With the passage of the act of 1906 transferring it to the state of Virginia, William and Mary began the second part of its experiment in combining collegiate and teacher-training education in one institution. Armed with increased self-assurance and enough funding for operational purposes, those charged with running the College could confidently meet the challenges of pulling the institution into the mainstream of higher education in Virginia. There were problems, to be sure, and how Tyler, the faculty, and the Board of Visitors solved them forms yet another chapter in the College’s story.

The act of 1906 had directed the College to maintain a system of normal instruction to train white male teachers for the public schools as well as to continue its collegiate course. The dichotomy between vocational and academic emphasis continued, and the College’s educational purpose became murkier. President Lyon G. Tyler tried to balance the disparate elements and at the same time, improve the academic standards of the College.

Contributing to the confusion were the College’s sustained attempts to meet the standards of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and to qualify for its pension plan for college professors. Carnegie’s stipulations affected the College’s entrance and degree requirements, faculty selection, fund-raising, and eventually, its preparatory academy. In 1906 Tyler had arranged a Carnegie pension for Lyman B. Wharton, but this proved to be a one-time exception. Three years later the Board asked the governor and General Assembly to recommend the College for Carnegie’s list of state institutions receiving retirement funding, but the foundation added more stipulations.^[1] Selected colleges would have to require specified high school units for entrance, have six full-time professors, require four years in liberal arts and sciences for a degree, and have an endowment of $200,000. By 1912 every department head had to hold a doctorate. As time went on, other educational associations added more requirements to define a college, and especially applicable to William and Mary was a prohibition against colleges operating preparatory schools.^[2]

The Curriculum: Teacher Training

Between 1906 and 1919, the teacher-training program underwent continual change, although many of these changes were semantic rather than substantive. The teachers’ diploma required a prescribed four-year course, but the first two years were at the secondary school level; the last two called for professional training.

In 1907 prospective teachers had to pursue one of three tracks—language and history, science, or agricultural and industrial—to qualify to teach at the high school level. Two years later the program expanded to five years, but only the last two were at the collegiate level. The agricultural and industrial specialization was gone. In 1911 the College began offering a slightly different two-year course for students who had adequate high school preparation, then the sixty-hour program remained steady throughout the Tyler administration. As it had always done, the College encouraged the holders of the teachers’ diploma to continue their studies and earn bachelor of arts or science degrees, at no additional cost. Although the faculty rejected a bachelor of education degree, in 1910 it approved a certificate of graduation in Education for students who held a baccalaureate degree, had met the teachers’ diploma requirements, and had taken an additional ten credits in higher Education courses. To emphasize the importance of Education, the Department of Education and Philosophy soon split into separate departments.^[3]

During these same years, the boom in the expansion of the public school system in Virginia established more and more high schools, but there was still a shortage, especially in rural areas.^[4]  Since many students had little or inadequate secondary education, in 1911 the College organized its subcollegiate courses into the Normal Academy offering three years of academic high school work. Under G. Oscar Ferguson, Jr., the principal, the academy had six teachers and enrolled about seventy-seven pupils. Kept completely separate from the College itself, these students had their own space in College dormitories and classrooms and soon organized their own athletic teams, literary societies, and clubs.^[5]  As the public high school system expanded, the faculty saw no reason for the College to continue its Normal Academy. Because it was also trying to meet the Carnegie Foundation’s requirements for faculty pensions which prohibited academies attached to colleges, the faculty voted to eliminate one class a year until the academy eventually closed in 1918. Tyler had opposed this move because he felt that the academy was an important feeder for the College.^[6]

Observation and practice teaching formed a crucial part of the teacher-training program, and the College’s Matthew Whaley Model and Practice School was the laboratory. Operated in conjunction with the Williamsburg School Board, the model school offered classes from kindergarten through the fourth grade and was under the supervision of Nannie C. Davis, the principal, whose title was soon raised to assistant in Education. Enrollment ranged between 106 and 141 boys and girls.^[7]

In 1908 Tyler proposed a plan of union for the city’s schools by which the College and the school board would jointly operate a system covering kindergarten through the tenth grade. Although the school board and the Board of Visitors approved the plan, they were hoping for financial assistance from the Peabody Fund that never materialized.^[8] In 1912 Tyler and Professor of Education Henry E. Bennett put forward another plan of reorganization and unity which allowed the school board to use the model school for some of its students and the College to use the city high school for practice teaching. The jointly financed arrangement worked well for several years and afforded a complete range of classes for teacher training.^[9]

In 1914 the city council threatened to reduce its appropriation to the combined system, and four years later Tyler notified them that the current contract would end unless another agreement on costs was reached. In a new contract in 1919, the school board agreed to operate an elementary school of seven grades and a high school for white children, with all classes open for observation and practice. The College would contribute $3,000 for maintenance. It also would nominate certified teachers; the school board would select them. In April 1919, at the request of the city and with the attorney general’s approval, the College turned over property adjacent to the model school to the school board for construction of a new public school on that site.^[10]

William and Mary’s teacher-training program, in conjunction with the practice facilities in Williamsburg schools, was under the direction of Alexander B. Coffey until 1907, then Henry Eastman Bennett until 1917, when he took a leave of absence for war work in France. Henry G. Hotz temporarily replaced him. In 1913 Bennett also became superintendent of schools for Williamsburg.^[11] Under the direction of these able men, the number of students pledged to teach for two years in the public schools in exchange for their tuition-free education rose from 118 in 1905–1906 to a peak of 164 in 1914–15, then dropped to 47 in 1918 because of World War I.^[12]

The College had to fight off increasing competition for male Education students, and President Edwin A. Alderman of the University of Virginia seized every opportunity to undercut William and Mary. In 1911 Tyler complained to the attorney general of Virginia that Alderman was building up the undergraduate program of Education at the university, rather than the graduate department, at the expense of William and Mary and the other colleges with small teacher-training programs (the Virginia Military Institute and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute). Alderman was chairman of the state Education Commission and used his influence with the General Assembly to promote a tuition-free normal school at the university. Adding insult to injury, Alderman proclaimed the university to be “head of the public school system of Virginia.”^[13] Paradoxically, at the same time that Alderman was doing what he could to harm the College, the university always ran ads in the William and Mary student newspaper, the Flat Hat.

Not only were teacher-training facilities for men proliferating, but those for women as well. In addition to the Female Normal School at Farmville, established in 1884, the General Assembly appropriated funds for the State Normal and Industrial Schools for Women at Harrisonburg and Fredericksburg in 1908 and another at Radford four years later.^[14]

Nevertheless, a state review of high school teachers in 1914 showed that William and Mary, with fifty-seven, led all other institutions in providing male teachers. The university had twenty-two; the Virginia Military Institute, five; and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, eight. When Tyler was leaving office in 1919, he attributed the state’s great educational awakening to the leadership of William and Mary men. The College had more of its male teachers in the high schools than all other state institutions combined and also provided the ablest principals and superintendents.^[15]

The Curriculum: The Collegiate Course

Side by side with teacher training ran the collegiate program. The two shared courses and faculty, and collegiate study provided the academic foundation for the vocationally oriented normal instruction. After the College was transferred to the state in 1906, the State Board of Education mandated academic requirements that brought William and Mary in line with other state institutions, and the perennial hope of a foundation grant called forth other changes.

The curricular overhaul in 1905 had set the first entrance requirements other than a student’s having to be fifteen years old—that the College had ever had. Now students must have had high school work in English, history, mathematics, science, Latin, and one other language. In 1908 the faculty, hoping to gain pensions from the Carnegie Foundation, required fourteen academic units. A unit was one school year in classes meeting five times a week for forty-five minutes, and it came to be called a Carnegie unit.^[16]

There were other ways to gain entrance to the College: conditional entrance with twelve units; admission by high school certificate that showed the nature and content of the courses taken; and admission by examination on required courses. The College also offered credits of advanced standing on collegiate-level work above the fourteen entrance units, if students took an examination in the subject.^[17]

From 1906 to 1919, the faculty stiffened degree requirements. The bachelor of arts called for 122 credits, with 60 of them in higher-level courses. Eighty-two prescribed credits emphasized English, Latin, Greek or modern languages, and history, along with some mathematics and natural science. For the bachelor of science, the proportions between literary and scientific requirements were reversed. Of the remaining 40 credits, only 20 were left for electives. This was in contrast to the national trend which emphasized electives over prescribed curricula. Students had to earn at least a C on 60 of the 122 hours.^[18] Any mention of a field of concentration was dropped from the College Catalogue after 1908, so broad distribution requirements, rather than specialization, for either a literary or a scientific degree characterized the curriculum.

