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The legacy behind the brick
Milwaukee-Downer College buildings provide campus with rich history
By Katie Visser
Not one of these women would ever have walked these historic and hallowed halls if it weren’t for several ambitious and passionate ladies who gave the Milwaukee-Downer College its start long ago
It is the noon hour, and students swarm from the doors of each of the three red-brick buildings that surround the grassy square. Some rush off to another class. Others find spots on the green lawn where they gather for lunch in clusters or pairs. Some study in the peaceful, shady solitude under one of the large trees.
Snatches of conversation can be overheard – desperate pleas for guidance from a study partner before tomorrow’s exam, discussion of paper topics for a shared course, or perhaps anecdotes from someone’s first day at their new internship.
Rewind just over 100 years and you would have heard very similar conversations on these grounds. Only, interestingly, the male population would have been missing from the scene. All the students described above would have been chatting or studying busily, preparing for futures in such areas as teaching, nursing and home economics, and all the students would have been female.
They are the students of the Milwaukee-Downer College, one of the most influential colleges in the history of Milwaukee, and one of the most influential institutes of female higher education in the United States.
Whether they received teaching certificates in the 1890s, bachelor’s degrees in home economics in the 1950s or master’s degrees in communication today, not one of these women would ever have walked these historic and hallowed halls if it weren’t for several ambitious and passionate ladies who gave the Milwaukee-Downer College its start long ago.
Genevieve McBride, an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and editor of an anthology on the history of women’s education in Wisconsin, is proud of UWM’s roots as a pioneer institute in female higher education.
In those days “women ran the place,” she says of the Milwaukee-Downer era. While admitting that outside help was necessary for fundraising, and that there were even a few men involved in the College’s government throughout the years, McBride emphasizes the fact that the women who founded and taught at Milwaukee-Downer really did create an unprecedented powerhouse in education by the sweat of their own brows.
The first of these women was Mrs. Lucy Ann Seymour Parsons, who instituted a “Seminary for Young Ladies” in Milwaukee in 1848. Mrs. Parsons’ husband had come to town as the new minister of the Free Congregational Society, and of course his wife came with him.
Once here she lost no time in preparing for a mission that would consume her life and passion for the next few years. Plans were announced for a school for women, and within two short months Mrs. Parsons had bought and equipped a building (on the corner of Broadway and Wells Street), designed a curriculum and hired a staff.
The Milwaukee Female Seminary, the first of the ancestral institutions behind the Milwaukee-Downer College, was born.
During its first several years Mrs. Parsons’ Seminary was well supported by wealthy and generous Milwaukee backers. No one took as intense an interest in the school, however, as an ambitious young educator from the East Coast – a young woman named Catherine Esther Beecher.
Catherine Beecher, older sister of famous abolitionist novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, was famous in the realm of women’s education. After founding a private ladies’ school in Hartford, Connecticut, she toured the country spreading her “Educational Plan for Women” during the mid-1800s.
In the spring of 1850 her travels took her on a visit to Milwaukee, a young city whose educational system was just beginning to take real shape.
The school that Mrs. Parsons had founded was ready and willing to be molded by Catherine Beecher’s progressive leadership. In September of that same year Beecher returned to the Milwaukee Female Seminary, again to drum up financial support and advise the school’s staff.
Catherine Beecher’s “Plan,” both for the Milwaukee Female Seminary and for female college students throughout the United States, served to mark Milwaukee on the national map where pioneer female colleges were concerned.
The Seminary, along with female schools Beecher founded in Connecticut, Iowa and Illinois, formed a brand of education that focused on female students as valuable assets to their communities and to society at large.
When asked if there were an individual who did the most to make Milwaukee-Downer the unique and successful institution it became, McBride emphatically replies that this individual was Mary Mortimer. Enter the third leading lady in the history of the Milwaukee-Downer College.
Mortimer took over from Lucy Parsons as principal of the school in the 1850s, when it was still called the Milwaukee Female College. McBride notes that at the time other female colleges were being instituted, but none of them were lasting. So what made Milwaukee’s version different?
“This one survived because Mary Mortimer gave it the rest of her life – many decades,” McBride says.
This was only the beginning for women’s education in the Cream City, however.
Continued in 10-20 Issue
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