{"id":2753,"date":"2024-07-15T04:18:50","date_gmt":"2024-07-15T04:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/?p=2753"},"modified":"2026-04-13T19:42:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T19:42:01","slug":"the-other-mrs-kedzie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/the-other-mrs-kedzie\/","title":{"rendered":"The other Mrs. Kedzie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Starting in 1903 and continuing for many years afterward, items in the M.A.C. Record<\/em> 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Harriet Fairchild Kedzie, undated photo. Image source: MSU Archives<\/a><\/span>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.†<\/a><\/sup> 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<\/a>. They were married in 1850.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u20131879. The Kedzies and the Fairchilds lived next door to each other on Faculty Row<\/a>, in \u2116 5 and \u2116 6 respectively. George Fairchild was acting president during a time of illness for T. C. Abbot<\/a> in 1872\u20131874, and also M.A.C.’s first appointed librarian. Fairchild Theatre\u2014part of the Auditorium Building, built 1940\u2014is 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.)1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although she was an important part of the M.A.C. community for nearly three decades, Harriet Fairchild Kedzie is not<\/strong> the Mrs. Kedzie of this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The middle son, Robert Fairchild Kedzie (M.A.C. \u201971), 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nellie Sawyer Kedzie, undated photo. Image source: MSU Archives<\/a><\/span>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nellie Sawyer Kedzie Jones was an imporant, trailblazing educator. She is also<\/strong> not<\/strong> the Mrs. Kedzie of this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The eldest son, William Knowlton Kedzie (M.A.C. \u201970), 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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ella Gale Kedzie, undated photo. Image source: MSU Archives<\/a><\/span>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

In April 1880, William Kedzie died from “inflammation of the brain.” He was just twenty-eight years old, the first of two Kedzie sons to die before the age of thirty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then fate dealt the Kedzie family another blow. On December 17, 1891, Harriett Fairchild Kedzie died at home at Faculty Row \u2116 5. She was sixty-five years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pearl and Roscoe Kedzie, undated photo. Image source: MSU Archives<\/a><\/span>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Faculty Row children, aka the “campus kids,” 1892. In the group of four boys standing at rear, Roscoe is on the left. Pearl is not pictured. Image source: MSU Archives<\/a><\/span>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a> in 1898, the second class to complete it, and as the high honor student gave a commencement address entitled, “The Realm of Woman.”††<\/a><\/sup> 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.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Faculty Row \u2116 5, circa 1896, captioned as “the home of Ella Kedzie,” who is pictured sitting on the front steps. The original caption omits mention of both Faculty Row<\/a> and Professor Robert Kedzie<\/a>, to whom the home was still assigned. Image source: MSU Archives<\/a><\/span>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While her kids were “away” at college, Mrs. Kedzie stayed busy. She opened an art studio at 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 M.A.C.’s 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.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. \u2116 5 was reassigned to the new Professor of Agriculture, Robert Shaw<\/a>, and Ella Kedzie was forced to move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Campus Scene – Rustic Bridge” by Ella Marie Gale Kedzie, watercolor painted before 1900. Image source: Smithsonian Institution.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

She traveled to Florida over the winter to visit her family at Mangonia, her father’s retirement homestead in Palm Beach County.†††<\/a><\/sup> Upon her return for spring term 1903, the M.A.C. Record<\/em> announced that she would be moving into the Ray Stannard Baker<\/a> house on the Delta<\/a>. Apparently this did not happen—instead, she acquired property in Oakwood<\/a>.4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Abbot Road (marked “Wildwood”) and Evergreen Avenue in 1913. The Towar\u2013Kedzie\u2013Ewing house is on lot 24, with “Mrs. Kedzie’s cottage” appearing at edge of the map on lot 25. The brick-veneered house (edged in red) is the Woodbury house<\/a>, by this time owned by the Hesperian Society. Excerpt from Sanborn (1913), p. 105.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mrs. Kedzie\u2019s 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<\/a> for Towar, it was built in 1899 as one of the very first houses in Oakwood.††††<\/a><\/sup> 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<\/a>, which might be one reason why he sold it to Mrs. Kedzie. Meanwhile, at the rear of lot 25, a smaller 1\u00bd-story cottage faced onto Evergreen Avenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>, 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.5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Two of the ten students living at Mrs. Kedzie’s for the 1903–04 school year, amid others in rooming houses (Shaffer’s, Loew’s), Lansing homes (118 Lapeer Street, and unspecified “Lansing”), and rooms in Williams Hall<\/a> (the bare numbers). Image excerpted from MAC Directory<\/a><\/span> (1903), p. 9.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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. \u201992) and Nora May Ewing.†††††<\/a><\/sup> 6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n