The faculty allowed up to 30 hours credit for work done in absentia, after the completion of a minimum of 30 credits at the College or elsewhere. It dropped the undergraduate thesis requirement in 1916.^[19] The College began giving a distinct preparatory course for prospective medical students in 1915, and two years later worked out an agreement with the Medical College of Virginia whereby students could earn both undergraduate and medical degrees in less than eight years.^[20]

The master of arts degree requirements fluctuated, but by 1918 there were two options: either 20 credit hours of course work with a grade of B or better beyond the bachelor of arts degree and 10 hours for a thesis; or 30 hours of course work with no grade less than a B for all work and an A for 10 hours and no thesis. As in the work for bachelor of arts or science degrees, there was no specialization.^[21]

To increase educational opportunities and to make William and Mary’s presence felt in the southwestern part of Virginia, the faculty began conducting a summer session there in 1912. Using the facilities of the Dublin Institute for dormitories and lecture rooms, the summer session ran for eight weeks at Dublin in Pulaski County.^[22] Immediately popular, the summer school averaged about seventy-five students, most of College grade, who took the opportunity to make up missing degree credits. Some came on to William and Mary as regular students. Later, the faculty conferred degrees and diplomas on students completing their requirements at Dublin. The summer session became a permanent feature in 1916 when the General Assembly appropriated $2,500 a year for it.^[23] At that time William and Mary was the only college in the state to provide a full session of regular courses off campus. America’s entry into World War I caused a wrenching change in the program: the Board’s Executive Committee voted to allow women to attend the summer program under the same conditions as men—for the 1917 session only. In 1919 the summer school was held at the Williamsburg campus because the College had made an earlier commitment to remain in session until July 1 to handle military requirements.^[24]

During this period of curricular modification, changes occurred in the collegiate departments as well. In 1906 there had been chairs of American history and politics; English language and literature, and general history; mathematics; physics and chemistry; Greek, French, and German; biology; philosophy and Education; drawing and manual arts; and Latin. In 1907 physics became a separate chair; and the next year, all history was consolidated into one chair. In 1911 a reorganization of languages resulted in the formation of chairs of ancient languages and of modern languages. The next year, Education and philosophy divided into two separate chairs. In 1917 drawing and manual arts became the chair of fine and industrial arts. The next year the new department of home economics began.^[25] The College had toyed with the idea of establishing a chair of agriculture for years, and the federal Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, which provided salaries for teachers of vocational subjects, gave William and Mary an opportunity to branch into another field. The Board authorized the president to appoint a professor of agriculture in 1918, but nothing came of the plan.^[26]

As part of the drive for improved academic standards, accreditation by a reputable agency would have been helpful to the College. In the early twentieth century, national groups such as the Association of American Universities and the Association of American Colleges and regional organizations such as the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools (SACSS) helped to define and enforce common standards. The faculty had sent a representative to SACSS meetings for years, and in 1912 began taking the steps necessary for membership. It was not until 1921, however—and after the Tyler era—that the SACSS admitted William and Mary. Nevertheless, the criteria demanded by the accrediting agency, as well as those of the state of Virginia and fund-granting foundations, had a great effect on the College’s curriculum formation.^[27]

With its expanded course offerings, reorganized departments, tightened entrance and degree requirements, and growing adherence to state and foundation standards, William and Mary had brought its collegiate program to the level of other four-year colleges in Virginia. By 1919 it had two distinct tracks: teacher training and collegiate. Judging from the number of degrees and diplomas conferred between 1906 and 1919 (197 bachelor of arts or science degrees and 17 master of arts degrees, for a total of 214 academic degrees, and 178 teachers’ diplomas or the old licentiates of instruction) the collegiate course had a slight edge.^[28]

The Faculty: The Seven Wise Men—and Others

During the Tyler years, the growth and specialization of the faculty paralleled the increase in the student body, the division of earlier chairs, and the addition of more subjects. In 1906 six of the legendary Seven Wise Men still taught at William and Mary. One of the seven, Hugh Stockdell Bird, professor of philosophy and pedagogy, had resigned in 1904. The next to go was Lyman Brown Wharton, professor of ancient and modern languages and then of Latin alone. He retired in 1906. Five years later, Charles Edward Bishop, professor of Greek, French, and German, left the College to teach Greek at the University of West Virginia. He was the only one of the original seven to leave to go to another college. The professor of mathematics, Thomas Jefferson Stubbs, continued in his post until his death in 1915. Tyler retired from the presidency and from his professorship of politics and economics in 1919, leaving but two of the original seven. Van Franklin Garrett, professor of natural science, then of physics and chemistry, and finally of only chemistry, taught until he retired in 1923. The longest survivor was John Lesslie Hall, professor of English and history and then of English language and literature. In recognition of Hall’s scholarly achievements, Wake Forest awarded him a doctor of letters degree in 1916; William and Mary, a doctor of law in 1923. After teaching at the College for forty years, he died in 1928.^[29] Alumnus William Munford Tuck, who would later become governor of Virginia and a member of Congress, paid tribute to the “distinguished” faculty: “It was a great honor to have sat at the knee of [these] men—Dr. Hall, … Dr. Stubbs, Dr. Garrett, and Dr. Tyler. I cherish the privilege.”^[30]

As the Seven Wise Men gradually left, the College had the difficult task of replacing these dedicated teachers and of filling new professorships as the curriculum expanded. Each vacancy brought a deluge of applications, and more and more candidates held the doctorate. The supply of trained men with this terminal degree had increased nationwide.^[31] But some on the Board of Visitors cautioned against too much emphasis on such a degree. The College should not confuse knowledge and education, wrote James H. Dillard, who would soon be rector; personality, character, and general culture were also important.^[32] The College balanced the qualifications of new faculty and chose, for the most part, effective professors. By the fall of 1918, the College had fourteen professors, five more than in 1906. Of these fourteen, four held doctorates, one was a medical doctor, seven had master of arts or science degrees, and two had bachelor of science degrees.^[33]

Although not as colorful as a group or as well known as the Seven Wise Men, the new professors left their mark on the College. Several especially stood out. Throughout the period John Woodside Ritchie was professor of biology and, with the help of an instructor, taught all the classes in zoology and botany. Born in 1871, Ritchie came to the College in 1905 with a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Chicago. A prolific writer, Ritchie published more than a dozen books on physiology, hygiene, and sanitation. Many went into several editions and were used nationwide as textbooks. He edited at least fourteen other books on chemistry and botany. Immensely popular with his students, Ritchie trained academic and normal students in the biological sciences, and the students thought so highly of him that the Flat Hat suggested that his courses be made mandatory. He went on leave from 1915 to 1917 to continue writing textbooks and never returned to the College.^[34]

Another young scientist who was at the College as long as Ritchie was William Houston Keeble, who became professor of physics in 1907. Keeble was born in 1873, had a bachelor of science degree from the University of Tennessee, and had taken three years of graduate studies in physics at the University of Chicago. Keeble, along with a laboratory assistant, taught all the physics classes, which were geared to training students to teach the subject in high schools. Keeble remained at the College until the end of the Tyler administration and then became professor of physics at Randolph-Macon College.^[35]

A professor with a different background was James Southall Wilson, who joined the faculty as assistant professor of English language, literature, and general history in 1906. With the departmental reshuffling two years later, he became professor of history and associate professor of English. Wilson was born in 1880 and was from Norfolk. He had come to William and Mary as a student to study English under Professor Hall. He received a bachelor of arts degree in 1904, then went to the University of Virginia where he earned a master of arts degree. He continued his studies at Princeton University and received a doctorate in 1906. He was the author of Alexander Wilson, Poet-Naturalist. After finishing his graduate study, he leaped at the chance to return to the College.^[36] Single-handedly, Wilson conducted all courses in history—from ancient Greece and Rome, through European, to American. A lively and entertaining teacher, he was popular with his students. Later, he was the director of the summer session. Wilson was also active in representing the College at various educational conferences, and he became a member of the State Board of Education. But English language and literature were his real love, and in 1919 he accepted the Edgar Allen Poe Chair of English at the University of Virginia.^[37]

Directing the teacher-training program was Henry Eastman Bennett, who came to the College as professor of philosophy and Education and supervisor of the model school in 1907. He brought impressive credentials with him. Born in 1873, he received a licentiate of instruction from Peabody Normal College and a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Chicago, where he also did some graduate work. He later became secretary of the Florida Department of Education, president of Florida State Normal School, then dean of the normal department at the University of Florida.^[38] At William and Mary he directed the continuing development of teacher training, became superintendent of schools for Williamsburg, and was an eloquent spokesman for the College at state educational gatherings. During World War I, he took a leave of absence from 1917 to 1919 to serve as educational director of the YMCA in France.^[39] Bennett returned to the College and taught until 1924.

