Washington University is an institution that was created by men for men.  But it did not remain that way for long.  Women contributed to shaping the university in a variety of ways.  As students, they had an impact on campus life and classroom activities.  As donors, they stepped in at critical moments to save the university from financial disaster, to establish programs advocated by chancellors, board presidents, and faculty.  As administrators, they paid particular attention to institutional culture.  And as faculty members, they contributed to developing the curriculum and maintaining rigorous teaching.  The research presented here contributes to our understanding of the first three ways women shaped Washington University.  Work on women's contributions as faculty has yet to be done.

Women as Students

   The first charter, submitted by St. Louis businessman Wayman Crow and passed by the Missouri legislature in 1853, was sufficiently vague as to the exact functions of the institution.  It simply provided for incorporation by a board of trustees (also called the corporation), named the first seventeen trustees, and granted them power to determine the institution's program.  It began with the name 'Eliot Seminary', in the manner of numerous secondary institutions in the middle nineteenth century.   In 1857, the board and board president, Unitarian minister William Greenleaf Eliot, amended the charter, with 3 additional sections, and the university was renamed Washington University.  The original charter did not mention gender, nor did the 1857 sections. ¹

   This openness regarding students' gender may have been unintentional.  Or it may have been a result of institution builders' growing commitment to the secondary and post-secondary education of women in mid-nineteenth-century United States.  Women's academies offering secondary education had been enrolling middle-class girls since the 1790s.  Public high schools became more available, particularly in urban areas, over the course of the nineteenth century, as such schools increasingly were perceived as places to train teachers for expanding common school systems.  Frontier towns were less able than older Eastern cities to afford separate secondary schooling for girls; they opened coeducational secondary schools.  By 1853, a few small institutions calling themselves colleges admitted women: Georgia Female College (chartered in 1836), Mary Sharp College (chartered in 1848), Elmira College in New York (chartered initially in 1852), but it is not clear that any of these, except perhaps Elmira, re-chartered in 1855 and granting its first bachelor's degrees in 1859, offered a college education. ²
   A very few coeducational colleges enrolled women before the Civil War: Oberlin College (1833) began admitting women to the college course in 1837; Antioch College (1853) enrolled a quarter of its first class as women; the University of Iowa (1856) had a coeducational entering class.  The University of Wisconsin enrolled women in its preparatory department in 1849, but did not begin admitting women to the college program until 1860.  After Vassar College (1865) and the other Seven Sisters (1870s and 1880s) opened, and coeducation was introduced in western state universities in the 1870s, the advanced education of women and coeducation became largely accepted practices in American higher education.
   Washington University's charter may not have excluded women students, but its practices did.  Eliot, who as president of the corporation had a defining influence on the shape of the institution, was committed to, but had conflicted views of, female education.   His attitude was shaped in part by his more general ideas about education and his conversations with the board of trustees.  These discussions concerned both the board's desire to provide practical education that would further the economic and technical development of the city of St. Louis and Eliot and board members' recognition that cultural education would advance the study of both science and humanities in the Midwest.  During its first decade the corporation sponsored adult learning classes in a local school, secondary education for boys (too few students were prepared for collegiate education at that point and the university lacked the resources to initiate a college program), and the O'Fallon Polytechnic Institute for training in engineering and industry.  The collegiate program was not offered until 1859, but the university had a scientific department that Eliot hoped would grow into the equivalent of Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School.³
   Eliot was largely responsible for the university's first initiative in female education by raising money for and pushing to establish a female secondary-level academy to complement the male academy.  Eliot believed citizens of St. Louis should not have to send their "daughters a thousand miles away from home, for four or five of the most critical years" in their lives "to be trained by strangers."  Mary Institute was designed to provide as rigorous a curriculum as the male academy did and to encourage its students to develop as rational beings, limited, as male education was, only "by the capacity of the individual scholar and the external means within reach."  At the same time, he believed that "female education should be conducted with reference to the duties a woman is called upon to fulfill in the different relations of her life," including acting "as the companion and equal of her husband" and early educator of her children within the family.   Nevertheless, Eliot did not encourage admitting women to the university and was extremely ambivalent about coeducation at that time.  At the same time, Mary Institute began offering more advanced, college-level courses for students who desired them.⁴
   Mary Institute was not the first effort to provide secondary education for young women in St. Louis.  A few private academies and schools, including some that were coeducational, operated in St. Louis in the 1820s, but had limited capacity.  In 1827 the Sisters of Charity, a Roman Catholic order of nuns who had come to the region in 1818, opened a convent, specifically to establish educational institutions.  They undertook the education of children from all segments of St. Louis, including orphans, the poor, Blacks and middle-class girls.  Within ten years, they were operating the only free school in the city and included both Protestant and Catholic children in all of their institutions.  The sisters explicitly tailored their curriculum to teach republican values and ethno religious tolerance, as well as basic literacy and more advanced academic subjects.  In addition, he Roman Catholic Church had established St. Louis University had been established for young men in 1818 (as St. Louis College).  Clearly, Catholic St. Louisans and religious orders were providing a significant portion of primary, secondary, and advanced schooling in antebellum St. Louis.  One issue prominent in the minds of Protestants such as Eliot was the kind of religious education the sisters offered.  And Eliot himself ensured that sectarian concerns would not influence the university's educational program when he insisted on including that provision in the 1857 charter amendment:

