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.

September 19, 1918: A New W. & M. Begins Two Hundred Twenty-Sixth Year

The Virginia Gazette for September 19 included two articles about the beginning of the new academic year and the first class of women to enter the College of William and Mary.

In a front page news story, the paper referred to a "new atmosphere" at the opening of the session. The paper went on to say that along with the usual atmosphere surrounding the new semester also came the "gentle women of Virginia to drink at the same fountainhead of learning from whose waters the famous of the land have quaffed. It is a momentous event in the history of this grand old institution, and a strange coincidence that the inception of the military should be smultaneous (sic) with the coming of the women of the land."

This blog has mentioned some effects of World War I here and here, and you will be able to find all future posts on the topic here.

A brief article on The Gazette's editorial page welcomed women to the College and noted that their success and integration was fully anticipated. The paper's words also struck a sympathetic tone noting that the new students would have the cooperation of the paper and town of Williamsburg during the year.








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 19, 1918: From the Diary of Martha Barksdale

Student Martha Barksdale recounted arriving at the College of William and Mary on this date with classmates Ruth Conkey and Celeste Ross in her diary entry of November 26.

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 19, 1918: Mary Enters with Her Brother William

On this date ninety years ago, women entered the College of William and Mary as students. The women made up around 20% of the total number of students enrolled in the College and almost a third of the freshman class, due in large part to the country's involvement in World War I. These "pioneers," as they were often called, included:

Lilian Hope Baines, Martha Barksdale, Margaret Florence Bridges, Lucille Brown, Janet Coleman, Ruth Taylor Conkey, Catherine Dennis, Mary Haile, Florence Mae Harris, Ruth Harris, Elizabeth Lee, Margaret Lee, Evelyn Palmer, Alice Person, Edna Widgen Reid, Laura Louise Reid, Celeste Ross, Elizabeth Scott, Margaret Thornton, and Marie Wilkins.

This list is from the document "Names of girls at William and Mary, Oct., 8, 1918" from the office of Herbert L. Bridges. Bridges served as Registrar and Secretary of the Faculty from 1907 until 1928 and held several other positions at the College as well during his tenure from 1881 through 1933. Click image to enlarge.

Other lists also include Alice Burke, Winifred Goodwin, Emily Hall, and Alice Powers as part of the first class of women. President Lyon G. Tyler would later refer to these women in a letter to Catherine Dennis as the "noble band of girls who broke the ice at William and Mary, and led the way in the emancipation of their sex." Still, as of September, 19, 1918, they were also just the latest in a long line of new students to College - facing the challenges of classes and a new social environment.

The women may or may not have know it then, but this was just the beginning of a year full of change at William and Mary.


A copy of the Strode Bill that allowed women to attend William and Mary from the records of President Lyon G. Tyler. Click image to enlarge.







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.

August 24, 1918: Home Economics becomes a College Subject

As William and Mary was becoming co-ed, the institution probably realized that they needed at least one "appropriate" subject for their new female students to take. This was achieved with the addition of Home Economics to the Courses of Study before the start of the fall semester. On August 24, 1918, future President of the College, Julian Alvin Carroll Chandler, wrote to President Tyler to express that his committee had "decided favorably on home economics for William and Mary." Chandler also expressed his hope that it would be a "real satisfactory college department."

While to the modern reader Home Economics sounds like a fluff subject, in 1918 it was not intended to be. According to the 1918-1919 Course Catalog, the department was "intended primarily for the training of teachers of Home Economics," but "open to all women of the college, and to others who may desire to elect them."

The Home Economics major included classes in the more "traditional" women's work, such as sewing and cooking, but it also included Math, English, and even Organic Chemistry. This department prepared women to become not only educated in the liberal arts, but also prepared them for a career. It provided them with an option that not a lot of women had: respectable employment. Through this department, some women at the college probably realized that they had choices about the direction of their lives and their futures.

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.

August 12, 1918: The Governor Weighs in on Co-Education

On August 12, 1918, Virginia's Governor, Westmoreland Davis, wrote to President Lyon G. Tyler, and voiced his opinion on the College's preparations for the women students who were arriving on campus in a little more than a month.


There were many issues that Davis could have had with William and Mary's co-education, such as not enough class offerings or faculty to accommodate the new students, or the fact that these women would be housed on campus. However, Davis had another concern that needed Tyler's immediate attention: the showers in the Tyler Hall bathrooms.

Davis explains that Tyler was "disregarding, at a good deal of expense, shower baths and replacing them with tubs," and that he should have been brought the matter before the State Health Department before doing so because "they [did] involve an outlay of the State's money."

Well, there are two ways to view this letter. First, if Governor Davis had the time to complain to President Tyler about the College's bathing options, then that means that the Governor had no other issues with women being present on William and Mary's campus. The other interpretation would be that Davis had such an issue with it that he was trying to find any reason why these women should not be at the College. I prefer the more positive option. Besides, if the Governor really had an issue with co-education, I think Davis would be able to find other things to complain to Tyler about, not the showers!

This letter is available in the folder "World War I" in the University Archives Subject File Collection.

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.