A professor who was a product of William and Mary was George Oscar Ferguson, Jr. Born in 1885, he was from Leesburg and entered the College in 1902. He earned a bachelor of arts degree three years later, and a master of arts degree in 1907. He immediately accepted an assistantship in American history and Education at the College, and in 1908 became adjunct professor of Education and philosophy. Two years later he assumed additional duties as principal of the Normal Academy until 1912, when he became professor of philosophy and associate professor of Education. The next year his title changed again to professor of philosophy and psychology and associate professor of Education, a position he held until he left the College in 1916. While teaching he completed what was probably the first experimental research by a William and Mary professor. His report, “The Psychology of the Negro: An Experimental Study,” compared the intelligence of blacks and whites and was published in two scholarly journals.^[40]

There were other notable professors, to be sure: Walter A. Montgomery was professor of Latin from 1907 to 1912, followed by Wesley P. Clark; Richard M. Crawford held the chair of drawing and manual arts (later called fine and industrial arts) from 1905 to 1919; and John Caldwell Calhoun was professor of modern languages from 1911 until his death in 1917. Toward the end of the Tyler era, several new professors, who would figure prominently for several decades, began teaching at the College, including Josef Roy Geiger, professor of philosophy and psychology; Robert G. Robb, who held the chair of chemistry; and Donald W. Davis, acting professor of biology.^[41]

This new faculty was not as homogeneous a group as the faculty had been at the start of the Tyler years. Interestingly, in contrast to earlier times when most faculty had studied at the University of Virginia, many newcomers had attended the University of Chicago, where John Dewey had established the School of Pedagogy in 1896. They brought with them progressive ideas about education and teaching. They shared the common goal of improving the College and its students. Workloads remained so heavy that there was little time for private research or publishing. Faculty organization, guided by Hall, who was dean, became more structured. Eleven standing committees, empowered to act for the faculty, assumed many duties that had previously taken so much of the time of the full faculty. Unless specially called, the faculty scaled back their regular meetings to once a month instead of two and three times a week. They became more interested in various professional organizations and sent representatives to nearby meetings. Affirming their seriousness and professionalism, in 1909 the faculty voted to obtain and wear appropriate “academic costumes” for College ceremonies.^[42]

Relations between the faculty and students remained close, not only in the classroom but in personal affairs as well. The main purpose of a college, Tyler continued to believe, was to form the character of the undergraduates.^[43] Disciplinary problems, which had loomed large in the early part of the Tyler years, took less time because a committee handled most of them. Of the offenses that reached the full faculty, hazing and drinking continued to predominate. There were so many reports, investigations, and suspensions caused by hazing that the students finally asked Tyler to define it. Hazing was anything involving force or violence, answered Tyler, any “treatment calculated to render the student ridiculous, or to humiliate him.”^[44]

In 1911 the specter of easy access to liquor in dry Williamsburg surfaced again. Governor William H. Mann told Tyler that he had heard there was a move afoot to open a dispensary (liquor store) in town. Tyler and the faculty petitioned the General Assembly not to pass any legislation allowing the establishment of a dispensary, citing the danger to a College with male students and to a hospital for the insane, many of whom were victims of liquor. The General Assembly complied.^[45]

In those days, faculty pay was poor—it had gone from $1,500 in 1906 to $2,200 in 1918—and there were no benefits such as insurance, medical leave, or retirement, and of course, the social security system lay far in the future. Still hoping for a place on the Carnegie Retiring Fund, in 1912 Tyler asked the Board to put an age limit on all professors, present and future, and the Visitors enacted a tough mandatory retirement policy for professors and the president at age sixty-five, effective in 1915. The College would have no responsibility for such retirements—meaning it would provide no pensions.^[46]

But William and Mary still failed to make the Carnegie list, and by 1914, with three professors facing retirement in the coming year, Tyler asked the Board to raise the mandatory age to sixty-nine and pointed to the hardship of not offering pensions. The Board firmly held to the retirement age of sixty-five. Tyler lost this round. After a protracted fight in early 1915, the Board postponed the effective date to 1918.^[47] The next year Tyler asked the Board to establish retirement allowances. When this failed, he wrote to dozens of other colleges for opinions about mandatory retirement without pensions, and of course, most opposed such a policy.^[48]

As his own retirement loomed, Tyler applied to the Carnegie Foundation for a pension. Although William and Mary was not on the list, the foundation sometimes made exceptions. In 1919 it agreed to award Tyler $1,000 a year, if the College added another $600 to the pension. The Board concurred and finally rescinded the retirement resolution of 1912.^[49] Tyler continued to plead for pensions for professors. There was now little likelihood that the College would ever make the Carnegie list, and few colleges in the country forced retirement without a pension, but the injustice remained.^[50]

The Students

The faculty’s main task, naturally, was teaching the students, and these young men had far better secondary training than their counterparts of the 1890s. The proliferation of high schools throughout the state, the College’s own Normal Academy, and the stricter entrance requirements for college-level work all contributed to the improvement. The College raised the minimum age for entrance to 16 years in 1908, and the average age for students rose to 18.6 years by 1919.^[51]

The number of students had peaked at 244 in 1906, averaged 208 between 1907 and 1916, then dipped to 149 in 1917, as World War I took young men out of colleges. The College proper averaged about 156 students; the subcollegiate course, which became the Normal Academy, about 75, until it closed in 1918. Virginians continued to make up almost the entire student body; the majority were from rural districts, with about 75 percent of the state’s counties represented.^[52] To help with recruiting, the College dispatched both faculty and students, giving them fees for their successes.^[53]

Most students lived in College dormitories Brafferton, Taliaferro, and Ewell for men, and the new Tyler Hall for women when they arrived in 1918. Meals were available in the dining hall, built in 1914. Other students lived in boardinghouses in Williamsburg and continued to enjoy the townspeople’s hospitality. In spite of persistent doubts about the healthfulness of the Williamsburg climate, students suffered no unusual medical problems, with the exception of an isolated case of smallpox in 1907.^[54] Costs for attending William and Mary, modest by any standards, crept upward as expenses and the cost of living rose. By the fall of 1918, Virginia students paid $261 a year for everything—up from $174 in 1905. Out-of-state students paid an extra $40 in tuition. There were many way to reduce these costs. The state continued to offer 132 scholarships for those pledging to teach in the public schools. The College gave 5 named scholarships, 2 more funded by Robert M. Hughes, and a number to high schools around the state. In 1910 the Phi Beta Kappa Society began awarding $50 to a son of a member.^[55] In 1908 the General Assembly, as part of the great educational revival under way in Virginia, established the State Students Loan Fund, authorizing state colleges to draw up to 1 percent of their annual appropriation to lend to students at 4 percent interest to help fund their educations.^[56] In an early self-help program, the faculty authorized a College “bookstore” in 1913 so that two needy students could sell books and stationery to other students and help defray their expenses. The superintendent of grounds and buildings also hired students to make repairs around campus.^[57]

As in earlier years, rules regulating student behavior were manifold. According to the president and the faculty, the object of such discipline was to “maintain regularity and order in the institution and to inculcate… the spirit of honor.” Expressly forbidden were hazing, absence from classes, smoking in buildings or on the front campus, chewing tobacco in dormitories, drinking, playing cards, cheating, stealing, lying, and using or possessing firearms.^[58]

The students continued their efforts to assume some control over disciplinary matters. After an outbreak of hazing in the fall of 1906, the senior class punished the perpetrators and reported their actions to the faculty, which then concentrated on the ringleader and expelled him. Three years later students asked for the authority to deal with all cases of cheating, stealing, and hazing. After due consideration, the faculty said that it welcomed student interest in protecting and upholding the Honor System but decided that it could not delegate this responsibility, which the Board of Visitors had given them.^[59]

There was a brief flurry of interest in a student senate in 1913, but nothing came of it. The next fall, however, a preliminary step toward self-government came with the beginning of the dormitory monitor system. Each floor of each dormitory elected a student as supervisor in the dormitory and in the dining hall. In 1914 students elected representatives from each class for a student committee, called the Student Council, to meet with the faculty’s student activities committee. Finally, in May 1915 the faculty turned over all routine disciplinary matters to this elected Student Council.^[60]

Faculty-student relations continued to be close. After all, the faculty felt a keen responsibility for the young men and to their parents. The faculty discussed each student’s progress and sent monthly reports to parents showing the class standing of their charges. After tests, remembered one alumnus, students would often go to the professors’ houses to get their grades—and always something to eat, as well. In 1908 the faculty initiated a series of College Hours to bring students and faculty in closer touch. The faculty took part in students’ extracurricular activities: athletics, the literary societies, campus organizations, publications, and social events such as German Club dances. Sometimes they accepted senior class challenges to baseball games.^[61] In a renewed effort to inculcate good study habits, the faculty set up a study hall for introductory students in 1907. All first year students had to report to the Main Building every night except Saturday and concentrate on school work between half past seven and ten.^[62]

When these sequestered students left William and Mary, they engaged in a variety of occupations. The faculty had begun following the careers of the normal students in the 1890s, but it was not until 1911 that a similar study was done on collegiate graduates. Registrar Herbert L. Bridges found that 60 of 160 students who had received undergraduate degrees between 1890 and 1911 taught in public schools and 15 in colleges or universities; 13 were division superintendents or district examiners of Virginia schools; 24 had gone into law, 6 into medicine, 12 into the ministry, and 10 into business. The rest were scattered among other professions.^[63] Over half of William and Mary graduates were involved in some aspect of the educational field.

The Extracurriculum

Students who came to the College during the second part of the Tyler era found that, over the years, little had changed in Williamsburg. The population had grown to about 2,700, but the town still slumbered and offered little to interest college-age youth.^[64] There were some exceptions, of course. In 1908 the Daughters of the Confederacy invited students and faculty to attend the unveiling of the Confederate monument on the Palace Green. Jamestown Day in May was a major holiday and diversion for students. In 1909 they flocked to watch the unveiling of the Captain John Smith monument on Jamestown Island.^[65] But for the most part, students turned to the College for extracurricular activities.

The Philomathean and Phoenix literary societies continued to provide intellectual and social stimulation. The two groups met every Saturday night for debate, declamation, and fellowship. Most of the student body belonged to one society or the other, and membership averaged about seventy in each.^[66]  The societies published the William and Mary Literary Magazine, which was the only outlet for students’ creative literary talents.^[67] Another group, the Gordon-Hope Literary Club, was organized in 1913 and a year later became a chapter of the national Sigma Upsilon Literary Fraternity, which had chapters at seventeen colleges.^[68]

The College annual, the Colonial Echo, which had started in 1899, mirrored student life in photographs, essays, and poems. Tyler kept publishing his William and Mary College Quarterly, which he had founded in 1892. Concentrating heavily on genealogical and Virginia history, the Quarterly was the forerunner of the present series. The College also began its Bulletin series in 1907.

