—making her the first woman to receive a namesake building at Kansas State.

Nellie Sawyer Kedzie Jones was an imporant, trailblazing educator. She is also not the Mrs. Kedzie of this story.

The eldest son, William Knowlton Kedzie (M.A.C. ’70), assisted his father at M.A.C. for a few years until 1874, when he was appointed as Professor of Chemistry at—you guessed it—Kansas State Agricultural College. Two years later William married Ella Marie Gale, a recent graduate of the Kansas State class of 1876 (and classmate of Nellie Sawyer).

Ella Gale was the daughter of Rev. Elbridge Gale, a regent and professor of botany and horticulture at Kansas State. Ella taught drawing at Kansas State for about a year following her marriage to William Kedzie, after which they had two children together: Ella Pearl, born 1877 and known as Pearl; and William Roscoe, born 1879 and known as Roscoe.

In April 1880, William Kedzie died from “inflammation of the brain.” He was just twenty-eight years old, the second Kedzie son to die before the age of thirty.

Ella Gale Kedzie, suddenly a young widow with two very young children, might have taken a little time to regroup—for the next few years her history seems quiet. Then in 1884, she moved her family to Michigan, where she took an appointment as Instructor in Painting and Drawing at Olivet College. Since she was the only teacher in that field at Olivet, this effectively made her head of the art department, a position she held for more than seven years.

Then fate dealt the Kedzie family another blow. On December 17, 1891, Harriett Fairchild Kedzie died at home at Faculty Row № 5. She was sixty-five years old.

Alone in the Faculty Row house and still teaching full-time at age sixty-eight, Professor Robert Kedzie wrote to Ella and invited her to move to M.A.C. to manage his household. She accepted the offer and immediately resigned from her position at Olivet.

At first blush, this seems terribly unfair—for the second time, she abandoned her teaching career for the benefit of a Kedzie man. Yet on the other hand, it was probably a very smart decision for Ella and her family. At Olivet College she was “head of the art department,” yet her title was instructor which under-ranked her as a department chair—typically a full, or at least assistant, professor—and commensurately underpaid her. At M.A.C., with room and board covered by her father-in-law, she had the freedom to homeschool her children, by then fourteen and twelve years old, in the literal heart of academia. An additional benefit for the kids was living under the same roof as their grandfather, who in this author’s opinion was one of the foremost scientific minds of the era.

Clearly, Pearl and Roscoe Kedzie thrived as two of the “campus kids” in the midst of M.A.C.’s education-first environment. Pearl was one of three graduates of the Women’s Course in 1898, the second class to complete it, and as the high honor student gave a commencement address entitled, “The Realm of Woman.”^†† Roscoe graduated in 1899 when he was just twenty, went on to earn a divinity degree from Oberlin College, and became a Congregational minister—a vocation that surely would have pleased his late great-grandfather.¹

While her kids were “away” at college, Mrs. Kedzie stayed busy. She opened an art studio in Lansing in 1897, initially in the Hollister Block and later in “old city hall,” a three-story Italianate commercial block that once stood at 112 East Michigan Avenue. There she practiced her specialization—ceramics—and taught private classes. She also assisted the Domestic Arts department for the 1897–98 school year as an instructor in freehand drawing, during the early days of that department when it was still understaffed.²

When Robert C. Kedzie died in November 1902, his Faculty Row house was no longer needed by the Professor of Chemistry—his son and replacement, Frank Kedzie, already owned a nice home in Lansing, a block west of the Capitol. № 5 was reassigned to the Professor of Agriculture, Robert Shaw, and Ella Kedzie was forced to move.

She traveled to Florida over the winter to visit her family at Mangonia, her father’s retirement homestead in Palm Beach County.^††† Upon her return for spring term 1903 the M.A.C. Record announced that she would be moving into the Ray Stannard Baker house on the Delta. Apparently this did not happen—instead, she acquired property in Oakwood.³

Mrs. Kedzie’s Oakwood property was a double lot that she purchased from J. D. Towar. Its main house, on lot 24, would become something of an East Lansing landmark in its day: designed by Edwyn Bowd for Towar, it was built in 1899 as one of the very first houses in Oakwood.^†††† At that time its view toward Grand River Avenue was unobstructed, and Towar oriented it to face south—but by 1903, it was looking at the rear of the Woodbury House, which might be one reason why he sold it to Mrs. Kedzie. Meanwhile, at the rear of lot 25, a smaller 1½-story cottage faced onto Evergreen Avenue.

Ella Kedzie moved into the main house, whimsically naming it “Conehurst,” and had rooms to let by April 1. One of her initial tenants was Dr. Herbert Landon, who used one of its rooms as his office for a while. He moved out by December 1903 and into “Miss Ketchum’s” at 244 Grand River Avenue.⁴

For many years to follow, Mrs. Kedzie rented her extra rooms to students and staff. She usually rented out the Evergreen Avenue cottage as a single unit, often to newly appointed faculty members and their families. By 1915, she had built a third house at the front of lot 25, facing Abbot Road; she soon moved there, and in 1917 sold the main house to G. Elmer Ewing (M.A.C. ’92) and Nora May Ewing.^{†††††5}

As the landlady and matron of these houses, Ella Kedzie likely had a positive influence on the many faculty members and students who lived under her roofs during those three decades. A partial list of her tenants (with years of appointment at the College, not residencies at Kedzie’s) includes:

