Remembering Their William and Mary Years

In September 1918, women entered the classrooms of the College of William and Mary and made history. We know that in the minds of at least some of the early women students, their actions were not necessarily viewed as ground breaking.

In 1982, some of these early women students shared their experiences at William and Mary in surveys for graduate student Laura Parrish's thesis. One woman remembered her friends' romances, while another commented on her role as a "house president" of Tyler Hall. Most conveyed a sense of honor and pride that they had been able to attend William and Mary. One said specifically "I can truthfully say that the years that I spent at W + M (sic) were the happiest years of my life."

Although some women fondly remembered the College, those feelings were, not surprisingly, not univerisal. One woman said that "as a freshman...I was not very happy." She recalled that "Co-eds were not welcomed by the men," and nothing about the College felt welcoming.

As with any event, personal experience and memories are nuanced and rarely universal. For example, in the 1970s oral history interview of alumna Janet Coleman Kimbrough, Emily Williams, the interviewer, asked if Kimbrough felt that she and the other women "was striking a blow for women's rights in some way" when they enrolled. Kimbrough stated bluntly "no, I don't think we felt that way," even though the professors and others constantly called them "pioneers," something that Kimbrough hated. "We got very tired of that word," explains Kimbrough.

As the 1918-1919 school year closed, these women likely looked back on it with mixed feelings. Some may have felt proud and enthusiastic about the year gone by and looking forward to returning in the fall. Others may just have been glad it was over. As much as some may not have liked the moniker, these students will always be remembered as pioneers.


This post was composed by Jordan Ecker.


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.

January 28, 1919: A Concerned Citizen Speaks out for the Marys

Coeducation at the College of William and Mary was once again a topic for debate in late January 1919 - this time on the campus itself. A debate took place between the College's literary societies on the topic of coeducation, discussing the reasonings behind it and the impact of women attending classes with men. Though not members of the literary societies, the women students were invited to attend the debate. Janet Coleman Kimbrough opted not to go, but remembered in an interview in the 1970s the attitudes on coeducation and controversy the event created:

"There was a certain resentment [toward coeducation] among the alumni and there were a lot of the students -- it would not have been fashionable for them to say that they approved of coeducation, but they weren't at all unfriendly to the girls. But it was fashionable to feel that this was a man's world and that William and Mary was a man's college, and they were possibly a little condescending in their attitude toward us, but as I remember, the students who were actually in college were very friendly. As I told you the other day, the war [World War I] was on, and everyone was thinking of the war so much more than they were of women's rights and coeducation that we didn't run into -- I don't remember any unpleasant attitude on the part of the men in general. I'm sure you read this little write-up they had this year -- "The Petticoat Invasion" or something like that. The only thing I really remember: there was this one preministerial student who was very much opposed -- I don't exactly remember why -- a young man named Wicker. He went on and studied for the ministry; I don't know what his attitude in later life was, but at that time he felt that this was just all wrong. He felt quite intensely on the subject that women should not go to William and Mary. And at that time they had two literary societies and debates were the big thing; just about every month they had a debate in one of the literary societies. They decided to have a debate pro and con on coeducation. And someone I think with a strong sense of humor put Mr.Wicker on to support coeducation. They just put him on that side. The two literary societies didn't have any women as members but we were invited to that particular meeting. I didn't go; I wish I had. A number of them went, and Mr. Wicker when it came his turn to give his section of the debate in favor of coeducation, stood up and said as there was nothing to be said in favor of coeducation he would have to explain why he couldn't support it, and he launched into a very violent attack on coeducation. Some of the girls were rather upset by it, others were very much amused, and the student body in general had a grand time. They just thought it was a grand, big joke, but there were a few of the girls who felt quite upset and embarrassed about having gone. This was just the age when the flapper was appearing, and he drew a terrible picture of the awful flapper and the awful influence she was on the male students and how her short dresses were disrupting the morals of the world and that the students weren't able to keep their minds on their studies because of the horrible women who were parading around in these short skirts. And the skirts actually -- they wore high shoes at the time and the skirts were actually an inch or two above the top of the high shoes, which was supposed to be just terrible. It [the debate] was a very exciting event but that is really the only incident I remember. There were a lot of students whose individual opinion was that women didn't belong in college, that they didn't need higher education, that this was sort of ridiculous -- but they didn't carry it over to being unfriendly at all. They dated the girls if they liked the girls and they didn't date them if they didn't and that was it."