New on the scene was the College newspaper, the Flat Hat, which began in 1911. The student-run paper was funded by the College and was published weekly. Its four pages described campus activities and student life, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch heralded it as “the liveliest thing in Williamsburg, which is saying a good deal.” The faculty exercised tight control over the contents and in December 1911 voted against distributing the current issue because of “certain opinions expressed in the editorials.” Several years later the faculty removed the editor because of objectionable editorials and forced him to print a signed apology in the next issue.^[69]

In 1911 the College became a charter member of the Southern Collegiate Press Association, which was open only to colleges with both a monthly magazine and a student newspaper.^[70] An added bonus for time spent on the Flat Hat, as well as the Literary Magazine and the Colonial Echo, was that sometimes the faculty permitted students to substitute their work on these publications for their undergraduate theses.^[71]

As popular as the literary societies, the YMCA played an important role on campus. The organization held weekly devotional meetings, an annual week of prayer service, and sponsored Bible study classes. Holding its meetings in its own Association Hall in the gymnasium, the YMCA enrolled about 70 percent of the student body.^[72] As part of its program to ease students’ entrance into college life, the YMCA issued a Student’s Handbook, with descriptions of all extracurricular activities and of the workings of the Honor System.^[73] The group’s religious studies took a new twist in 1916, when the faculty permitted the placement of billiard or pool tables in the meeting room.^[74]

Other students took to the athletic fields, and sports at William and Mary, as at colleges across the country, attracted more and more interest.^[75] The College had become an active participant in the Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Association’s Eastern Division, which consisted of Hampden-Sydney, Randolph-Macon, Richmond College, and William and Mary. Representatives from the College regularly attended meetings of the association and worked with the other colleges in directing athletics and scheduling games.^[76]

Through its committee on student activities, the faculty continued its tight control over all phases of athletics. In 1907, after two players were charged with using profanity on the baseball field, the faculty threatened to disband the team unless its members cleaned up their mouths. It approved all games, opponents, and time off from class for games away from campus. It required that athletes take a full fifteen credits a semester and earn no less than a C on ten hours and a D on the remainder. As time went on, an Athletic Council, representing both faculty and students, took over the management of all athletics.^[77] But in 1914 the Athletic Association ran up a $300 debt (a harbinger of years to come), and the Board of Visitors accepted Tyler’s recommendation of levying a yearly athletic fee of $10 on the students.^[78]

Varsity sports became more popular and better organized. William and Mary fielded intercollegiate teams in football, baseball, basketball, and track. Tennis remained a club, and this club played intercollegiate matches. During these years, baseball remained the sport of choice. James G. Driver, a freshman in 1905 and an outstanding athlete, later recalled the discipline involved for all teams. Athletes had to sign a pledge not to smoke, drink, or “carouse with women,” and they were held to the pledge by the Honor System.^[79] At the same time, colors for athletic teams changed from orange and white to orange and black, which showed less dirt and grime.^[80]

A few years later, the teams acquired their nicknames. In 1915, while the College engaged in various athletic contests with its archrival, Richmond College, William and Mary players began calling their opponents the “Jaspers,” because of a famous black Baptist preacher in Richmond named Richard Jasper. Richmond College was, after all, a Baptist school. The Richmond players fired back and dubbed William and Mary teams the “Loonies” because of their proximity to the Eastern Lunatic Asylum. Before the name could stick, a William and Mary student suggested “Indians,” because of the Indian School once held in the Brafferton.^[81]

Clubs, as well as athletics, grew increasingly important. There were regional clubs—Northern Neck, Southside, Gloucester, Albemarle, Piedmont, Eastern Shore, Southwest, Rappahannock, and the Northern Lights—which encouraged socialization among students from those areas. There were other clubs such as the German, which later became the Cotillion, dramatic and glee clubs, the Spottswood and Trevillian clubs, and the Monogram Club.^[82]

Fraternities, too, helped alleviate the inevitable boredom of College life. The earlier five fraternities—Kappa Sigma, Pi Kappa Alpha, Kappa Alpha, Theta Delta Chi, and Sigma Phi Epsilon—drew about twelve members each. They had chapter houses off campus where their members could socialize with more freedom—too much freedom, decided the faculty in 1910, when witnesses had seen a keg of beer delivered to the Kappa Sigma house and later, five brothers stumbling around. After a heated debate, the faculty moved to abolish all fraternities. Only Tyler’s tiebreaking vote enabled fraternities to remain. The next fall the faculty closed the Pi Kappa Alpha house and put four members on probation for drinking.^[83] Another fraternity, Phi Tau Beta, was founded in 1917, bringing the number of fraternities on campus to six.^[84]

The oldest of all Greek letter fraternities, Phi Beta Kappa, continued its active Virginia Alpha chapter. Dedicated to scholarship and achievement rather than partying, the society had begun electing promising young alumni in 1905. Seven years later, the chapter voted to admit each year two outstanding students from the senior class. The faculty set the qualifications: students must have a B average for the last two years and demonstrate broad, general culture.^[85]

After they left the College, all students could join the Alumni Association by paying one dollar a year in dues. Tyler continued to push for establishing local clubs, and the Richmond alumni were the most active and best organized. In 1908 they invited the faculty to their first banquet, held at the Jefferson Hotel.^[86]  Alumni were always interested in sports, and in 1916 the Alumni Association and the Athletic Council made plans so that alumni could become active members of the Athletic Association. At the same time, the Richmond alumni group began drumming up support for intercollegiate athletics—a trend that would resurface in the modern period of the College’s history—and asked for a separate coach for intercollegiate teams in addition to the director of gymnasium and class athletics. The alumni also thought that academic credits should be given for athletic training.^[87]

During these years the students had the opportunity to see the distinguished visitors who came to the College. In April 1914 French Ambassador Jules Jusserand toured the campus and attended a ceremony in the chapel. A few months later, black educational leader Booker T. Washington delivered a well-attended lecture. In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson visited the College on his way to Jamestown and returned three years later when he received an honorary degree.^[88]

The Campus

All of these disparate groups required campus facilities for their activities, and the construction and land acquisition of the first part of Tyler’s administration continued unabated. Tyler had raised over $20,000 in matching funds to qualify for a donation of the same amount from the Carnegie Foundation for a new library. The College hired the New York architectural firm, Cady and See, to draw plans and specifications and accepted a bid of $14,297 for the construction. With great fanfare and with Governor Claude A. Swanson in attendance, the cornerstone was laid on April 13, 1908 (Jefferson’s birthday).^[89] Rising to the north of the Main Building, the brick structure was eighty by thirty feet in size. Formally dedicated on May 14, 1909, the new library was a badly needed academic and physical addition to the College and a tribute to Tyler’s perseverance in raising the necessary funds.^[90] The building is now Tucker Hall.

That same year the athletic program got a boost in the form of a new, level, fenced playing field to the rear of the Main Building. Encompassing about twenty-five acres, it had a football field, a baseball field, and tennis courts. A six-hundred-seat grandstand could accommodate far larger crowds than the College normally attracted. Named Cary Field after the Richmond benefactor who financed the improvement, the new facility opened on April 9 with a ceremony and a baseball game between William and Mary and Delaware College.^[91]

Another addition was a greenhouse, completed in 1909, near the Main Building. It was designed for the department of biology.^[92] Soon a new water tank and tower rose on the property south of Jamestown Road, and the College supplied students with “pure artesian water.”^[93] A power plant to furnish central heat and lighting to the campus was built to the rear of Taliaferro dormitory. With its completion in 1911, the College had a thoroughly modern system of utilities.^[94]

The next major building that Tyler advocated was a dining hall to replace the inadequate facilities in the Ewell building. Located south of Ewell and Taliaferro dormitories and financed with state funds, the dining hall opened in 1914 with a seating capacity of 250 and had modern kitchen appliances. The dining hall later became a part of Trinkle Hall.^[95] A new dormitory, named Tyler Hall, rose in 1916. The three-story building, at the corner of Jamestown Road and Boundary Street, was constructed in two separate units to lessen the noise of long corridors.^[96] Tyler Hall is now the Reves Center.

Concurrent with the new construction went extensive remodeling of existing structures. In 1910 the north wing of the Main Building, which had housed the old library, was remodeled; the space was turned into a study hall and two lecture rooms. A second story of stacks in the new library added needed space for books. In 1914 the old dining hall in Ewell was converted to more dormitory rooms, and Taliaferro was remodeled as well.^[97]

Whenever the opportunity arose, the College purchased property adjacent to its south campus across Jamestown Road. In 1909 it paid $7,000 for houses and a large lot owned by John W. Jones, and five years later it bought the Galt property for $1,400. In 1916 it purchased property owned by Bettie Morris Lee for $5,000.^[98] The College disposed of property, too. In 1915 it gave one of the houses on the Jones property to the Williamsburg School Board and sold the rest of them. The next year, it sold some of its remaining land near the Matthew Whaley School.^[99]

Altogether, during the second phase of Tyler’s administration, the College constructed three major buildings and bought additional land adjoining its existing holdings. By 1919 it owned about fifty acres—up from the thirty acres of 1906.

