When we look at Eliphalet Nott and his role in transforming American higher education, perhaps his most obvious work was in the curriculum — the introduction of American history and grammar, for example, and the emphasis on scientific courses such as chemistry, physics, biology, and geology.
But the significance of Nott, president of Union from 1804 to 1866, goes beyond the curriculum. Nearly 100 of his “sons,” as he called them — Union students who studied under his presidency — became college presidents, among them the first presidents of the University of Illinois, Trinity College, the University of Michigan, and Vassar College.
Collectively, the impact of Nott's “sons” was tremendous, as they carried his philosophy to women's colleges in the East, land grant colleges in the West, and colleges and schools abroad. Here are a few of their stories.
Pioneers of women's education
“Should the education of women be the same as men?”
The question permeated the conversations of many college and university men during the mid-nineteenth century. Augustus W. Cowles (Class of 1841), John H. Raymond (Class of 1832), and Laurenus Clark Seelye (Class of 1857) answered “yes.” This great triumvirate of Union men became the first presidents of Elmira College, Vassar College, and Smith College, respectively.
The first steps
When Emma Willard (founder of Emma Willard School for girls in Troy, N.Y.) presented a plan for female education to the New York State legislature in 1819, she refrained from using the word “college” for fear of being ridiculed.
Thirty years later, the idea was no longer “ridiculous.” In 1852, a group of men, among them Augustus Cowles (Class of 1841), Amos Dean (Class of 1826 and chancellor of the University of Iowa), and Laurens P. Hickok (Class of 1820 and Nott's successor at Union), met to discuss establishing a true college for women. Three years later, Elmira College began with Cowles as president; it was the first women's college with a curriculum that mirrored the standards at men's colleges.
At about the same time, brewer Martin Vassar decided to open a college for women. John Raymond (Class of 1832) was hired to lead Vassar when it opened its doors in 1865; ten years later, a bequest from Sophia Smith led to another new women's college, and former Amherst professor of rhetoric and English literature Laurenus Seelye (Class of 1857) became Smith's first president.
Establishing credibility
One of the greatest challenges to this triumvirate was establishing the credibility of women's education. Before the nineteenth century, formal education for girls simply was not accepted and it was only in the 1800s that private schools and seminaries for girls and young women were introduced. Until there was a need for women to serve as teachers, few could comprehend educating women beyond elementary introductions to reading and writing. In general, college was seen as vocational training for men pursuing careers in the ministry, law, and medicine — professions that did not include women.
But Cowles, Raymond, and Seelye believed in the importance of women's education, even if only to encourage women to be good mothers and teachers. Anxious to prove that their women's colleges were equal to men's colleges, they introduced curricula similar to that found in men's colleges. But they also incorporated some of the changes in classical curriculum they had learned from Eliphalet Nott.
Elmira introduced its first modified system in 1857, cutting back on the traditional Latin and Greek requirements. Modern languages were required for a minimum of three and a half years, and two years of mathematics were followed by a year of astronomy. Science requirements began in the freshman year and continued through the senior year, and students also studied history, political science, political economy, logic, and English literature in addition to music, drawing, painting, and religious study.
At Vassar, President Raymond leaned toward the classical curriculum (he had been satisfied with the curriculum at Columbia College, where he completed his first three years of college), but he was willing to experiment somewhat. Vassar first-year students studied Latin, mathematics, and French (in place of Greek) and had a choice of either ancient history or English grammar. Science was plentiful, and students also studied English literature, logic, rhetoric, political economy, government, natural theology, religion, and philosophy. Careful not to deviate too much from the widely-accepted curriculum, Raymond was eager to prove that Vassar women could excel in the same courses as men.
Smith College required Greek for acceptance into the institution and, in its first year, offered Greek, Latin, English, and Biblical literature as well as mathematics, French, chemistry, physics, and German to the fourteen women who made up the first class. President Seelye felt strongly that the curriculum at Smith follow that at the men's colleges.
“No way to disabuse the popular mind of the impression that a women's college must be of an inferior intellectual type seemed more effectual than to adopt the prevailing requirements for admission in the New England colleges,” he said. “No differentiation could safely be made at the outset in the intellectual work demanded, if the college standards of scholarship were to respected and maintained.”
Administrators of the new colleges found that one of their greatest frustrations was the lack of substantial preliminary education available for women. Both Elmira and Vassar offered preparatory classes to prepare their students for college-level work. By the end of the Civil War, however, with more women choosing employment (primarily as teachers), preparatory education had improved somewhat, and Smith offered no preparatory classes.
The rhetoric: challenging mindsets
The most formidable task that these early women's colleges faced was to convince men that it was important to educate women. It was necessary to assure fathers and brothers that sending young women to Elmira, Vassar, or Smith would not “masculinize” them.
Clearly, Cowles, Raymond, and Seelye felt strongly about the importance of educating women. To fellow academics, Cowles of Elmira said, “I believe there are far wider differences between persons of the same sex than the difference of the average of the two sexes. There are self-asserting, earnest, pushing girls; there are weak, effeminate, vacillating, timid boys.” He asserted that while there may be slight differences in education — specifically, the inclusion of “aesthetic culture” in women's requirements, including instruction in art and music — it was important that women's colleges reflect “a perfect equality of rank with the colleges for men,” offering much of the same instruction.