Kimbrough describes a mixed reaction toward coeducation by the male students. There were some, like Wicker, who felt strongly against women attending a traditionally male college and made their opinions known. Others might have agreed with him, but did not let that prevent them from being courteous towards the female students. And, from reports and photographs of interaction between the men and women on campus, it would seem that some of the male students did not mind women being on campus at all.


News of the debate spread quickly. Within a week, alum J.E. Wilkins wrote to President Lyon G. Tyler, appalled that any student of William and Mary would "[offer] insults and [speak] in derision of the fair women of our state who are endeavoring to receive and education." Moreover, he found it disgraceful that the women might behave in such a manner to provoke criticism and yet go unchecked by the faculty. From this perspective, coeducation was degrading the rules of conduct between men and women, leading to a break down of society on campus. What Wilkins had in mind to fix the situation is open to interpretation - whether ending the experiment in coeducation or simply enforcing common courtesy between the sexes. No other major incidents were reported and "that act remain[ed] on the Statute books."

Copy of letter from J.E. Wilkins to President Tyler, January 28, 1919. From the records of Lyon G. Tyler. Click to enlarge image.

The above oral history excerpt is from an interview with Emily Williams, as part of an oral history project of the College conducted between 1974 and 1976. A longer excerpt of Kimbrough's interview may be found online. Complete transcripts of the project and records of Lyon G. Tyler are available in the Special Collections Research Center.

This post was composed by Jordan Ecker and Kate Hill.

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.

Sports at William and Mary

It is the start of the 2008 Homecoming week at the College William and Mary. Ideally, this post would detail homecoming at the College in 1918, focusing on student activities leading up to an exciting football game. However, little information is available on the football season in 1918 and Homecoming was not marked at the College until 1926. With the demands of the Students' Army Training Corps, scarce equipment, and no head coach, the success of the football team suffered. The Colonial Echo yearbook of 1919 was understated in describing the season as "incomplete and rather unsuccessful."

Despite the lackluster performance of the football team, athletics played an important role on campus, and sports like basketball and baseball regained popularity after the end of World War I. Janet Coleman Kimbrough remembered the strong level of school spirit among the students in her oral history interview in the 1970s:

It was a period when college spirit was very strong. There wasn't any question about supporting your team; you just naturally did. We used to have rallies, (so-called), just before the big games of the season, and part of the initiation of the ducs [underclassmen] was that they were required to learn certain cheers. We didn't have girl cheerleaders at all. I don't remember even considering them. The cheerleader would have a megaphone and would direct the cheering, but there wasn't any special costume or special activity on the part of the cheerleader; he was just to see that everybody made noise.

Basketball was especially popular on campus. Women students played among themselves, separated into the "Orange" (sometimes called "Yellow") and "Black" teams. Student Martha Barksdale was widely recognized as one of the best players, and even admitted to letting the other team win once in a while to keep them interested in playing. They also participated in "aesthetic dancing," drilling (during the war), tennis, and swimming.

Members of the "Orange" team (top): Martha Barksdale, Catherine Dennis, Alice Person, Ruth Harris, Edna Reid, Celeste Ross. Members of the "Black" team (bottom): Elizabeth Scott, Margaret Thornton, Mary Haile, Margaret Bridges, Janet Coleman, Louise Reid, Alice Burke. From The Colonial Echo.