The Administration

The enlarged campus and more complex academic program required a slightly larger and more compartmentalized administrative staff. To assist the president in running the College were the steward, the librarian, the treasurer, and a new officer, the registrar, each elected annually by the Board. In addition, there were several assistants, secretaries, and two deans.

The president was, of course, the chief administrator, and in 1907 the Board of Visitors reiterated his duties and defined those of other officers. He was the means of communication between the Board and the rest of the College community and was to report on the condition of the College and to recommend expedient actions. He was to represent the College to the public, preside over public occasions and confer all degrees except honorary degrees. He was an ex officio member of the Executive Committee with voting power and could attend meetings of all standing committees. This measure downgraded the 1905 definition of the president’s duties. In the earlier version, the president had voting privileges on all standing committees. He continued to have general supervision of the buildings and grounds, was to countersign all checks and prepare a budget for the Board’s consideration. He was to preside over faculty meetings as well, and of course, he carried a full teaching load.^[100]

The steward, who was also superintendent of grounds and buildings, had to run the dormitories and inspect each room daily, provide board for the students, keep books on purchases and expenditures, and maintain the campus. Robert L. Spencer continued in this post until 1911, and his wife kept on with housekeeping duties. Growing dissatisfaction with Spencer’s management of the boarding department led to the Visitors revamping these duties and leasing this department to someone to operate at a guaranteed rate for each student and under College supervision. Under the new system, the steward became the manager of the boarding department and no longer had responsibility for grounds and buildings. A succession of people filled the position—W. T. Brown until 1915, when Blanche E. Moncure, who had been College librarian from 1899 to 1902, replaced him. In 1918 the Board split the boarding department into a room service and a dining hall service and hired William H. Keeble as supervisor of the men’s dormitories and Esther Warren Redimon as manager of the boarding department.^[101]

The library remained under the watchful eye of Emily P. Christian throughout the period. When the new library opened in 1909, there was ample space for the rapidly growing collection of books, periodicals, artifacts, and portraits. By 1919 the number of books had increased, by gift and purchase, to about eighteen thousand volumes.^[102]

Unlike the early Tyler years, there was no problem with the College treasurer, and alumnus Levin Winder Lane, Jr., filled this position, and that of secretary to the Board of Visitors, throughout the later Tyler administration. Charged with keeping separate accounts for the boardinghouses, the medical fund, the contingent fund, the library fund, and the general fund, Lane handled his responsibilities efficiently and to the Board’s satisfaction. He had to keep his office at the College open from nine to ten o’clock six mornings a week. In 1911 the Board appointed a committee to look into the business management of the College and authorized the president to hire an accountant each year to examine the treasurer’s books. Two years later the Board established the office of purchasing agent to work in conjunction with the treasurer in making all purchases for the College. That same year, the Board approved spending thirty-five dollars for a check-writing machine for the treasurer’s office.^[103]

In 1906 the Board created a new administrative position, the registrar, and named alumnus Herbert L. Bridges to the post. Bridges kept records of matriculants, sent reports of absences to parents, helped prepare catalogues and bulletins, aided the president with correspondence, served as secretary to the faculty, and taught American history and politics. Soon after the restructuring of the steward’s responsibilities in 1911, Bridges also became superintendent of grounds and buildings. In addition to following graduates in their later careers, he kept records of alumni serving in the military during World War I.^[104]

There were other administrators to help keep the College running smoothly. In 1907 the Board created the post of dean of the College, and John Lesslie Hall, who was professor of English and dean of the faculty, filled this role as well. After women were admitted in 1918, the Visitors elected Caroline F. Tupper as their dean and appointed a “lady in charge” for their dormitory. The office of College physician changed frequently, and sometimes the doctor doubled as physical director. George A. Hankins served until 1911, when William J. Young became College physician and director of athletics and physical training. Two years later Dexter W. Draper replaced Young. Finally, in 1916, David J. King took over as College physician and brought long-term stability to the post. A separate director of athletics assumed responsibility for sports. Mary Anne Morecock was the president’s secretary throughout the period, and by 1918 Jean C. S. Mercer was College secretary.^[105] By the end of the Tyler era, the College’s administrative structure had become more specialized, and in this respect, it fit into the Progressive era’s penchant for more efficient management.^[106]

Finances—A Brightening Picture

From 1888 to 1906, the struggle for solvency had almost overwhelmed the College, but after it became a state institution, it would never again face the threat of closure because of lack of funds. There was never enough money for all the programs, staff, buildings, and improvements that Tyler envisioned; but there was enough to keep the College operating and for some physical expansion, and the institution had no longstanding burden of debt.

State appropriations became the College’s primary source of revenue, and these funds grew rapidly. From 1888 to 1906, the state annuity had risen from $10,000 to $35,000, and Tyler continued his pressure on the General Assembly for more. In 1908 the appropriation rose another $5,000, but there was no further increase for six more years, when the annuity went up to $45,000. In 1918 it rose to $54,500, which included $2,500 for the summer session at Dublin.^[107] Although these funds seemed like manna from heaven for the money-starved College, they were unimpressive compared to more favored state institutions. During these same years, for example, the University of Virginia’s annuity rose from $75,000 to $110,000, plus another $40,000 for its hospital; the Virginia Polytechnic Institute’s, from $61,750 to $117,500. Even the State Female Normal School at Farmville got more than William and Mary.^[108] These disparities would continue into modern times. In addition to operating funds, the College received appropriations for physical expansion and improvements. Between 1906 and 1919, the legislature awarded $92,000 for buildings, improvements, debt reduction, and equipment.^[109]

Tyler was active in trying to generate support for the College among the legislators. He, along with Rector Hughes, and either the vice-rector or the chairman of the Board’s finance committee, regularly presented the needs of the College to the General Assembly’s finance committees.^[110] To reinforce Tyler’s personal appearances and the letter-writing campaigns by College supporters, the president later had pamphlets printed describing the needs of the College for these finance committees.^[111] It is a matter of speculation whether William and Mary would have fared better with the Democratic-controlled legislatures and Democratic governors if both Rector Hughes and Vice-Rector Stubbs had not been Republicans.

As state appropriations increased, Tyler spent less time traveling “up North” trying to secure money from foundations or wealthy individuals. After the $20,000 Carnegie gift for the library in 1906, the College received no other foundation money. Tyler applied to the General Education Board for a $40,000 endowment fund, but the request was filed—along with several hundred others.^[112] The College commissioned several agents, offering to pay them 40 percent on money raised for endowment and 20 percent on all other funds, but little came of this.^[113]

Although large monetary contributions did not fill the College’s coffers, other gifts helped with expenses or adorned the College. There were several small gifts and bequests, and a number of donations of books the largest was two thousand books from Columbia University in 1907.^[114] An assortment of mirrors, rugs, portraits, miniatures, and an organ for the chapel were donated.^[115] In 1914 Vice-Rector James N. Stubbs had a tablet prepared with the names of all professors and students who had left the College to join the Confederate army. The tablet was to hang in the chapel. Later that year, the Colonial Capital Branch of the APVA presented the College with a white marble tablet listing William and Mary’s priorities.^[116]

The library’s finances were a different story. After Tyler raised over $20,000 in 1906 to match the Carnegie gift, the money was invested in a separate, perpetual endowment fund, its income used for books and library maintenance.^[117] Tyler occasionally had to fight off attempts by the Board to funnel this income into other directions and had to remind the Visitors of the stipulations of the Carnegie grant. He also deplored the lack of College funding for books and periodicals and requested a library fee, which the Board did not approve, and allocations from general funds for books.^[118]

The library’s endowment was part of the overall endowment of the College, and the latter, invested in securities and notes on property, steadily increased during the second part of Tyler’s administration. In 1914 the Richmond alumni discussed a movement to raise $1 million for the College’s endowment, a plan which generated enthusiastic support from the Flat Hat. Such a sum would enable the College to become an independent corporation, “severed from meddlesome politics under which it now labors.” The grandiose fund-raising plan would have to wait for another president. Nevertheless, by 1919 William and Mary’s endowment totaled $154,000—up from $132,328 in 1906.^[119]

The Board of Visitors

The act of 1906 transferring William and Mary to the state had stipulated that the College would be controlled by a ten-member Board of Visitors, appointed by the governor for four-year terms, with the superintendent of public instruction as an ex officio member. The ink was scarcely dry on the governor’s signature when Tyler urged the immediate appointment of new members so the Virginia Senate could confirm them while it was still in session.^[120] The Board sent a committee to ask Governor Claude A. Swanson to choose the new Board members. He complied, naming seven of the ten Visitors already on the Board.^[121]

On June 12, 1906, the old dual Board met for the last time. Tyler thanked them profusely for their unselfish service to the College and for giving up their self-perpetuating membership on the Board so that William and Mary could embark on “a new departure.” Two days later the state-appointed Board met and after Tyler’s welcome, got right to business. It adopted what amounted to bylaws. The chief officer would be the rector—dropping the title of president and reverting to the older term—who would be assisted by the vice-rector and a secretary who would also be treasurer of the College. Each would be elected for two-year terms. There would be four standing committees: executive, finance, boardinghouse department, and curriculum. The Board elected Robert Morton Hughes as rector, James N. Stubbs as vice-rector, and Levin W. Lane, Jr., as secretary-treasurer.^[122]

