Cottey -- a pioneer for a town and for a cause

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

By Patrick Brophy

Nevada Daily Mail

Certainly she was a pioneer -- a memorable and influential one -- in the eyes of her adoptive hometown. But that she was a pioneer in the larger sense we can appreciate only by reminding ourselves just how comparatively recent is the coming-of-age of her field.

"Schools are opening up again," her father remarked after the Civil War. "They need teachers, and are even asking for women teachers. Can you imagine that?" She could imagine it. Her heroine was Mary Lyon, whose Mt. Holyoke was "the oldest institution for higher education for women in the U.S." -- yet it had opened only in 1837. Vassar itself would still be a "pioneering" place, just 19 years old, when her own "Vassar of the West," as it was proudly called, welcomed its first students in Nevada in 1884.

Virginia Alice Cottey, always "Alice" or "Allie" to family and friends, was born in Knox County, in northeast Missouri, in 1848, one of nine children of staunchly Methodist Kentucky-born parents. Biographies often generously term the school the work of "the Cottey sisters;" but that Virginia Alice was "the Founder," the guiding spirit for 50 years, the very soul of the place, none, certainly not the sisters themselves, would ever have denied.

It's striking how meager were the educational preparations, even in the educational field itself, of many a pioneering achiever.

One's left wondering if formal qualifications are really as important after all as we make them out, and why such individuals often obsess about schooling for others. Likely they sense that self-education is for the unique few.

Alice Cottey spent only a year and a half in schools (primitive ones at that) as a pupil, and would boast no degree, not even a diploma or equivalent, until a small college awarded her an honorary doctorate at age 82. She taught herself French, German, Latin, and higher mathematics while teaching simpler things to others, starting with her own siblings at home. Her teaching talents must have been obvious, since she swiftly moved up from local one-room schoolhouses to a two-year position at Richmond Female College, in Richmond, Mo., then in 1876 to eight years at Central Female College, in Lexington, Mo.

By that time she'd saved $3,000. Sisters Dora and Mary, who were literally following in her footsteps, between them had $3,500. With this material endowment as dauntingly modest as their educational one, they concluded the time had come to realize Alice's lifelong dream: However scant their own schooling, they said, "We will have a school."
Locations as far away as Fort Worth were considered, but the choice soon fell on Nevada, a small but growing Southwest Missouri town with convenient railroad connections, though educationally still pretty much virgin territory. Nevada had had public elementary schooling only since 1872, a high school only since 1876, both still under one roof. Lulu Elliott's small private school for boys and girls, opened in her modest home in 1884, just as Alice was arriving with her dream, was actually looked on as serious, perhaps fatal competition! (Schooling was then only loosely divided by ages or subjects. Cottey itself would for a time offer grades "K-through-12," as we'd now say, along with preparatory, collegiate, and commercial courses.)

Meeting with Mayor Harry C. Moore and other town fathers, "Miss Cottey and Miss Dora Cottey" (as it was then put to distinguish an elder sister) offered to found and operate a school for young ladies, if suitable ground could be donated. At last, tired of the increasingly fruitless ensuing palaver, developer W.W. Prewitt donated a block of weedy cornfield on Nevada's then western outskirts; others joined forces to donate an adjoining second block.

The sisters' savings swiftly evaporated into a brick building of two stories and basement, small and plain but planned very much with future additions in mind. Somehow, living quarters were squeezed in for 18 boarding pupils and faculty and other staff, plus classrooms adequate for a total first-year enrollment of 72. The building would expand almost year by year, but crowding would long remain nearly as chronic a problem as finding the money.

Alice sought to show her gratitude for the gift of land by modestly naming the new school "Vernon Seminary." But to Nevadans it was from the first just "the Cottey girls' school." Alice gave in. As early as the 1886-87 catalog, it was officially "Cottey College."

The school's personality mirrored its founder's. Even in a sternly pious age Alice Cottey stands out, at least in the eyes of a looser later time, as oppressively strait-laced and strict, uncompromisingly opposed not just to obvious vices such as drink but to cards, dance, theater (when at last pupils were allowed to put on Shakespeare, girls playing male roles still had to wear skirts!), and any sort of frivolity, above all on Sundays, when faculty marched the student body to church with almost military discipline. Thrice-daily prayers were compulsory. Each pupil (and teacher) was expected to do her share of the most menial communal upkeep chores, in a building lacking plumbing, electricity, and central heat, as well as keep her own shared room neat and clean, plus make and care for her own elaborate uniform, easily-soiled pastel for summer and black for winter.

