June 10, 1919: Commencement Activities Part 2

The final day of College of William and Mary commencement activities in 1919 was a lighter day with the final exercises, including the all important conferring of nine bachelors degrees and five teacher's diplomas upon the graduates, on Tuesday, June 10th followed by the aptly named Final Ball later in the evening.

The commencement program opened with an academic procession from the library (today's Tucker Hall) to the chapel in the Wren Building. An opening prayer was given by Rev. John K. Walker followed by a musical selection and the commencement address by George Bryan. Awards and honors were then presented followed by the awarding of Teacher's Diplomas and Bachelor of Science and Arts degrees. After another musical interlude, the honorary Doctor of Laws degree was bestowed on President Lyon G. Tyler by Rector of the Board of Visitors James H. Dillard. After a fifth musical selection, the retiring William and Mary president gave his closing remarks.

Tyler's farewell address (which was also his final report to the Board of Visitors) naturally recounted his time in service to the institution as its president over the previous thirty-one years. The complete text of his address is available in the Special Collections Research Center with an excerpt provided here:

"I have never seen the State of Virginia yet refuse an appropriation when the argument could be advanced that the College was over-flowing. I rejoice that my last fight in the Legislature for the admission of women will contribute to this end. The experiment of admitting women to the College of William and Mary has been fully vindicated by the results of this session. The young ladies have been models of decorum and have stood among the first in their classes. I rejoice that old William and Mary has taken the lead among the colleges of Virginia in this particular, and I hope soon to see women accorded all the legal and political rights which justly belong to them."

While none of women students who entered William and Mary in the fall of 1918 were among the graduates of 1919, they would begin participating in the annual festivities the following year. In 1920, Margaret Marion Lee received a Teacher's Diploma and Edna Zinn Juchhoff earned her Masters of Arts degree. Their place among the "firsts" were followed in 1921 when six women participating in commencement exercises earned their Bachelors of Arts and three women earned the Bachelors of Science in Music.

For additional information about the first women students at the College of William and Mary see: When Mary Entered with her Brother William: Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945 by Laura F. Parrish; "The Petticoat Invasion": Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945; The Martha Barksdale Papers; and the Women at the College of William and Mary page on the Special Collections Research Center Wiki.

June 7-9, 1919: Commencement Activities Part 1

Commencement activities at the College of William and Mary in 1919 were similar to those 90 years later in that events were held over the course of several days from June 7-10th and featured a mix of ceremony and entertainment for the graduates.

Activities began on Saturday, June 7th, with the Cotillion Club Dance in the evening. Sunday morning there was a Baccalaurate (sic) Sermon by Rev. C. Braxton Bryan, D.D. Activities continued on Monday with the Final Literary Society Program in the morning, Senior Class Exercises in the afternoon, the Alumni Address and the Alumni Smoker in the evening, with another dance - this time the Kappa Sigma Dance - closing out the evening.

Among the oldest records of student organizations at the College of William and Mary are those from the various literary societies, of which William and Mary had several. These societies, which were popular all over the country in the late eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, sought to train their members in public speaking by sponsoring debates and dramatic readings. Some also assigned their members to write essays, which were then critiqued. While the Special Collections Research Center does not have a complete set of records from all of the literary societies, substantial quantities of these records do exist, including nineteenth and twentieth- century minute books, constitutions, by-laws, membership lists, and treasurer's books. The Phoenix and Philomathean Societies, although not the oldest groups, were the longest lived and therefore more material exists for them including from the early twentieth century.

The Hon. Schuyler Otis Bland attended the College of William and Mary and in 1919, when he gave the Alumni Address to the soon-to-be-minted newest alumni, was still a new member of the U.S. House of Representatives, having been elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-fifth Congress in 1918 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Rep. William A. Jones. Bland was reelected to the Sixty-sixth and to the fifteen succeeding Congresses and served until his death in 1950. Bland's personal papers are part of the Special Collections Research Center's collections and available for public use in Swem Library.

For additional information about the first women students at the College of William and Mary see: When Mary Entered with her Brother William: Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945 by Laura F. Parrish; "The Petticoat Invasion": Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945; The Martha Barksdale Papers; and the Women at the College of William and Mary page on the Special Collections Research Center Wiki.