A Girl Goes to College in 1900

Molly Smith
University High School, Urbana

"Having attained to the mature age of eighteen years, seven months and eighteen days without ever having kept a diary, I have determined to do so now," my great-grandmother wrote close to the turn of the century in Alton, Illinois. She wrote in her journal about her desire to learn and her curiosity about life. Unfortunately only a few pages of the diary remain, but they give some facts and clues to her personality.

My great-grandmother, Lucy Stifler, a very intelligent woman from Alton, Illinois, helped set the pattern of college education for women in years to come. She attended Shurtleff College from 1901 to 1906 and graduated at the age of nineteen.

To understand the story of Shurtleff College, one needs to go back to its Baptist origins. In 1807 five churches joined to form the Illinois Union. However, they could not agree on the issue of slavery, and therefore the Illinois Union was dissolved. "Those who favored slavery reorganized themselves into the Illinois United Baptist Association, the three associations which were hostile to the South, assuming the title of Friends of Humanity." In the early 1800s Baptist missionaries, such as John Mason Peck in 1819, came west to states such as Illinois to found schools because "illiteracy and irreligion prevailed." Peck arrived in St. Louis and began a search for a suitable site, "which afterward bore it full fruitage in Shurtleff College of Alton, Illinois."

Amazingly enough, John Mason Peck and other Baptist missionaries met the most opposition within their own ranks. A group called the "Anti-Missionary Baptists" or "Hardshells" fought against founding educational institutions.

Austen de Blois, in his 1900 book, The Pioneer School, described 1820s Illinois as "not in every way

Erected in 1821, Shurtleff College's Loomis Hall was one of several buildings on campus.

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a promising locality at that time." However, a strongly encouraging factor was that Illinois applied its entire funds from sales of public land "to the encouragement of learning." By contrast, Ohio and Indiana spent such money on roads.

When Lucy was born, her father was the president of Rodger Williams University, a small Baptist missionary college for African Americans in Nashville. In May of that year, he lost his job, but it is not known why. The family was then forced to move back to Sarah's parents in Upper Alton. Her father searched for a job and eventually found one as a minister in the Eighteenth Street Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan. While in Detroit, Lucy's sister, Mary, suddenly died at fourteen years of age.

After that tragedy, the family moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1892. In 1895, while in Sioux Falls, William died of a massive stroke at the age of 54. The family was again left with little choice but to move back to Upper Alton with Sarah's parents. Once there, Sarah's wealthy cousin built their family a house on Leverett Avenue, in Alton. It was the house that Lucy lived in for the rest of her life.

In 1901, at fourteen years of age, Lucy started school at Shurtleff Academy, the Baptist high school/college that had grown since the days of John Mason Peck. She attended there until 1906, when she graduated from Shurtleff College at age nineteen.

At Shurtleff, Lucy took many courses such as math, Latin, English, history, elocution, debate, reading, and science. Although she excelled in all her subjects, reading and English were her favorites; thus she chose literature as her major. Lucy's record shows that a young girl could receive an excellent liberal arts education at a small Illinois college at the beginning of the twentieth century.

During her years at Shurtleff, Lucy was a friendly person. Although she was quiet, she was thoughtful, compassionate, and always cheerful. She had a very close circle of friends who often went on picnics, hikes, or short boating trips together. When the weather was not nice enough for them to go outdoors, they often played card, or board games.

When Lucy was not busy socializing with her friends, she was mainly playing the piano, reading, knitting, writing compositions, or singing. Lucy never sang solo, but was an active soprano in her church choir and a community choir.

Soon after Lucy graduated, she became engaged to a fellow Shurtleff student, Roy Blair. Lucy liked to say that she "had to marry Roy because he got her through physics class." Lucy and Roy had to postpone their marriage for several years when Roy's father suddenly died of tuberculosis. After a very long engagement, Lucy and Roy were finally married in September 1911. Before their marriage, Lucy worked as a public school teacher at Lowell School in Upper Alton.

Lucy and Roy lived together in Lucy's childhood home with Lucy's mother, who died in 1948 at the age of 103 years. By that time, Lucy and Roy had three children; Mary Abbot, born in November 1914, Betty, born in June 1918, and Barbara, born in March 1923.

Lucy and Roy stayed together in their house on Leverett Avenue for the rest of their lives. Lucy became a widow in June 1971, when Roy died of prostate cancer. Lucy stayed in their house until she died in 1978 of natural causes.

Although my great-grandmother may not have invented anything spectacular or become famous, she was a smart, fine woman who was educated and respected in her community. When I hold my scrapbook filled with her journal entries, letters, and pictures, I feel her spirit and words in the artifacts she left.—[From Austen de Blois, The Pioneer School; Lucy Stifler, unpublished journal; student historian's interview with Betty Sutton, Nov. 23, and Dec. 25, 2000.]

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