Hughes soon suggested to Tyler that they look through all Board minutes since 1888, note the regulations adopted, then copy them separately. This would codify the rules of the College. The next year the Board took a large step toward a clearer definition of the duties of the Visitors, the president, the faculty, and other administrators when it adopted an elaborate set of rules. In addition to electing its own officers, the Board must regularly meet in February and June and must elect its standing committees, which would meet independently. The rules expressly prohibited using funds appropriated for one purpose for another purpose without the Board’s consent. The regulations carefully spelled out the responsibilities of the president—ostensibly ending the confusion which had plagued Tyler in earlier years—and of the registrar, the librarian, the treasurer, and the steward. The faculty, appointed initially for one year and then at the pleasure of the Board, was relegated to the discipline and management of the students and to administering their own departments.^[123] There would be no question, as there had been in the 1890s, about the faculty’s authority to sell property. The streamlined Board of Visitors had put the running of the College on a less casual and more businesslike basis, and with a few modifications, these regulations controlled the College for the rest of Tyler’s administration.^[124]

After the faculty was officially restricted to teaching and disciplining, it had little contact with the Board. The Visitors occasionally overrode faculty decisions. In 1910 they elected two student assistants who had not been recommended by the faculty, and the next year they rejected the faculty’s suggested name for the subcollegiate program, the Academy of the College of William and Mary, in favor of the William and Mary Normal Academy. As if to emphasize the separateness, in 1913 the Board began requiring all department heads to submit an annual written report on the condition and needs of their departments. Yet the rector realized the importance of closer ties with the teaching staff, so in 1912 the Board initiated sporadic social meetings with the faculty. Two years later, the Board added a faculty member to the College’s endowment committee. Otherwise, there was little interaction between these two important elements of the College community.^[125]

Tyler’s relations with the governing body were more stable than in earlier years. He continued keeping the Visitors well informed of all events and problems affecting the College and readily suggested courses of action.^[126] The powerhouse of this Board was Hughes, the rector, and he and Tyler seemed to have kept their mutual hostility under control after the bitter election fight for the presidency of the Board in 1905. A ray of hope shone briefly for Tyler when the governor failed to reappoint Hughes when his term expired in March 1908. A month later, however, Swanson named Hughes to fill a new vacancy on the Board.^[127] Two years later Hughes resigned after Governor William H. Mann appointed him chairman of the Board of State Examiners. He felt that his appointment placed the Democratic governor in an awkward position by having the same Republican appointee in two positions. Mann did not accept the resignation; Tyler had asked him to retain Hughes on the Board because he was the most efficient member of it!^[128]

Hughes was so efficient that in 1911 he decided to set Tyler straight about his shortcomings. “You probably know that you have some enemies,” he wrote. “Every man of positive personality is certain to have them.” He then listed three recent slights of the rector: not being asked to sit on the platform during the cornerstone-laying ceremony for the new library; Tyler’s conferring master of arts degrees at the last commencement instead of the rector; and Alpha chapter’s designating Armistead Gordon as its representative at the inauguration of a Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Washington and Lee. Tyler, of course, defended himself. No one meant to snub the rector at the cornerstone ceremony, but the president presides at all public occasions. As for the president’s conferring advanced degrees, Hughes had been on the committee that changed the rules ten years earlier. Tyler knew nothing about the Phi Beta Kappa arrangements. The two men then decided to forget their quarrel and get to work.^[129]

But Tyler soon acquired another antagonist on the Board—George P. Coleman, a Williamsburg alumnus, who became a Visitor in 1913. A deep personal hostility, to the point where they refused to speak, developed between the two, probably because Coleman was on the finance committee, and he and Tyler often disagreed.^[130] Finally, in 1918 Governor Westmoreland Davis did not reappoint Hughes and two of his allies—William C. L. Taliaferro and Manly H. Barnes—to the Board. Tyler could not conceal his glee and relief. He thanked the governor for the “new deal” at William and Mary and only wished that Coleman could have been included in the removals.^[131] The newly constituted Board of Visitors assembled on April 19, 1918, and among the recent appointees was James H. Dillard, an activist in educational causes and race relations.^[132] Soon the Board met again and elected him rector. James N. Stubbs declined the post of vice-rector, a position he had filled since 1890, first as vice-president, then as vice-rector. The Visitors named Coleman to the second spot. Levin W. Lane, Jr., continued as secretary to the Board, as well as treasurer of the College.^[133] The new Board would soon have to confront the many problems that World War I would thrust upon the College.

World War I

The outbreak of war between the Allies and the Central Powers in 1914 had little initial impact on William and Mary or other American colleges. Tyler deplored the country’s embarking on “the high road to militarism,” but he went along with efforts to establish some sort of military training at the College. In 1915 Rector Hughes suggested organizing a military company, but the faculty supported only a rifle club at that time.^[134] The Board’s Executive Committee began investigating the necessary steps for the College to form a military company and learned that 150 students were necessary in a mandatory instructional program. The students overwhelmingly supported military training.^[135] Nothing came of the idea, even as President Woodrow Wilson launched his “preparedness” campaign in 1916 and as the United States edged ever closer to the European conflict.

In early 1917 the Flat Hat urged some type of military training for the students, and Hughes prodded Tyler about organizing a volunteer company, but it was not until after the United States officially entered World War I on April 6, 1917, that anything was done.^[136] The faculty and students held a mass meeting supporting Wilson’s actions, and Tyler and Hughes engaged Captain W. G. Puller of the Richmond Blues to serve as drill master for the rest of the session. A William and Mary battalion was quickly organized, and it drilled for two hours daily. The faculty shortened classes to provide more time for training, gave one credit for military drill, and voted to end the school year early. They agreed to give academic credit for work done for students who enlisted, or engaged in war work, or were urgently needed at home. Nearly all students took part in the program, which became even more attractive after Congress passed the Selective Service Act in May.^[137]

In the fall of 1917, the voluntary military training program continued under the command of Captain S. M. Taylor. Many of the students wanted to leave College and join the armed forces, but the faculty urged them to finish school and granted two credits a term for training. The country would need educated military leaders, they argued. The battalion was organized into two companies, and the student-soldiers were supplied with khaki uniforms. To provide more daylight hours for drill and other activities, the College conformed to the “new time” (daylight savings) set by the federal government.^[138]

In spite of the College’s efforts to retain students, enrollment plummeted to 140 in 1917–18. Not only were students leaving to join the service, but the nearby military installations and war industries attracted others. Especially enticing was the new Du Pont powder plant at Penniman, just five miles from Williamsburg. The Du Pont Company had bought more than four thousand acres along the York River, built its plant to make munitions, and began erecting housing for employees. By 1918 a tremendous influx of workers transformed Williamsburg into a comparative boom city. Land prices soared, and new stores, businesses, and housing arose. There was even a movie theater. To make use of its emptying dormitory space, the College leased Ewell Hall to Du Pont for male workers in early 1918.^[139]

As the war in Europe continued in the summer of 1918, Tyler felt great concern and fear about the College. Would there be any men to enroll in the fall? he wondered. William and Mary already had about four hundred alumni in the military. Suddenly an opportunity arose that seemed tailor-made for the College. In June the War Department had established the Students’ Army Training Corps (SATC) to give military instruction to College men so they could go on to officers’ training camps and earn commissions, and Tyler quickly applied for an SATC unit. In August he learned that William and Mary had been selected.^[140] In September Major William P. Stone, who had been professor of military science and tactics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, arrived as commanding officer of the SATC. Lieutenant D. B. Van Dusen soon joined him. The War Department prescribed the curriculum and provided uniforms and rifles for the fledgling military unit. The government would pay all fees and board and allot the students thirty dollars a month. In addition, the faculty would arrange special courses for students lacking sufficient entrance units.^[141]

Such enticements attracted ninety-eight young men to the SATC at William and Mary. Soon uniformed students marched to class carrying their books in their left hands, maintained alert posture at their desks, and stood at attention when faculty or army officers entered.^[142] After the armistice ended the war on November 11, 1918, the SATC continued for several weeks, then was demobilized on December 8. The unit was in existence too short a time for Tyler to assess the long-term effects of a rigid military system on the College’s educational program, but in the short term, it had been disruptive. Compounding the problem was an outbreak of Spanish influenza, which had affected over half of the students. Later, the Flat Hat referred to the “unpleasant influence” of the SATC at William and Mary. If the SATC did nothing else, it enabled the College to remain open and functioning in the fall of 1918. There were only thirty-six non-SATC men enrolled.^[143]

Mary Comes to the College with William

As dwindling male enrollment threatened the College’s very existence, Tyler cast about for another means to fill the classrooms and dormitories. For years there had been an unsuccessful movement to admit women to the University of Virginia. Why not allow them to come to William and Mary? Such a plan would serve the dual purpose of bolstering enrollment and providing a four-year, degree granting state school for women as well as men.^[144]

The idea of women attending William and Mary had first surfaced as long before as 1882, when President Benjamin S. Ewell frantically sought some way to salvage the failing College. Edward S. Joynes of the University of Tennessee had suggested to him that William and Mary turn over its property to the state to establish a normal college for men and women.^[145] The idea lay dormant for decades.