"No instruction, either sectarian in religion, or party in politics, shall be allowed in any department of said University, and no sectarian or party test shall be allowed in the election of professors, teachers, or other officers of said University, or in the admission of scholars thereto, or for any other purpose whatever." ⁵

   In 1870 Eliot became acting chancellor and then chancellor of the university, in addition to continuing as president of the board of trustees.  His ambivalence about coeducation had diminished.  He acknowledged that women's roles might be broader than merely domestic: as "the principal educators in our whole Public School system."  He went so far as to suggest that in some "special & exceptional" cases, "according to individual capacity, opportunity" education might offer preparation for "any position they may have within reach.  No limit here, or scarcely any." He believed that woman "will undoubtedly be a voter, with all the rights, privileges, responsibilities, & duties of a citizen," including holding property.  He also thought "fair competition" would settle any questions of women's ability to compete with men in academic excellence.  But he was contending with increasing pressure from St. Louis women, and with parents of graduates of Mary Institute and St. Louis's public high school, who wanted college for their daughters.  And he continued to feel uneasy with coeducation, believing that female students should have opportunities "correlative & equal to" male students', but they should not necessarily be in the same classrooms.  Women's education, he argued in his personal journal, "is different, and for different purposes"--equal, but not the same.  He was surprised that, when the issue was put to a university faculty vote, "all the faculty . . . were in favor of admitting women into College classes, either for special recitations or as full students."  He predicted, "few will avail themselves of this.  But the doors are open.  The College curriculum will not be varied in [the] smallest degree to suit the woman demand." ⁶
   The first women students actually entered the university in 1869, as law students, two years after the law department opened.  Lemma Barkeloo, a student from New York, stayed at the university less than a year before passing the bar exam.  Phoebe Couzins was elected class officer in her first year, completed her degree in 1871, was admitted to the bar, practiced law, lectured on woman suffrage, and served a short term as Deputy U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District.  The first undergraduate student entered the university in 1870; Alice Belcher stayed a year, then moved to the University of Michigan, which also began admitting women in 1870, and finished at Milwaukee Downer College.  Mary Rychlicki and Ada Calista Fisher, who enrolled in 1873, were the first women to receive degrees—both in 1876.  Others enrolled as special students, to take classes, but not degrees.  By 1877 after some experience with women students, Eliot still thought that "girls should never be educated away from home" unless it was necessary, but that women were as capable as men of intense intellectual engagement and accomplishment and could elevate the "tone of morality" in coeducational settings.  He also continued to believe that there were inherent differences between men and women and that they faced different demands and lived in different conditions. But the numbers of women increased, so that by the 1880s, women made up from one of three (1882) to three of six (1886) graduating seniors, belying Eliot's prediction that few would take advantage of such an opening. ⁷
 

   Women continued to enroll in the university.  In fact, it was their matriculation that greatly increased student enrollment in the university in the 1890s.  But they found themselves excluded from many (male) student activities.  This began to change when the university moved from downtown St. Louis to its new hilltop campus on the western edge of the city in 1905.   The move was the result of efforts by the board, under the leadership of President Robert S. Brookings (1895-1928), to increase the endowment, expand the university's facilities, and raise the university's profile among leading institutions in the United States.   The university's first material acknowledgement of the presence of women occurred during the board's planning for new buildings on the hilltop campus.  Initially, a women's dormitory had been among the new building plans, but Brookings, like his predecessor Eliot, also had reservations about coeducation.⁸