How male students might have supported women's basketball is unclear, but everyone seems to have cheered on the men's basketball team. According to Barksdale, students would ring the bells on campus after the men won a game, then gather for a celebratory bonfire and rally either on campus or on Duke of Gloucester Street. The police monitored these celebrations, occasionally arresting students for being too loud or for making the bonfire too large.

As part of Homecoming festivities, check out The Wham Bam Big Band performing at Swem Library on Friday October 24th at 3:30pm in conjunction with the exhibit "Ringing Far and Near: Student Music and Song at the College of William and Mary." Other events in Swem Library include: tours of the library this Friday and Saturday at 1:30, 2, 3:30, and 4pm; tours of the Media Center on Friday from 3-4:30pm; and Ben & Jerry's ice cream from 3:30-4:30pm.

Mary Comes to the College with William encourages students, alumni, and other visitors to enjoy Homecoming and celebrate responsibly (please, no bonfires).

Editions of The Colonial Echo are available in the Special Collections Research Center and Swem Library. An excerpt of the transcription of Kimbrough's interview is available online and the complete transcription is available from the University Archives Oral History Collection in the Special Collections Research Center.

This post was composed by Kate Hill.

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.

Rules for Women

The College of William and Mary's Dean of Women, Dr. Caroline Tupper, was quick to create and enforce rules for the College's new students. One of the first women, Janet Coleman Kimbrough, was asked about those rules during an interview in the 1970s for the College's oral history project. A list of those rules as recalled by Kimbrough:

-After dinner, the women had to stay in their dormitory, Tyler Hall (the present-day Reves Center), until all lights went out at midnight.

-While in their dorm, the women had a mandatory study hall from 8pm-10pm. During this time, they were not supposed to leave their rooms and they had to be quiet.

-At 10pm, the women were allowed to wander between rooms and talk.

-At 10:30pm, all women students were required to go to bed, unless they got special permission to stay up and study until midnight.

-If a woman received special permission to stay up until midnight, she had to study in a different room than her own, so she would not disturb others.

Kimbrough recalled that Dr. Tupper was "constantly trying to avoid making hard and fast rules," and was more interested in "establish[ing] a 'tradition'" for future women at the College.

While these rules may seem restrictive, the women found ways to enjoy themselves. Kimbrough describes a "social hour" the women created between the end of dinner and before the start of the 8pm study hall. During this time, she explained that "someone would play the piano, and they would roll back the rugs and dance."

Tyler Hall, 1919. From Catherine Dennis' scrapbook.

Regulations for student behavior from the 19th century to the mid-20th century are available in the Student Rules Collection in the Special Collections Research Center. An excerpt of the transcription of Kimbrough's interview is available online and the complete transcription is available from the University Archives Oral History Collection in the Special Collections Research Center. Catherine Dennis' scrapbook is also available in the Special Collections Research Center.

This post was composed by Jordan Ecker.

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.

October 1918: Changes in Williamsburg

That women were now enrolled and attending classes at the College of William and Mary was not perhaps the greatest change affecting Williamsburg in the fall of 1918. World War I introduced new training facilities and industry to the area. Through the Students' Army Training Corps (SATC) based at William and Mary, male students could enlist in the military and still attend college with government-paid tuition. The Corps became such a central feature on campus that it became common for an Army bugle to signal the end of classes. In an interview Y.O. Kent, a member of the SATC, recalled marching and drilling around campus, as well as guarding an aircraft landing strip "outside town in the middle of winter." Meanwhile, Williamsburg itself was in the process of moderninizing its infrastructure to cope with the demands of the war. And all over the country, traditional ideas and morals were being challenged by new opinions and behavior.