Contact with the opposite sex was as unthinkable as in a convent. A girl who somehow actually managed to meet a male was told that her belongings had already been packed, she could take herself straight to the depot, back to her desolated parents!

But all this was as much simply "the times" as it was Alice Cottey. Though Alice comes across as the typical self-denying Victorian maiden lady, she insisted she'd been plagued by beaux in her youth, and had even rejected offers of marriage.

And indeed in 1890, at the ripe age of 42, she accepted the somewhat austere proposal of Samuel Stockard, a traveling man, a widower who'd more or less permanently parked not merely his daughter Kate but his two sons on Cottey and Alice.

Predictably Alice's waxing love for the children grew to include their father, who graciously conceded first place in his wife's life to her school, and soon settled down to doing his own bit on its behalf.

Alice adopted a curriculum "considered adequate for the education of women" in 1884, encompassing "primary grades through college." Sewing and other domestic arts were stressed; yet the "college course" offered "truly an ambitious program for such a small faculty": Latin, French or German, trigonometry, chemistry, English literature, astronomy, and mental and moral philosophy, plus a "normal" class for prospective teachers. The graduate received the degree of "Mistress of Literature," and afterwards of "Art."

(It would be years before an organized statewide accreditation system led to more familiar, regularized degrees.)

Cottey's longtime reputation for musical excellence had its beginning in 1895 when Alice secured the pricey services of French-born Dr. Edouard Blitz and his American-born wife, who'd both studied and made their musical marks in Europe. They were the first in a continuing parade of European faculty lured to Cottey in a day when the practice was rare.

Alice had conceived the idea of paying for building additions and other improvements by "selling scholarships" locally at a discount, offering bargain schooling to Nevada girls and beginning a Cottey tradition of "opening the doors to education for the student with capabilities but little cash." Early on, daughters of ministers were admitted free, and soon orphans and girls studying for the mission field (Alice's other passion) were added.

Many Nevadans are still inflexibly convinced all Cottey girls come from rich families; yet as the new millennium dawns the majority attend on scholarships, more or less bringing Alice's early ideal full circle.

Alice's efforts to provide for the future of her school after her own time began as early as 1907. Through a board of trustees, all local leaders or men (no women!) prominent in the Methodist Church, articles of incorporation were drawn up, and a charter received that same year from Missouri's Secretary of State.

School operations were unaffected. The board met merely to rubber-stamp decisions and actions already taken by Alice. A male president hired in 1920 proved unsatisfactory -- at least to Alice! The setup's flaws grew more obvious as Alice grew older.

The board meekly voted itself out of existence and deeded the school back to Alice in 1926, when she settled on her old idea of offering it to her beloved Methodist Church.

But the church was in the throes of consolidating or even closing its several colleges. Alice fretted that Cottey's future wouldn't be as assured in the church's hands as she'd expected.

Fortuitously, her approach had sort of gotten lost for a year in the church's bureaucracy. Alice withdrew the offer and soldiered on, alone.

In 1926 she'd joined the local chapter of the PEO Sisterhood, and was soon struck by the similarity of the group's ideals to Cottey's. (Even their colors were the same, yellow and white, and their flower, the marguerite, or ox-eye daisy.)

At the 1929 PEO convention, Alice formally made her offer. At first some PEO's feared they might be taking on too daunting an obligation; but enthusiasm built, and the decision to accept, when it came, was unanimous. Cottey would be the only college owned and operated by a women's organization.

Alice was at last able slowly to back off, for the first time in her life to travel, or just take things easier, with the title President Emeritus.

She saw the 1938 construction of PEO Hall, in which living quarters were arranged in "suites," with girls paired in bedrooms around a shared sitting room, a tradition still unique to Cottey.

Many schools have owed their all to one person; but assuredly no college ever owed more than Cottey (not even mentioning the town of Nevada, or the cause of women's education) owes to the memory of Virginia Alice Cottey Stockard.

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