“A Hearty and Equal Welcome”

Remarkable in their day, the ideals of the founders, Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, constituted a truly radical educational experiment for the 1860s. From its founding, Cornell University was explicitly non-sectarian and committed to equal educational opportunities for all “persons,” men and women. The Cornell University Charter specifically stated that “persons of every religious denomination or of no religious denomination, shall be equally eligible to all offices and appointments.”

From the university’s opening day, women attended classes, even if they were not officially enrolled. Many prominent women, including Susan B. Anthony and Emily Howland, wrote to Ezra Cornell urging him to open the university to women. Many young women wrote to Mr. Cornell themselves, requesting a place at the university. He replied that they would in time be welcome. Jennie Spencer of Cortland won a state scholarship in 1870, but withdrew from the University after a few weeks.

In 1871, University Trustee Henry W. Sage wrote to White saying that he wished to discuss “a place for the education of women under the wing of Cornell.” In the winter of 1871, White and Sage traveled to inspect various mid-western co-educational institutions. Based on these trips and on extensive correspondence with other educators, White compiled a report. The Trustees unanimously approved the report and its recommendations, and based on the study, Henry W. Sage gave Cornell $250,000 for the construction of a building. The Trustees officially voted to accept women in the spring of 1872.

Sage College for Women, completed in 1875. Professor Charles Babcock, Architect.
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Ezra Cornell. Letter to Mattie Curran. Ithaca, New York, July 24, 1869.
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There is a great reform required in the education and habits of females. Please study the subject and see what can be done for them. Respectfully yours Ezra Cornell.

Gift of Stephen Weiss

Cornell University Schedule of Classes, 1874.
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At least two young women began taking classes at Cornell University in the fall of 1871. They did not come as beginning freshmen. Emma Sheffield Eastman, who was from New Hampshire and had studied at Vassar, became the first woman to graduate from Cornell in 1873. Sophy Philippa Fleming of Ithaca also came in 1871 and received her degree in 1874, along with Eva Marie Pitts and Cornelia Alice Preston.

[Presumed to be] Sophy Philippa Fleming, ca. 1874.
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Sophy Fleming was born in Florida in 1850. Her family came to Ithaca, and she was educated at the Ithaca Academy. After graduation, she served as the Assistant Lady Principal for a year. She came to Cornell in the fall of 1871, expecting that her courses would count for credit when the Trustees officially voted to accept women in the spring of 1872. Winning one of the State Scholarships, she graduated in 1874, with an A. B. degree in the Classical course. She taught for many years in schools in New York, Ohio, Florida, and New Jersey. She returned to Cornell to take graduate work from 1895 to 1899, and later taught at Miss Merriman’s School in Oakland, California until her death in 1929.

Eva Marie Pitts, Class of 1874.
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Eva Maria Pitts came to Cornell from Honeoye, New York in the fall of 1872. She graduated in 1874 and received a master’s degree in 1875, studying literature. She taught in schools in Indiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Connecticut, before going to Washington, D. C., where she taught high school history and English literature. She died in 1901. Her sister, Helen, became the second wife of Frederick Douglass.

Cornelia Alice Preston, Class of 1874.
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Cornelia Preston came to Cornell in the fall of 1872 from South Dover, New York, after studying at Vassar for two years. She graduated in 1874 in the Science course. She married one of her classmates, George B. Upham, who became known as the ‘father of the Boston subway system.’ In 1945, she was the oldest living Cornellian. She died in 1947 at the age of ninety-five.

Emma Sheffield Eastman, Class of 1873.
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Emma Eastman came to Cornell in the fall of 1871, having studied at Vassar College. She was one of two women to begin taking classes at Cornell, both of whom had the expectation that their courses would count for credit when the Trustees officially voted to accept women in the spring of 1872. In 1873, Eastman became Cornell’s first woman graduate. After teaching science and math for a year in Portland, Maine, she married Leroy A. Foster and worked for woman suffrage for much of her life, dying in California in 1932.

Anna Botsford, Class of 1876.
Tintype
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Anna Botsford came to Cornell in 1875 having been warned that she would not have “a gay time, for the boys won’t pay any attention to the college girls.” She concluded that “Cornell must be a good place for a girl to get an education; it has all the advantages of a university and a convent combined.” Anna earned a Cornell degree in 1876, having lived in a boarding house in which there were also male student boarders, and she met, while at the university, John Henry Comstock, Cornell class of 1874 whom she married. John became a professor of entomology and the couple lived on campus in a faculty house often open to students. Developing her interest in science, Anna Botsford Comstock became a scientific illustrator and the author of works on nature study.

