© 1997 Lawrence University Press
The Teachers: Women Without Men
Milwaukee-Downer was an institution with a very human character, in which life was shaped by the nature and quality of the interactions among the major players, the students and the teachers. The context for these interactions is important to understanding the role the institution played in influencing the development of those who attended. Thus, it is useful to picture Milwaukee-Downer as, above all, an all-female institution in which all leadership positions were occupied by women, unencumbered by competition from men, an institution in which faculty and staff were strong models of self-sufficiency and independence.
Over the course of the college's history, the members of the Milwaukee-Downer faculty shared a number of characteristics. They were all well-educated women, a substantial and increasing proportion of whom held degrees beyond the B.A., from institutions of recognized reputation. In the early days, even when this was not the case at other colleges, all Milwaukee-Downer teachers had to hold a bachelor's degree, at the very minimum. Thus, a woman applying for a job teaching home economics was turned down because she was without a degree, and even applicants for positions in physical education were turned away for lack of a college background.
The make-up of a Milwaukee-Downer teacher consisted of more than just certifiable educational credentials; the woman in this position also had to possess certain much less well-defined elements of personality, character, and belief. Loyalty, for example, was a prime requisite for teaching at Milwaukee-Downer; President Sabin wanted a woman who would dedicate herself to building up the college, who would not come and teach for only a year or two but who would think of herself as part of a permanent body of teachers.
The Milwaukee-Downer teacher was a woman for whom school was a total life experience; she needed to be able to fit comfortably into the pattern of life in the classroom and dormitory alike. Her good breeding, evidenced by the way she presided at table, by her manner in enforcing rules, by the way she modeled her acquaintance with the best standards of social life, would inform the conduct of college life and would make it positive. Above all, the Milwaukee-Downer teacher was a "loyal and earnest" Christian woman, in sympathy with Christian education and imbued with the Christian spirit of helpfulness. Her actual church affiliation was important, too; during the Sabin years the Milwaukee-Downer teacher was a Protestant, most frequently from the Congregationalist, Presbyterian, or Episcopalian denominations.
This was, then, the type of woman Sabin had in mind when, in 1908, she wrote to Miss Amelia Clewley Ford, offering her a teaching position in history:
We need one who will work heartily for the upbuilding of the college in every direction, who will work as men work to develop a business enterprise: i.e., wholeheartedly, devotedly. We need one in sympathy with the thought that the training of character is the chief function of education and that the religious development of the student is an aim in our work. We want no one to come who would not expect to work here several years. . . an instinct of my own [says] that you would do us good, and [I am] hoping that you will think it best to accept the position. . . .
Sabin must have been delighted with Ford's reply:
My instinct is to go to Milwaukee-Downer, largely because your standards of teaching appeal to me. I intend to set for my students such ideals of scholarly work as were set for me by Professor Channing at Radcliffe and by Professor Turner at Wisconsin, and I should look toward making the history department at Milwaukee-Downer eventually as strong as that of any woman's college in the country.
Miss Ford's commitment to scholarship was clear. She had worked, borrowed, and secured scholarships in pursuit of her Bachelor of Arts degree at Radcliffe and had used similar means to earn both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in history at the University of Wisconsin, where she studied under Frederick Jackson Turner. In short, she possessed the credentials to be potentially a strong asset to the history department at Milwaukee-Downer, a fact undoubtedly not lost upon Sabin. The fact that Miss Ford also communicated the willingness, indeed the desire, to help build and gain wide recognition for the department at Milwaukee-Downer must have had great appeal to Sabin, as well.
Along with this, Miss Ford's view of what constituted the legitimate role of the teacher bore strong similarity to Sabin's. On this subject, she told Sabin:
I agree with you entirely in the idea that good teaching includes character training. My own experience has been that the best appeal to students is by leading them to understand the delight of increasing power and usefulness through discipline, self-control, and the satisfaction of "work done squarely."