Janet Coleman Kimbrough, Williamsburg resident as well as a member of the College's first class of women, later detailed a number of physcial and social adjustments that occured throughout the town:

We had daylight savings [time]; of course we'd never had [it] before. Automobile traffic was just really getting under way, and the army stimulated that tremendously. There were these military trucks continually coming through town carrying loads of military materials down to the ports and the army camps here. They tore up the road. We had no paved roads, you see, and we had two very bad winters, and they tore up the roads terribly and turned them into just almost an impossible morass -- especially the eastern end of Duke of Gloucester Street. You really couldn't get across it. You had to walk sometimes three or four blocks up the street before you could go from one side to another because of this deep mud. I remember stepping in and losing my shoe in it; there was no hope of finding it; it was way down in the mud. To complicate matters still further, the town decided to put in water and sewage -- or had decided just ahead of all this -- and they dug the street up to put in sewer pipes, and that made it that much worse. They began the thing thinking they were going to be able to finish it quickly and then because of the shortage of materials and shortage of labor and so forth, it didn't get finished as quickly as they thought. The result was that the streets were terribly torn up. Of course, the fact that almost every family had some member involved in the armed forces -- there was just so much change at that time that coeducation was a minor matter. Girls' skirts were going up; of course, the flapper and jazz and the type of dancing -- everything was "upsetting the morals and the morality of the young people," and we were coming in for a great deal of criticism. Just everything was changing; the coeducation was just one small item, really.

Janet Coleman Kimbrough (left) with Alice Person, 1919. From Catherine Dennis' scrapbook.

The above oral history excerpts are from interviews with Emily Williams, as part of an oral history project of the College conducted between 1974 and 1976. A longer excerpt of Kimbrough's interview may be found online. Catherine Dennis' scrapbook is available in the Special Collections Research Center. Taps, a booklet commemorating the Students' Army Training Corps, is available for viewing online.

This post was composed by Kate Hill.

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.

September 25 - October 5, 1918: Quarantine

On September 25, 1918, less than a week into the start of classes at the College of William and Mary, an outbreak of influenza resulted in the quarantine of a group of students living on campus. According to the Williamburg newspaper, The Virginia Gazette, "fifteen or twenty students at William and Mary are under quarantine, being affected with the Spanish grip. Some of them are quite ill but none are in danger. They are usually confined to the rooms for a day or two, but suffer considerably while the malady is at its worst."

Further reports of the influenza epidemic (commonly known as the "Spanish flu") in Williamsburg in the Gazette are sparse, but the October 3 edition of the newspaper did note that the dance hall at the Marx Hotel had closed to help prevent the spread of the disease, and encouraged other businesses in the area to do the same. On campus, classes were cancelled during the quarantine.

Martha Barksdale, one of the first women students, mentioned the quarantine in her diary entry of November 26 and that none of the women in Tyler Hall were ill. New to the dormitory and college life, they used the break from classes to get to know each other, and even play a game of basketball. The quarantine period helped established Tyler as a center for activity for the female students. Although fewer than 14 members of the first group lived in the dorm, the women who lived off-campus in Williamsburg spent much of their free time there. As Janet Coleman Kimbrough described in an interview, "we were tremendously interested in each other [...] We spent a great deal of time discussing clothes and manners and what everybody was doing and whether to use lipstick or not and whether a girl who kissed boy was fast and so forth."

The students afflicted with the disease eventually recovered and the campus quarantine was lifted on October 5. Classes resumed, and the students returned to work.

Partial group photo of the first class of women from Catherine Dennis' scrapbook, dated 1918.

Top row, left-right: Mary Haile, Edna Reid, Catherine Dennis, Florence Black, Margaret Bridges, Lucille Brown
Middle row, l-r: Janet Coleman, Marie Wilkins, Louise Reid, Martha Barksdale, Margaret Lee

Bottom row, l-r: Celeste Ross, Elizabeth Lee, Margaret Thronton, Elizabeth Scott, Alice Person

An excerpt of Janet Coleman Kimbrough's interview is featured in the online exhibit, "The Petticoat Invasion": Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945. Full text of Kimbrough's interview, issues of The Virginia Gazette, and Catherine Dennis' scrapbook are available in the Special Collections Research Center.

This post was composed by Kate Hill.

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 Martha Barksdale Papers; and the Women at the College of William and Mary page on the Special Collections Research Center Wiki.