Seelye of Smith, discussing the importance of encouraging women to be “gentlewomen,” said that his “conception of the ideal college woman is that she must be refined, educated, gentle. This is the type of woman before whom the world still bows. She is not old-fashioned, even if there are some who think her out of fashion today. College is the most splendid refining influence in a girl's life. It will not make her masculine, nor brusque, nor impressed, with her own importance, if its ideals are respected.”
Raymond was more conservative in his view of women's education. In his “prospectus” regarding the establishment of Vassar, he acknowledged the importance of a curriculum similar to men's colleges, but also asserted the need for modifications. He promised opportunities for domestic training and “feminine employment,” specifically telegraphy, dressing of rooms, and arrangement of flowers. He assured that the Vassar education, while much like the ordinary college curriculum, would “be suited to the sex.” Nonetheless, he felt strongly that the education of girls and women was extremely important and that they be encouraged to explore their own ideas and opportunities.
Where did this recognition of the importance of women's education come from? Can it be traced to Eliphalet Nott's teachings?
Perhaps.
We know that Nott had strong women in his life — his second wife, Gertrude Tibbits, and her fortune allowed him to purchase the property on which the College now stands, and his third wife, Urania Sheldon, was a major force in his life. In fact, Urania, a former schoolmistress and an educated woman, handled Nott's correspondence after his second stroke. In addition, we know that Nott truly treasured his only daughter, Sarah Maria, and that the conversation at his dinner table was never to include gossip but was to center on ideas, books, music, philosophy, and religion. To be sure, Sarah Maria was a part of those discussions.
Union's records show no references to women's education in Nott's correspondence, yet surely a respect for women must have penetrated the students who studied at Union when he was president. Cowles, Raymond, and Seelye were not the only Nott's “sons” to influence women's education. Others included:
— John Newman (Class of 1838), who oversaw the transformation of the Troy Confederate Academy into Ripley Female College (now Green Mountain College), in Poultney, Vt.
— Edward Cooper (Class of 1839), president of Asbury College from 1855 to 1859.
— Thomas C. Strong (Class of 1841), president of Wells College in New York State from 1871 to 1875.
— Edward Walsworth (Class of 1844), founder and president of Pacific Female College from 1864 to 1872.
— Frederick Augustus Chase (Class of 1855), president of Lyons Female College in Iowa.
— George LaMonte (Class of 1857), founder of Farmville and Danville Female Colleges in Virginia, antecedents to present-day Longwood and Averett Colleges.
Union was established by community effort, as opposed to church or individual concept, and was dedicated to “the general welfare of the state.” The stories of Cowles, Raymond, Seelye, and others illustrate that there were some of Nott's “sons” who took seriously the idea of making education available to daughters as well as sons.
Other “sons” as leaders in education
— Thomas Church Brownell (Class of 1804) was the first president of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. Before assuming the presidency at Trinity (then called Washington College), Brownell was professor of belles lettres, chemistry, and mineralogy at Union.
— Eliphalet Wheeler Gilbert (Class of 1813) was elected the first president of Newark College (now called the University of Delaware) in 1834. Gilbert served only one year before resigning because he disapproved of the lottery that supported the school. In 1840, he assumed the presidency once again on the condition that the lottery would be abandoned.
— Francis Wayland (Class of 1813) was president of Brown University during its “Golden Age.” Upon taking office in 1827 he tightened academic and disciplinary standards and took steps to broaden the curriculum by adding scientific study and elective courses. Wayland is credited with recharging the intellectual life of the university.
— Henry Philip Tappan (Class of 1825) was the first president of the University of Michigan. Assuming office in 1852, he served until 1863 and was responsible for the shaping of the university — selecting faculty members, developing standards and curricula, and expanding the facilities to absorb an increasing number students.
— William Colgrove Kenyon (Class of 1844) was founder and first president of Alfred University in New York State. Kenyon, who overcame extreme poverty to attend Union, oversaw the early expansion of Alfred and served as president for ten years.
— John Milton Gregory (Class of 1846) was the first president of the University of Illinois (then called Illinois Industrial University), one of the first land grant schools. An ordained Baptist minister, Gregory was president of Kalamazoo College before assuming going to Illinois in 1867. He remained there until 1880, going on to serve as Civil Service Commissioner under President (and fellow Union alumnus) Chester Arthur.
— David Murray (Class of 1852) is the founder of the modern system of education in Japan. Called upon in 1873 to guide the Japanese to establish western methods of educating, Murray became the superintendent of educational affairs in Japan and an advisor to the Imperial Minister of Education. He is credited with convincing the Japanese to establish kindergartens and public schools.
— Horace Morrison Hale (Class of 1856) was superintendent of public instruction for the Colorado territory before it became a state. He designed the first school building in Colorado and went on to serve as president of the University of Colorado for five years.
— Henry Martin Tupper (Class of 1859) founded Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., in 1865. Commissioned by the American Baptist Home Mission Society at the close of the Civil War to go south and serve as a missionary to freedmen, Tupper established the Second Colored Baptist Church in Raleigh before founding Shaw, a university committed to the education of minorities.