While fresh out of graduate school when the position at Milwaukee-Downer was offered her, Miss Ford nevertheless had, by that point, considerable teaching experience to her credit, having taught at both the elementary and high school levels while living and studying in the Boston area. It was this experience upon which she undoubtedly relied when advocating "character training" as part of the teacher's legitimate role.
And if the accord with Sabin's views on the importance of scholarship and character were not enough, Miss Ford further assured Sabin that she had "no inclination to change positions often," clearly implying that she had the potential, which Sabin sought, for longevity as a faculty member. Only in the matter of living arrangements did Miss Ford deviate from the usual practice of Milwaukee-Downer teachers. She chose not to reside in the college dormitory, explaining that, "I can be of more value to the college by giving my whole vigor and personality to history teaching than by expending energy on social duties or other functions outside my legitimate sphere."
And this she did: Miss Ford gave her whole vigor and personality to history teaching. She took her subject and her teaching of it seriously and was apparently unruffled even when the unexpected occurred in the classroom. A student of hers later recalled:
I remember that class so well. She was lecturing -- she was a little bit of a person -- and she was lecturing away at a great rate. And she stepped, by mistake, into the wastebasket. She turned and apologized to the wastebasket and went right on talking! And we just nearly died!. . .
Students agreed that Miss Ford had a congenial personality and rated her an excellent teacher. Her popularity was enhanced by the frequent talks she gave before the whole college on "Current Events," which always concluded with a new anecdote, story, or joke. These she called her "Happy Endings," and over her 31-year tenure they became truly institutionalized.
It would not, in fact, be wrong to call Amelia Clewley Ford herself an "institution," as her own life was woven into the fabric of Milwaukee-Downer's life for over three decades. Her personal history was a story in which everything she accomplished was by dint of her own wit and enterprise; what she achieved was done without the support of men. This same self-reliance seemed to carry over to, and characterize, her life at Milwaukee-Downer. Miss Ford, at least, was a woman for whom marriage might have been a realistic possibility. This was not necessarily true of a good many of her counterparts on the faculty. Speaking of the teachers collectively, an alumna of 1915 offered this opinion:
You know what they all were, all these dear women at Milwaukee-Downer; they were all the original "spinster." That's really what they were. I don't think they ever met the right man. I don't think they ever were in a position, economically, to travel in the society in which they would have met a man. They never met men, and, as a result, they were all just darling spinsters. . . . [Most of them] would have been terrified if any man had approached them. They were just darling spinsters. . . .
"Terrified" by men, perhaps, but, if this were really the case for these women, it was hardly congruent with the aggressiveness manifested by some in pursuit of their personal interests. Miss Alice Emeline Belcher, for example, a member and chair of the Milwaukee-Downer economics department for 42 years, put a great deal of energy into turning her average salary of $3,000 a year into over $100,000 worth of holdings in the stock market. Her savings and investment activities were motivated by a need for independence and by a desire to provide for her own old age; they were a response to hardships she had endured as a young person. Perhaps this drive to take care of herself interfered with her development of social skills. She was clearly not the kind of personality who would have been comfortable in a position of dependency upon a man. To her students, Miss Belcher was a person in whom "there was a fine mind, but there was not a social type of culture. . . at all; [it seemed to students that] she didn't know how to be friendly."
Miss Elizabeth Rossberg, who, by contrast, was considered a much friendlier personality, nevertheless also did not engage in social life with men. She devoted much of her life to travel, making at least 18 trips abroad during her 43-year tenure at Milwaukee-Downer. Some of these trips were student tours that she conducted, perhaps best viewed as an extension of her leadership role at the college as resident head of McLaren Hall. The exercise of leadership was apparently very important to her, for she was head, too, of the Milwaukee-Downer Division of Language and Literature and chair of the college's curriculum committee. Men, however, did not figure in her life. A student of hers, who went on to become a personal friend, later claimed that Miss Rossberg never had any close association with men, that she indeed felt a sense of superiority to them. At the very least, she was probably not inclined to risk suffering the decline in her own status that might result from such association.