Tyler himself had always espoused equal political and educational opportunities for women. As the College prepared for its bicentennial in 1893, Tyler wrote to his cousin, Elsie Seawell, who was an aspiring poetess: “And would it not be nice if these horrid men would relax their narrow bigotry and invite you to fill the Laureate’s office? I am sure you would give us a song full of melody and tenderness.”^[146] At the turn of the century, he sent his daughter Julia to Wellesley College for a first-rate liberal arts education—a rarity in that day and age when less than 3 percent of College-age women obtained a higher education.^[147]

Julia and her mother Annie became active in the woman’s suffrage movement in Virginia, led by Lila Meade Valentine, who had earlier been a ringleader in the Richmond Education Association. Tyler himself had always believed that anyone of reasonable intelligence should be able to vote and hold office. There was no reason to discriminate against women because of sex.^[148] Tyler, his wife, and daughter joined the Woman’s Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, and Tyler supported the drive for women’s voting rights by writing letters to newspapers, attending meetings, and addressing league gatherings. He was “the first well known public man in Virginia to come out for [the league].” The Flat Hat, however, strongly criticized one of Tyler’s suffrage speeches because he had said that all institutions of higher education should be open to women. “Coeducation means emasculation,” thundered the editor.^[149]

Women’s suffrage and education were inexorably intertwined during the Progressive era, so it was small wonder that Tyler supported a simultaneous drive for a women’s coordinate college at the University of Virginia. “I think the State has not been generous to the female sex, and my sympathies are largely with them,” he wrote.^[150] In January 1910 Senator Aubrey E. Strode of Amherst County introduced a bill in the General Assembly to establish a women’s college in Charlottesville coordinate with the University of Virginia. Although the measure did not pass, it began a decade of controversy about the state’s obligation to educate women. Mary-Cooke Branch Munford, who had also been a leader in the Richmond Education Association, organized the Coordinate College League, which both Tyler and his wife actively endorsed.^[151] At each subsequent session of the General Assembly, similar bills were introduced, and the drumbeat of support sounded from organizations such as Munford’s Coordinate College League, the Virginia Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Virginia State Teachers Association, and the Virginia Education Commission. Although President Alderman and the faculty approved the measure, determined opposition from students and alumni of the university deterred passage.^[152]

In late 1917 Strode included William and Mary in his legislative plans, possibly at Tyler’s behest. “Frankly, I see no good reason why the courses at your College should not be open to women on a co-educational basis,” Strode wrote. “It seems to me the time is opportune to move in that direction.”^[153] When the General Assembly convened in January 1918, Strode introduced one bill into the Virginia Senate permitting women to attend William and Mary, and another bill admitting women to the graduate and professional schools at the University of Virginia. The latter met its usual fate when it reached the House of Delegates.^[154]

After Strode’s William and Mary bill had been reported without amendment by the Committee on Public Institutions and Education, the Board of Visitors met on February 12 and endorsed the measure, with three negative votes: Rector Robert M. Hughes, Samuel W. Williams, and H. F. Hutcheson. Coeducation would, wrote Hughes, “absolutely destroy the historic atmosphere of the College.” Although the faculty never discussed the proposal at their meetings—at least, any such discussion is not recorded in the minutes—Tyler apparently polled them informally and found them agreeable to the bill. The Strode bill easily passed the Senate on February 19.^[155]

The real opposition came in the House of Delegates, led by James N. Stubbs, vice-rector of the Board of Visitors. William and Mary was established as a school for males in 1888 and again in 1906, wrote Stubbs. The Strode bill clearly violated the College’s agreement with the state. “I don’t want to make the fight, but I feel it is my duty under the circumstances to defeat the bill.”^[156] And try he did.

To help counter the opposition, Strode asked Tyler to come to Richmond and canvas the House of Delegates, where he found the majority in favor of the coeducation bill. He continued to lobby energetically for the measure.^[157] After the Committee on Schools and Colleges reported favorably on the bill, it came up on the floor on March 7. Stubbs tried unsuccessfully to dismiss the bill. Next, W. M. Tiffany of Fauquier County proposed an amendment delaying the effective date until men were allowed to attend the state’s four female normal schools. When this failed, Robert O. Norris, Jr., of Lancaster tried in vain to restrict the women to only the collegiate course. Stubbs offered more amendments: delay the effective date until 1919; add provisions that the Board and the faculty must agree on the appropriateness of coeducation and that the College must have funds to implement it. None of these tactics worked for the opposition, and the House of Delegates passed the Strode Bill by a fifty-seven to thirty-three vote.^[158]

Signed into law on March 15, An Act to Provide for the Admission of Women to the College of William and Mary in Virginia stipulated that beginning in the fall of 1918, the College would admit properly prepared women to both the collegiate and normal courses and grant them degrees on the same terms as men students.^[159] Relieved and delighted, Tyler could now prepare for his final experiment to invigorate the old College.

The measure had gone through the General Assembly so quickly that organized opposition never materialized. There was as yet no strong alumni association to present the views of many disgruntled alumni. One hoped that the bill would “be buried beyond hope of further resurrection.” Another did not want women, if they came, to crowd the normal department.^[160] More vehement protests came from newspapers and students. The Virginia Gazette editorialized that surely illustrious alumni such as Jefferson, Tyler, Monroe, Ewell, and Taliaferro were turning in their graves because women aspired “to all the rights and all the privileges of men, their place, their power, and their might—a fetish that allures them even at the price of the womanhood Virginia has cherished as a sacred thing.” The Flat Hat questioned the object of the law: was it to establish the principle of coeducation in Virginia or to provide a college giving a full degree to women? Why should William and Mary’s tradition—the noblest of any institution—be sacrificed? The College newspaper soon mellowed by anticipating another social element “when Mary is allowed to enter with her brother William.”^[161] When a letter to the Flat Hat called for men students to drive away coeducation from William and Mary by making women feel unwelcome, the Virginia Gazette reversed its earlier stand and advised accepting the inevitable. Nevertheless, the senior class historian, writing in the Colonial Echo, regretted that “we are the last class to graduate from this old college before it is defiled by coeducation.”^[162]

As the belated complaining continued, James N. Stubbs, who had fought so vigorously against the Strode bill in the House of Delegates, tried one more time to dissuade the Board of Visitors. At a meeting on June 25, he introduced a resolution stating that the act of 1906 providing for the education of white male teachers had not been repealed; therefore the act of 1918 violated the earlier law and was illegal. He called for the Board to rescind its previous approval. When the Visitors voted, Stubbs was the only one in favor of his own resolution.^[163] So ended any official opposition to admitting women. Another factor in stilling Board dissatisfaction had been the removal of Rector Robert M. Hughes. James H. Dillard, his replacement, firmly supported the new venture.

Meanwhile, preparations had gotten under way for the coeds. In April the Board dispatched Tyler and the history professor, James S. Wilson, to visit several colleges to gain information about the duties and qualities required of a dean of women and about student government and organization. The two men went to nine colleges and reported back to the Board in June.^[164] At that meeting the Board, on Tyler’s recommendation, elected Caroline F. Tupper, who held a doctorate from Radcliffe, as dean of women. Other administrative positions soon followed: Marceline Gatling was to be “lady in charge” of the women’s dormitory, and Bertha Wilder would be athletic director.^[165]

The ace up the College’s sleeve in attracting women was a new federally funded program in home economics and other vocational subjects. In 1917 the United States Congress had passed the Smith-Hughes Act to promote vocational education and to prepare teachers in these subjects. The government would pay the salaries of teachers, supervisors, and directors of such programs.^[166] The College had considered taking advantage of the act to establish a program in agriculture, but nothing had come of the idea. Now, the admission of women and federal funding of the salaries of home economics teachers dovetailed nicely. What better combination than training teachers of the household arts? Home economics would also open a career for women other than primary school teaching.^[167] The Board approved the College’s accepting federal funds to establish teacher training in home economics and soon hired Edith Baer, who had taught at the Drexel Institute and the Teachers College of Columbia University, to head the new department.^[168] At the faculty’s request, Baer devised a four-year course leading to a bachelor of science degree in home economics.^[169] As time went on, Baer visited many high schools in the state, explaining William and Mary’s program. Even an agent from the federal government was pleased with the College’s rapid progress.^[170]

But before the new program could begin, the College had to prepare for the women’s arrival. During the summer of 1918, modifications were made in Tyler Hall, the newest dormitory, and strict rules and regulations about conduct were devised. Complicating the coming of women was the simultaneous beginning of the Students’ Army Training Corps. The face of the old campus would drastically change.

