History of Randolph-Macon College

Randolph-Macon Women's College

That Randolph-Macon should embark upon a plan for the separate education of women is not unusual in light of the contemporary advanced thinking, nor is it unusual that the experiment should be made 110 miles by rail from Ashland in light of the local influences playing upon the trustees' founding of other schools.

The trustees met in the YMCA at Lynchburg on November 13, 1890, where Smith laid before the Trustees the proposition of the Rivermont Land Co. of Lynchburg, Va. looking to the establishment of a School for women on the land of said Company. A similar proposal came from the West End Company. How much initiating Smith had done beforehand is not even suggested by the official records. In her History of the Woman's College, Roberta Cornelius collected recollections suggesting that Smith had fished in the Lynchburg waters well before the official meeting. By March 10, 1891, Smith could report to the board that pledges evidenced by good bonds and other property had been collected amounting to $105,000, and he recommended accepting the offer of the Rivermont Land Company. By June of that year, the new college had twenty acres of land and $40,000 in money, and stock in the Rivermont Land Company worth $60,000 to be used for the buildings. All of this wealth was in addition to $107 ,000 in money and bonds in hand for the endowment. . ..in three months your President [struck out in the original] Board will have established for our young women a College with assets equal to those secured for the College for young men here [Ashland] by the united efforts, sacrifices and zeal of our entire Constituency for fifty years, and that a single City will have contributed seven eights of the amount. The construction was begun in 1891, again following Poindexter's design, and the college opened in 1893. Of the stock, forty-three thousand dollars had been used to buy land from the Rivermont Company, and that land, in turn, was sold to raise money. The stock could not be sold directly, since it was already under par and could not be sold without permission of the company.

One of the most active men in assisting Smith in raising so large an endowment in so short a time was John P. Pettyjohn. Pettyjohn, a Lynchburger, also constructed the new college. In effect, he transferred his wealth and talents from support of the college at Ashland to that in his native city. While the system grew, it did so to some extent at the expense of the mother college.

The distraction of financial support matched the distraction of personal attention of President Smith. He acknowledged this, but it did not worry him. The unexpected openings at Front Royal and Lynchburg engrossing the attention and efforts of the President of the College have prevented the Contemplated Canvass to extinguish the debt. It is not however in a form seriously to embarrass us. It should be regarded as offset by the large results at Front Royal and Lynchburg to which the successful establishment of the Bedford academy largely contributed. Despite the shudder in the smooth operations of the college, the board and Smith continued expansion. In 1897 they took under their umbrella the Danville Female Institute, which had a brick building on a three-quarter acre lot, together worth $33,500. The school -which had only thirteen boarders within accommodations for seventy, as well as sixty day students-was to be a feeder for the Woman's College. As such, the president and faculty of the Woman's College were to prepare a curriculum for it and to appoint the teachers. Danville lies 60 miles south of Lynchburg by rail, but 140 miles from Ashland.

The trustees refused to take over the new Blackstone Female Institute, headed by James Cannon, Jr. That place applied for the same sort of connection in 1895 as had been granted to Danville two years later. The board, in explaining its rejection, only used the excuse that adoption would be premature. It added, formally, that it found the corps of instruction competent, and consequently we recognize the Blackstone Female Institute as a feeder to the Randolph Macon Woman's College and commend it to the patronage of those desiring to prepare their daughters for the College. The board took the same approach again in 1896. The obvious wariness exhibited by the board may have had something to do with the president of Blackstone.

Far from being a threat to the finances of the college in Ashland, the Woman's College proved so huge a success that it began to outshine its older sibling. The physical plant, concentrated in one large Romanesque building, exceeded in grandeur and modernity anything on the Ashland campus. The paucity of rivals drew large numbers of students to it. In 1904, a new dormitory was added to meet the demands for admission. Some indication of the remarkable growth of the Woman's College may be gleaned from the comparative figures below, for eleven years after its opening:

Table 5. Comparison of RMC and the Woman's College, 1904

So high, in fact, were the Woman's College standards, that it became eligible for the prestigious and demanding Carnegie Pension Fund in 1906, and its Phi Beta Kappa chapter was started in 1917, well ahead of the men's college.

As the twentieth century dawned, the Randolph-Macon community of students, professors, trustees, alumni, and friends could view with satisfaction the sprawling network of preparatory schools feeding the two colleges, one venerable and the other holding out the highest prospects for success. The distance, measured in physical terms, from the old buildings in Ashland to the brick and electricity of 1900 in Lynchburg would please the most saturnine observer. Beneath the general academic success lay a troubled future. What surpassed the happiest dreams of 1880 or even 1890 now seemed old-fashioned and a bit worn. To bring the college at Ashland up to the standards of the Woman's College would take money. To fulfill the promising beginnings of the Woman 's College would take money.

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Reprinted from Professor James Scanlon's Randolph-Macon College: A Southern History 1825-1967