The faculty members at Milwaukee-Downer, then, were women without men, but probably less because of terror than from personal choice. Whether they had actually, during young adulthood, made an active decision not to marry is not ascertainable from the written record. It may well have been the case that some of these women were examples of the "Victorian feminist," the late 19th-century daughter of a middle-class family who was formally educated and who had decided to accept spinsterhood as the price of a career. It was almost certainly the case that they depended a lot upon each other for friendship and emotional support. A student later stated:
I can tell you this much; this I know: they found great joy in each other. Now, not intimacy -- none of the lesbian business. . . . They always took their walks together; they'd walk after classes, and go into Lake Park, and things like that. . . I remember Miss Belcher walking around the horseshoe [a circular driveway on campus] with one of the other teachers. You always spoke of them as, "those two go together."
Thus, the social life of Milwaukee-Downer teachers seemed to center around each other and their common dedication to the school.
Sometimes, however, the relations among teachers were not friendly. Miss Felicitas Minna Haberstich, professor and chair of French, wrote to President Sabin at great length about insults to her dignity that had, she said, been knowingly perpetrated by two other faculty members, Miss May L. Cook, an underling in her own department, and Miss Emma M. Cowles, a professor of mathematics. The indignities Miss Haberstich claimed to have suffered at the hands of her colleagues ranged from their criticism of her mode of dress and decoration of her private living quarters to their undermining of her authority with residential students, essential to her success as head of Johnston Hall. Miss Cook's purpose, Miss Haberstich insisted, was to supplant her as department head and destroy her relationship with President Sabin. Calling Miss Cook "a crafty little Machiavellian," Miss Haberstich went on to reveal to Sabin aspects of what she saw as Miss Cook's underhanded strategy:
[Miss Cook] once said to me: When I want a thing to get to Miss Sabin's ears, I don't tell it myself, but I tell Miss Denton, and then I know that it will get there, the way I want it presented. . . . [This was preceded by Miss Cook's] avowal of making up tales and the cynical expression that, if a lie served her better than the truth, she would tell the lie every time. . . .
Miss Cowles, Miss Haberstich told Sabin, was just as bad:
. . . what Miss Cook invented, Miss Cowles told. . . . Yes, Miss Cowles is somewhat brighter than I, [I] certainly do not possess her remarkable power of persuasion with you nor her shrewdness in dealings, but neither do I stoop to intrigue to accomplish a selfish purpose. . . .
Much of this may be interpreted as the product of Miss Haberstich's rivalry with her colleagues for Sabin's favor and attention. Clearly disappointed in not having received more support from the president, Miss Haberstich turned upon her, asking whether "you could realize what a desolation and failure you have made of my life." And she closed the letter as follows:
Miss Sabin, if your aim has been through all these six years of heartless torture, to make life a sea of bitterness to me, to turn into bitterness and gall what was once sweet in a woman's soul, I can let you have the joy, that you have accomplished what you aimed at. You most always do.
Miss Haberstich served at Milwaukee-Downer from 1898 until 1910. She did not return there to teach again after this letter was written. As her final sentences indicate, she viewed Sabin as always operating from a position of strength and as capable of accomplishing whatever goal she set herself. Her view of her own position, by contrast, was that it was relatively weak and that Sabin could always take advantage of this to victimize her or allow her to be victimized by other faculty members.
Unfortunately, there is no evidence in the written record that provides insight about Ellen Sabin's actual perspective on Miss Haberstich's case. Absence of such evidence, however, supports the likelihood that Sabin made no effort to induce Miss Haberstitch to return, perhaps regarding her problems as reflecting weaknesses of character or personality. Given Sabin's preference for having women at Milwaukee-Downer whom she regarded as possessing strength of character and purpose, she may well have regarded Miss Haberstitch's departure as a desirable outcome.