On September 19 William and Mary’s experiment in coeducation began. About twenty female students enrolled.^[171] Women eagerly took their places in the classrooms and as the year progressed, did well scholastically.^[172] Barred from participating in athletic or extracurricular activities with men, women soon founded their own organizations. The Flat Hat even carried a column for “the Marys” about their activities. The women organized their own Student Council and elected Martha Barksdale as president.^[173]  They formed the Alpha Club, which engaged in musical, dramatic, and literary activities, and began intramural basketball teams. In the spring the women staged two one-act plays, Three Pills in a Bottle and A Flower of Yeddo.^[174]

The vehement hostility shown by many students earlier in the year began to fade, and most resentment came from only alumni. The male students were not unfriendly, recalled Janet Coleman Kimbrough, a member of that first class with women. They were somewhat condescending, patronizing.^[175] Only one known incident of overtly hostile behavior occurred. During a literary society debate, which the women students attended, one speaker used insulting language, violently attacked coeducation, and urged an insurgent movement to get rid of female students.^[176] Otherwise, there was very little friction. Generally, men considered the women’s presence an attraction. They enjoyed socializing in the reception room of Tyler Hall after dinner, and there were many more partners for dances and cotillions.^[177]

As the first year of coeducation came to a close, Tyler felt that the great experiment had been fully vindicated. “The young ladies were models of decorum and stood among the first in their classes,” he reported to the Board. “I hope soon to see women fully accorded all the rights of law and suffrage, which justly belong to them.” He felt that admitting women doubled the opportunity for development, enrollment, and state appropriations. “I rejoice that my last fight in the Legislature [was] for the admission of women.”^[178] Tyler attributed the College’s surviving the enrollment crisis during World War I to women. “Always the champion of free and progressive principles, William and Mary heard the call of the hour and flung her doors in 1918 wide open to properly prepared young women.”^[179] Ten years later Tyler wrote to one of that “noble band of girls” that he wanted to have a banquet and salute them as “pioneers of the new faith in women.”^[180]

One Era Ends; Another Begins

With his last major undertaking accomplished, Tyler, then sixty-six years old, announced his retirement. He had already arranged for a pension from the Carnegie Foundation. On February 11, 1919, he told the Board of Visitors that he would leave on June 30. The Visitors then named him president emeritus.^[181] When the faculty heard that Tyler was resigning to devote his time to literary and editorial pursuits, they passed a resolution of high regard for Tyler and recommended that the Board award an honorary doctor of law degree to him, as well as to President Woodrow Wilson. The Board agreed, and the degrees were conferred in June.^[182]

The Board lost no time in searching for a replacement for Tyler. At the February meeting, the rector appointed a committee on the selection of a new president. Composed of Rector James H. Dillard, Henry J. Davis, Samuel W. Williams, and Fernando S. Farrar, this special committee reported on March 14. The Board went into executive session to hear the committee’s report and recommendation of Julian Alvin Carroll Chandler. In its regular session, the Board elected Chandler to the presidency at a salary of $5,000 a year—$2,000 more than Tyler had earned. In April the Board met again and voted down a resolution repealing the $5,000 salary. Chandler would be paid $5,000–$2,000 of which would come from interest on the College’s endowment fund.^[183]

Chandler then entered the meeting and accepted the presidency under a number of conditions: he was to have free occupancy of the President’s House and the surrounding grounds and outbuildings; repairs would be made to the residence and the stable converted to a garage. He could eat in the dining hall without charge—to better supervise the boarding department—and his wife and children could also eat there at a rate fixed by the Board. The administrative rules and regulations would have to be revised to give Chandler “proper latitude” in running the College.^[184] Chandler would be able to devote his full time and energy to administration because the Board had accepted Tyler’s suggestion and established an independent chair of political science, thus relieving the president of teaching in addition to running the College.^[185]

Chandler was a familiar figure to many connected with the College. He had graduated from William and Mary in 1891 and received a master of arts degree the next year. In 1896 he earned a doctor of philosophy degree from Johns Hopkins University. He was active among Richmond alumni of the College and was president of the Alumni Association. In 1909 he became superintendent of schools for Richmond, a post he was holding when chosen as president of William and Mary.^[186] The new president would bring sweeping changes to the ancient College—changes in mission, academic programs, faculty, and administrative style. He would oversee the great expansion of the student body and of the physical plant. Another era was about to begin and with it the emergence of the modern College.

Between 1888 and 1919, William and Mary had undergone a complete transformation. When Tyler arrived, the College, stripped of most of its lands and assets, had been closed for seven years. Few clung to any hope that it would ever recover. Similarly, Tyler described Williamsburg as stagnant and depressed, still showing the effects of the ravages of the Civil War. He had heard the town characterized as “a graveyard, where moss grew on the houses and where, because of the pestilential climate, the main occupation of the people consisted of burying the dead.”^[187] By the time Tyler retired in 1919, the College had become a state-owned, coeducational institution, granting four-year collegiate degrees and vocational diplomas. Its future was secure, for the first time in its history. Williamsburg itself enjoyed a similar reawakening. Its population had grown, and renewed confidence led to an upturn in construction of housing, businesses, and amenities.

Under Tyler’s guiding hand, entrance and degree requirements had become stricter and more standardized. The curriculum had evolved from the old classic collegiate course, with its heavy emphasis on ancient languages and moral philosophy, to a modern four-year liberal arts program resulting in the degrees of either bachelor of arts or science. Further study could lead to a master of arts degree. Simultaneously, the new and untried teacher-training mission put William and Mary in the vanguard of preparing white males to teach in the public schools. There was no precedent for such a program in Virginia and little in the South. The success of both missions did, however, begin an uncertainty about the College’s main purpose: was it a liberal arts college or a vocational school? This uncertainty persisted for many years.

About half of the students took advantage of the free tuition offered by the state in exchange for pledging to teach for two years in the public schools. Enrollment had grown from 102 students in 1888 to a high of 244 in 1906, then held fairly steady at about 208 until World War I threatened to decimate the College’s ranks. To ensure the continuing operations of the institution, in 1918 Tyler arranged for a unit of the Students’ Army Training Corps on campus and had successfully campaigned to admit women to the College.

Singularly blessed by the caliber and dedication of its original faculty of the Seven Wise Men, the College continued to attract well-trained men with modern teaching ideas to its faculty. In 1888 six professors, including the president, had taught all classes. The seventh professor arrived in 1892. As the curriculum expanded and diversified, so, too, did the need for more professors, and by 1918–19, fourteen professors handled the teaching demands.

Along with the growth of the student body and the faculty, the physical facilities of the College expanded. When Tyler arrived, the College’s property consisted of the main campus, a small amount of land on the south side of Jamestown Road, and the Mattey School property—a total of seventeen acres. Tyler aggressively pushed for expansion of these holdings, especially by purchasing land to enlarge the south campus and by acquiring the Bright tract to the west. When he left the presidency, the College owned about fifty acres. Similarly, the number of buildings increased significantly. In 1888 there were five: the Main Building, the President’s House, the Brafferton, the College Hotel, and the Mattey School. During the ensuing years, the College added an infirmary, Taliaferro dormitory, the gymnasium, the science hall, the library, the dining hall, and Tyler dormitory—for a total of twelve major College buildings. In addition, the College boasted of a new and modern utilities system.

These changes could take place because of the College’s improving financial condition. Collecting $10,000 of the Mayo debt in 1889 and receiving the reparation of $64,000 from the federal government for Civil War damages four years later enabled the College to erase its debts and build up its endowment. Tyler had moderate success with fund-raising from private donors. Among the largest gifts were $6,000 for the gymnasium, $20,000 from the Carnegie Foundation for the library, and $10,000 from George C. Batcheller as part of the required matching funds. Appropriations from the state of Virginia provided most of the College’s operating money. After battling two major threats to the College’s appropriations—the Retrenchment and Reform movement of 1898 and the constitutional convention of 1901–1902—Tyler led the drive for increases in the annuity, which rose from $10,000 in 1888 to $54,500 in 1918. During the years after William and Mary became a state college in 1906, the legislature awarded over $90,000 for building projects. Another sign of the College’s improved financial stability was the growth of the endowment fund from $20,000 to $154,000.

Hand in hand with Tyler in running the College went the Board of Visitors. After the confusion of the dual boards created by the act of 1888, the governing body became a single ten-man board appointed by the governor in 1906. Generally a competent, dedicated group, the old and new boards were led by such stalwarts as General William B. Taliaferro, Colonel William Lamb, James N. Stubbs, John W. Lawson, and Robert Morton Hughes. In spite of Tyler’s supersensitivity to Board criticism and personality clashes between Tyler and several Visitors, especially Hughes, the president and the Board usually were able to work together in the College’s behalf.

As the College grew larger and more complex, the organization of several important bodies was modernized. Under a dean, the faculty delegated routine matters to an assortment of standing committees and disciplinary problems to the new Student Council. The administration became slightly larger with specific duties for officers. By adopting bylaws and by clearly defining their own duties and those of the College’s officers and faculty, the Board of Visitors became more businesslike and efficient.

The events of Tyler’s administration with the most far-reaching consequences were turning over the College to state ownership in 1906 and admitting women in 1918. With the former came permanency and financial security. With the latter came the potential for great expansion of enrollment, curriculum, buildings, and appropriations, as well as the distinction of becoming the first state college to offer a four-year degree program for women. Tyler had assumed an active leadership role in bringing about both of these significant changes.

In addition to his whirlwind activities in administering the College and carrying a full teaching load, Tyler continued his own scholarly interests in history and genealogy. Especially important for the College was Tyler’s founding the William and Mary College Quarterly—the first historical journal in Virginia and the precursor of the modern William and Mary Quarterly. In recognition of Tyler’s achievements, four institutions awarded him honorary degrees.

To Tyler must go the major part of the credit for reviving William and Mary.^[188] With a dogged determination, Tyler had taken the defunct College, guided it through numerous crises, and left it secure as one of Virginia’s leading educational institutions. The energetic, multifaceted president—he was administrator, teacher, scholar, writer, fund-raiser, and political and educational activist—demonstrated an innovative willingness to experiment with the College’s mission, the curriculum, and the composition of the student body. His administration was a transition between the old classical liberal arts College and the modern four-year, coeducational institution. Above all, Tyler had breathed life into the moribund school and had instilled a will to survive in the whole College community.