   As he wrote to Chancellor Winfield Scott Chaplin in 1901 while the campus was in development: "The more time I have to consider the question the more convinced I am that we should avoid the girls [sic] dormitory until all evidence is in that we have had every opportunity to determine wisely to what extent we should develop along coeducation lines."  Models the university might emulate, he suggested, included Harvard with its annex, Radcliffe College, where Harvard faculty taught Radcliffe women in separate classes, or Columbia University with Barnard College, where a mix of Barnard and Columbia faculty taught largely (but not entirely) separate classes.  Chaplin responded by noting that he was willing to postpone such a dormitory, but "if some one comes forward who prefers to build us a dormitory for women, we of course shall have to accept it."  He added "there has always been protest against co-education, but in the face of it co-education is the common and accepted condition in nine-tenths of the educational institutions west of New York.  It seems to be so strongly settled here in the west, that it would be unwise for us to take any steps to introduce a different plan."  Chaplin thought that the expense of separate institutions was prohibitive and that Harvard's approach had damaged the institution by unnecessarily stretching resources. In the end, a donor did come forward, Eliza (Mrs. William S.) McMillan, who provided a total of $300,000, "the entire cost of construction and equipment," including a gymnasium, for McMillan Hall, named after her late husband, who had been a champion of female education in St. Louis. ⁹
 

   But Brookings, whose voice in university matters was often decisive, stubbornly clung to the idea of abandoning coeducation.  And McMillan Hall continued to be used by the university for purposes in addition to housing women students.  Faculty lived there for years, and in 1918, Chancellor Hall proposed using the "Chancellor's quarters" in McMillan for a faculty club.  Dean of Women Martha McCaulley protested that the women needed all the available space for their own activities.  And although Brookings realized that women were pushing the university medical school to admit them ("it does look as though the medical schools of the country recognize the importance of admitting women"), he continued to press Chancellor Hall for information on the costs of separate instruction at the undergraduate level.  Brookings continued to raise "the argument for a distinct type of university in the Middle West and [the] establishment of a women's college corresponding with Radcliffe," bearing the name of its donor.  He considered using McMillan to house such a college until a new one could be built and then converting McMillan to house the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.  The plan never came to fruition and women students increasingly made inroads at the university.¹⁰
   In their efforts to make the university theirs, too, women met significant early resistance by men students.  Although some men were fascinated by the women and believed that the primary reason for keeping them on campus was their ability to refine male manners and behavior, many were threatened by their presence into the twentieth century.  Women were rarely permitted to participate in the campus culture men established at the downtown location, but had begun to organize sororities and their own honorary society, and to participate in the drama club.  McMillan Hall was critical to the process—it provided space for the gym, meeting rooms, administrative offices, and a dining room.   The reception area of the hall facilitated social gatherings between current students and alumnae after McMillan opened in 1907.¹¹
 

   McMillan served as a base of power for women students.  They began contributing to previously male organizations, including academic clubs, the student newspaper Student Life, the yearbook The Hatchet, although most often not in leadership positions, but were largely excluded from the male honoraries and from student government, the kinds of activities that wielded the most power in shaping undergraduate campus culture. This relative marginality was a result of male student fears that women would feminize the campus, fears that other coeducational institutions exhibited in the early decades of the twentieth century. The balance of power shifted, as at most institutions, during wartime, when the dearth of men created openings for women.  But in peacetime women students continued to create their own organizations and developed their own rites and rituals to support women's social life on campus. ¹²
   The next major advance for women students occurred in the 1920s.  They began by forming a Women's Union in 1917, a parallel organization to the already existing Men's Union, and calling for a building specifically for use by women's organizations.  They had outgrown McMillan Hall and by 1921, the university remodeled the building, but had to reduce meeting space to accommodate more student living space.  In addition to rooms for student meetings, other goals were to provide a better venue for women students and alumnae to meet, communicate, and form networks, and to create a place on campus for the large contingent of commuting students.   They petitioned Chancellor Herbert S. Hadley in 1924 for permission to hold a fund raising drive for a building to house their campus activities and to "make every woman feel that a part of the university belonged to her."   Hadley agreed and provided support for their efforts, primarily by acting as liaison with the Board of Trustees and vetting some of the larger donations for furnishings and appointments.   Students drew on local alumnae and women's groups for help.  Nearly 1,200 students, alumnae, and other friends contributed funds.  Students held rummage sales, sold food at athletic events, and organized carnivals and bridge games to raise funds.  A large matching donation of $100,000 came from Alice (Mrs. Henry Eliot) Smith of Illinois, pending $150,000 from other sources.  Another $25,000, which helped to close the gap on the matching grant, came from Mary Institute alumna Sarah Glasgow (Mrs. Newton R.) Wilson, who learned of the campaign when she saw women hawking hot dogs at a university football game.  Sororities solicited funds from members, negotiated with the university, and contributed from their "house fund[s]"—requesting that a matron be appointed so that they could sleep in the building should their meetings run late at night.  By 1927, the money had been raised and the cornerstone was laid. ¹³