• Arthur Rodney Sawyer, Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering (1904–1924; 20 years).⁶
• Dr. George Alfred Waterman, Professor of Veterinary Science (1897–1908; 11 years).⁷
• Dr. and Mrs. Leslie M. Hurt, Professor of Veterinary Science (1907–1909).⁸
• Arthur John Clark, Instructor and later Professor of Chemistry (1906–1954; 48 years) and first Director of the Band (1907–1916).⁹
• Dr. and Mrs. Richard P. Lyman, Dean of Veterinary Science and Professor of Veterinary Medicine (1910–1919).¹⁰
• Irvin Forest Huddleson (M.A.C. M.S. 1916, D.V.M. 1925; M.S.C. Ph.D. 1937), appointed as Research Assistant in Bacteriology in 1916, retired as Research Professor of Microbiology and Public Health in 1964, a tenure of 48 years. “His research on brucellosis is generally credited as the basis for the procedures which have helped to bring the disease under control in Michigan and other states.”¹¹
• Edwin W. Morrison, Assistant Professor of Physics (1919–1936; 17 years).¹²

This is not to suggest that Mrs. Kedzie was solely responsible for their accomplishments, but it stands to reason that the long tenures of several professors mentioned above were made more likely by the warm welcome they received from her when they were newly appointed faculty members in need of a place to live.

In addition to her private art tutoring, Ella Kedzie was also an active member of the Lansing Woman’s Club. She served as a delegate at the annual State Federation of Women’s Clubs meeting, frequently contributed to presentations on art and artists during the club’s regular meetings, and presided over their round table discussions. Ella traveled extensively, visiting destinations like Yellowstone National Park, France, Spain, and Egypt, among others. She shared her experiences through lively and engaging lectures, captivating the LWC and other audiences.¹³

Ella Kedzie moved to the rear cottage circa 1920. She died there in 1935 and is interred alongside her husband William and several other members of the Kedzie family at Mount Hope Cemetery in Lansing. All three houses—307 and 313 Abbot, and 304 Evergreen—were later razed, partly to extend Albert Avenue west of Abbot Road, and for many years the rest of the property was a city-owned parking lot. Today, the site of “Mrs. Kedzie’s” houses is occupied by the M.S.U. Credit Union’s new branch office building at 311 Abbot Road, completed in 2023.¹⁴

Update for 27 Mar 2025: Mrs. Kedzie’s residences have been corrected to more accurately reflect the three houses she lived in over the course of more than three decades. Additionally, information about her activities with the LWC has been included.

1. MAC Record, 3(40), 21 Jun 1898, pp. 4–5. ↩︎
2. MAC Record, 3(10), 16 Nov 1897, p. 4. LCD (1898), p. 167. 37th AR (1898), pp. 6, 31. ↩︎
3. MAC Record, 8(22), 17 Feb 1903, p. 3; 8(27), 24 Mar 1903, p. 1. FSD (1903), pp. 7, 9, etc. ↩︎
4. MAC Record, 8(27), 24 Mar 1903, p. 1; 9(12), 8 Dec 1903, p. 2. LJ, 10 Jun 1903, p. 7. LSJ, 10 Jun 1904, p. 5; 9 Nov 1904 p. 4. ↩︎
5. LSJ, 11 Jul 1917, p. 14. ↩︎
6. MAC Record, 9(29), 12 Apr 1904, p. 3. Yakeley (1916), p. 14. ↩︎
7. MAC Record, 10(14), 20 Dec 1904, p. 3; 15(11), 30 Nov 1909, p. 3. Yakeley (1916), p. 13. ↩︎
8. MAC Record, 13(4), 15 Oct 1907, p. 3. Yakeley (1916), p. 15. ↩︎
9. MAC Record, 14(1), 22 Sep 1908, p. 2. Yakeley (1916), p. 15. ↩︎
10. MAC Record, 16(11), 29 Nov 1910, p. 3. Yakeley (1916), p. 16. ↩︎
11. United States Census (1920). Minutes, 19 Jul 1916, p. 278; 21 Jan 1920, p. 444; 19 Jun 1925, p. 638; 20 May 1937, p. 1324; 10 Jan 1964, p. 4977. MSU Libraries. ↩︎
12. MAC Record, 25(3), 10 Oct 1919, p. 7. United States Census (1920). Richmond (Ind.) Palladium, 45(82), 16 Feb 1920, p. 7. Minutes, 2 Jul 1936, p. 1255. ↩︎
13. LSJ, 18 Feb 1905, p. 5; 17 Oct 1905, p. 6; 13 Feb 1909, p. 5; 27 Aug 1910, p. 8. ↩︎
14. LSJ, 14 Sep 1935, p. 14. ↩︎

1. † Grandison Fairchild wanted his sons to become ministers, and reputedly joked that they “petered out as college presidents.”↩︎
2. †† Pearl graduated after Amy Bell Vaughn (M.A.C. ’97), and along with Jennette Coryell Carpenter and Anne Catherine Watkins.

   In her address, she touted the importance of education for good housekeeping, words that surely gratified the Home Economics department, then extrapolated that to state that a woman has no need for the right to vote “if she would take the interests of the country’s welfare into her home,” thereby to influence her husband’s vote from within. To this author, it’s a stark reminder of the prevailing anti-suffragist attitude of the time, all the more surprising for having been espoused by an intelligent woman from a family of very smart people.↩︎

3. ††† Rev. Elbridge Gale is remembered for being the first to successfully cultivate mangoes in the United States, hence the name of his home. Today, an elementary school in nearby Wellington, Florida, bears his name.↩︎
4. †††† This is not to be confused with the James DeLoss Towar House, built further north on Abbot Road in 1904, still standing and an East Lansing Landmark.↩︎
5. ††††† The Ewings moved from their farm in Byron Township, Kent County, so that their daughters could attend M.A.C. in the Home Economics division. Alice Amanda Ewing (M.A.C. ’21) and Meta Myrtle Ewing (M.A.C. ’21) would later rent the house to the College for use as one of the women’s cooperative houses.↩︎