Read more about Anna Botsford’s experiences as a woman boarder while pursuing her studies at Cornell.

Lucy Washburn. Letter to Ezra Cornell. Fredonia, New York, March 2, 1869.
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Lucy Washburn, niece of Cornell Trustee Henry B. Lord of Ithaca, wrote to Mr. Cornell in 1869 about the university’s intentions regarding the education of women. She urged Mr. Cornell to consider the needs of women for a university education, and she later wrote that many of these female scholars “look longingly toward Michigan and Cornell universities.” Lucy Washburn had taken a degree at Fredonia Academy, Vassar being “beyond my means,” other “girls’ boarding schools [offering] about the same as I have already enjoyed.” She went on to teach at Hampton Institute, where Booker T. Washington was among her students, and a life-long friend. Later Lucy Washburn moved to California, where she taught at a private school founded by her brother and at the college in San Jose.

Ezra Cornell. Letter to Lucy Washburn. Ithaca, New York, February 26, 1869.
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Sage Chapel, completed in 1875. Professor Charles Babcock, Architect.
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The university’s nonsectarian stance was very controversial in 1868. The Governor of New York State had been scheduled to speak but feared the political consequences of attending. White scribbled a note on his copy of the program for the Inauguration exercises: “But Gov. Fenton was afraid of Methodists & Baptists & other sectarian enemies of the University & levanted the night before leaving the duty to Lieut. Gov. Woodford who discharged the duties admirably.”

Ezra Cornell. Letter to Eunice Cornell. Albany, New York, February 18, 1867.
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Ezra Cornell’s support of education always meant educational opportunities for all. He most poignantly expressed his sentiments in his letter of February 17, 1867 to his four-year-old granddaughter, Eunice.

Ezra Cornell. Letter “to the coming man and woman,” Ithaca, New York, May 15, 1873.
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In his speech at the laying of the cornerstone of Sage Hall, Ezra Cornell described a letter that he had placed in the cornerstone: a letter “addressed to the future man and woman, of which I have kept no copy, [which] will relate to future generations the cause of the failure of this experiment, if it ever does fail, as I trust in God it never will.” Although Sage Hall was built as Sage College, the first women’s dormitory at Cornell, the “experiment” to which Cornell refers turns out to be Cornell University itself, co-educational and non-sectarian, with diverse educational opportunities. It is extraordinary that in 1872, for Ezra Cornell, and for Andrew Dickson White, co-education was not seen as an experiment that might fail, but rather as an idea so right that it could only succeed. “The principal danger,” Cornell wrote, “to be encountered by the friends of education, and by all lovers of true liberty is that which may arise from sectarian strife.”

Ithaca, New York
May 15, 1873

To the Coming man & woman

On the occasion of laying the corner stone of the Sage College for women of Cornell University, I desire to say that the principle [sic] danger, and I say almost the only danger I see in the future to be encountered by the friends of education, and by all lovers of true liberty is that which may arise from sectarian strife.

From these halls, sectarianism must be forever excluded, all students must be left free to worship God, as their concience [sic] shall dictate, and all persons of any creed or all creeds must find free and easy access, and a hearty and equal welcome, to the educational facilities possessed by the Cornell University.

Coeducation of the sexes and entire freedom from sectarian or political preferences is the only proper and safe way for providing an education that shall meet the wants of the future and carry out the founders idea of an Institution where “any person can find instruction in any study.” I herewith commit this great trust to your care.

Ezra Cornell

Maria Mitchell. Letter to Ezra Cornell. Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, March 10, 1868.
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Maria Mitchell, the noted American astronomer, touched upon the issue of coeducation and non-sectarianism in her letter to Mr. Cornell from Vassar, where she was a professor of astronomy. She wrote Cornell in March of 1868: “I consider Vassar the best institution in the world of the kind; it is not of the right kind.” She urged him to hurry along his plan to admit women, and she believed that other schools were ready to make that step. Some mid-western state universities had already become coeducational, but eastern colleges would not become co-educational for over a hundred years.

Mitchell also wondered if Cornell University could maintain itself as a school with no religious affiliation. Her concern was not about the students, but about the faculty: could excellent faculty be hired without first determining their religious convictions? However, when A. D. White learned that a prospective faculty member was a Unitarian, and therefore unacceptable at many schools, he insisted that the man’s religious affiliation was no reason to exclude him. At Cornell University, there was no bar to students or faculty who professed any—or even no—religious affiliation.

Cornell University. Statistics of the Class of 1874. Published in the Cornell Era, 1874.
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