   Women students continued to chip away at the male campus culture, making great leaps toward real coeducation during World War II, and then again in the later 1960s and early 1970s.  Numbers alone helped.  By 1929, women made up more than half the undergraduate student body, though they remained a very small minority in the professional schools.  Their graduation rate outpaced men's by three or four to one throughout the 1920s.  Numbers and proportions fell in the late 1940s and early 1950s, as they did in colleges throughout the United States, with the influx of young men on the G.I. Bill.  But women's enrollment rapidly increased in the late 1960s.  The formation of the Women's Studies Program in 1972, one of the first in the country, enabled women students and faculty to emphasize the study of women's conditions and experience, contributions to the arts and scholarship, and feminist analyses of literature, politics, history, the arts, and other knowledge domains to contribute to the undergraduate and graduate curriculum of the university.  But their steady efforts to penetrate all corners of the campus, from the athletic program, to the business school, to the administration, and to use the knowledge they gained at the university to shape society is most remarkable.  These efforts are the subject of the research presented here. ¹⁴

NOTES:

1 Charter and Constitution of the Washington Institute of St. Louis; Organized under an Act of the General Assembly of the State of Missouri, February 22, 1854 (St. Louis, Mo.:  Chambers and Knapp, 1854), Washington University Archives (WUA).
2 Thomas Woody, Women's Education in the United States, Vol. 2 (2 vols.; New York: Science Press, 1929), chapters 2 and 3; Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Linda Eisenmann, ed., Historical Dictionary of Women's Education in the United States (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1998).
3 Ralph E. Morrow, Washington University in St. Louis: A History (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1996), on the university's early years.
4 Catalogue of the Officers of Washington University with the Course of Studies, 1860-61(hereinafter WU Catalogue), 41, WUA); William G. Eliot, Lectures to Young Women (Boston: Crosby, Nichols and Company, 1854), 102, 111.
5 Inauguration of Washington University at Saint Louis, Missouri, April 23, 1857 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1857), 103.  Nikola Baumgarten, "Education and Democracy in Frontier St. Louis: The  Society of the Sacred Heart," History of Education Quarterly 34 (summer 1994): 171-92. 
6 Eliot Notebook 7, n.d. (ca. November 1870); September 16, 1870; and Notebook 8, December 7, 1871, series 1, box 2, William Greenleaf Eliot Papers, Washington University Archives (WGE, WUA).
7 Eliot Notebook 9, n.d. (ca. 1877), series 1, box 2, WGE, WUA.  Lucile Wiley Ring, Breaking the Barriers: The St. Louis Legacy of Women in Law (1869-1969) (Manchester, MO: Independent Publishing Corporation, 1996), 1-3 on Barkeloo, and 4-13 on Couzins; Alexander S. Langsdorff, "History of Washington University, 1853-1953," 239-41, typescript, WUA; WU Catalogue, 1870-1871 and 1875-1876, WUA; and Lois Claire Held, "History of the College of Washington University, 1871-1883," (Master's thesis, Washington University, 1941), 51-58.
8 Morrow, Washington University, 123-24, chapter 7.
9 Brookings to Chaplin, 6 July 1901, and Chaplin to Brookings, 9 July 1901, Chancellors Files, W.S. Chaplin (CF, WSC), series 1, box 1; Eliza McMillan to Brookings, 1 February 1906, Corporation Records, Minutes, 2 February 1906; all in WUA.  William McMillan had helped financed one relocation of Mary Institute, including land and building, with a $100,000 contribution (of the total $155,335 from various sources to the building fund) in 1902; see Annual Report of the Treasurer, Washington University, 1903 (WUTR), 24, WUA. 
10 Hall to Brookings, 27 February 1918; Brookings to Hall, 1 October 1917, series 2, box 1, Hall to Brookings, 20 March 1920, and Brookings, notes, n.d. (ca. March 1920), series 3, box 1; all in CF, Frederic A. Hall (FAH), WUA.
11 Matt MacDonald, "The Development of Women's Campus Culture at Washington University, 1853-1945," (senior honors thesis in history, Washington University, 1994) is my principal secondary source for information on women students. 
12 See, for example, Lynn Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) and Harold S. Wechsler, "An Academic Gresham's Law: Group Repulsion as a Theme in American Higher Education," Teachers College Record 82 (**): 567-88.
13 Beatrice J. Kotstein to Chancellor George Throop, 4 February 1928, series 1, box 4, CF, Throop, WUA, on the house funds; Peyton Haws quoted in MacDonald, "The Development of Women's Campus Culture," 56; J. H. Zumbalen to Throop, 28 January 1925, series 1, box 4, CF, Herbert S. Hadley, WUA, on the Smith donation; and "Women's Building," 27 November 1928, series 1, box 4, CF, Hadley, WUA.  A thoughtful account is in the MacDonald thesis, 53-62.
14 Morrow, Washington University, 288, on graduation rates in the 1920s.