Sweet Briar College

By Lynn Rainville and Lisa N. Johnston

On October 29, 1900, Indiana Fletcher Williams died, leaving her 8,000-acre plantation estate and almost $1 million to create the Sweet Briar Institute.

Later renamed Sweet Briar College, it was founded by Williams to honor her daughter, Maria Georgiana "Daisy" Williams, who died tragically in 1884 at age 16. For over a century, Sweet Briar has recruited dedicated faculty and staff to teach exceptional students. The school's award-winning lands include old-growth forests, rare arboreal and floral species, scenic hiking and riding trails, and two lakes. Complementing these natural resources are beautiful campus buildings, many of which are listed in national and state historic registers. Each of these features is rare for a college campus; taken together, they compose the rich physical and community heritage of a historic college that celebrates its 115th birthday in 2016

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Dec 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781439654163

Lynn Rainville

Lynn Rainville is Director of Institutional History and Professor of Anthropology at Washington and Lee University and former Dean of Sweet Briar College.. For over two decades she has studied the lives of exceptional, yet overlooked, Americans. This work has been supported by numerous grants and she has written five books (on Mesopotamian houses, African American cemeteries, Sweet Briar College, and Virginia’s role in World War I). She directs the Tusculum Institute for local history and historic preservation at Sweet Briar College.

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INTRODUCTION

From its inception, Sweet Briar College has been run by passionate and determined individuals who believed in Indiana Fletcher Williams’s vision to establish a school for women in rural Virginia. This book charts the history of the dedicated college employees, passionate faculty, and inspirational students. This special group of individuals has worked tirelessly to keep Williams’s dream alive into the 21st century.

Indiana Fletcher was one of four surviving children born to Elijah Fletcher and Maria Antoinette Crawford. Her parents met in New Glasgow, Virginia, where Elijah taught young women Latin. After their marriage in 1813, the Fletchers moved to nearby Lynchburg, Virginia, and 10 years later, started their family. Indiana was encouraged to read books, learn musical instruments, speak foreign languages, and, as she got older, travel the world. She returned from one of these trips to settle on the Sweet Briar Plantation, then owned by her father. When he died in 1858, she took over the responsibility of managing this large Southern plantation. At the end of the Civil War, she married an Irishman who had immigrated to New York City with his family decades earlier. They split their time between the Virginian farm and New York. In 1867, Indiana gave birth to her one and only child, Maria Georgiana Williams, nicknamed Daisy. Daisy followed in her mother’s educated footsteps, learning French, Italian, and German, going to the theater and concerts in New York City, and studying a wide range of subjects at private boarding schools. Unfortunately, she suffered from an undiagnosed disease that she inherited from her father. This tragic condition, alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, causes weakness in the lungs and often results in emphysema, asthma, and liver disease. A careful reading of Daisy Williams’s diaries reveals that she was often sick with a cold and regularly visited doctors. In the 19th century, there was no known cure for the disease, and she died in 1884 at the age of 16. Indiana’s husband died from the same condition three years later at 58 years old. Left a widow, she took her husband’s last wishes to heart; he hoped that she would find a way to honor the memory of their daughter by establishing a school. Decades earlier, Indiana’s father had sent both of his daughters to attend private schools in the North, concluding, A girl will be more respected with an education than with wealth.

On October 29, 1900, Indiana Fletcher Williams died, leaving her 8,000-acre plantation estate and over $500,000 to create the Sweet Briar Institute, later renamed Sweet Briar College. Indiana founded the institution to honor her daughter: This bequest, devise and foundation are made in fulfillment of my own desire, and of the especial request of my late husband, James Henry Williams, solemnly conveyed to me by his last will and testament, for the establishment of a perpetual memorial of our deceased daughter, Daisy Williams. In her will, she names four trustees to carry out her wishes. They created a seven-member board of directors and added additional members to create a larger board of overseers in 1927. In this book, the term trustees will be used for consistency to refer to members of these two groups.

Reading through old newspaper articles, alumnae magazine announcements, and college promotional materials, it becomes apparent Sweet Briar College has faced and surmounted adversity ever since its inception. For starters, it was no small feat to open a college for women in the early 20th century. Although dozens of institutions of higher education for women had opened by 1900, it was still 18 years before women would get the vote, and many Americans believed that advanced degrees were unnecessary for the fairer sex.

The effort to create the college almost ended with the death with its founder. When Indiana Fletcher Williams died, her will was misplaced and not located until the next day, when her housekeeper reached for fresh linens and an envelope fell out of a wicker basket. This was Indiana’s last will and testament. Her nieces and nephews were dismayed to learn that they were not mentioned in the will and threatened to contest it. The Town of Amherst began proceedings to collect past due monies on land taxes. And there were disagreements among the men that Indiana selected as college trustees on the form and design of the new college. Yet the college rose from the former plantation lands, brick by brick, with a campus designed by a national architect.

The college has always aspired to attract and influence a wide swath of society, not just wealthy Southern women. The March 10, 1901, issue of the Richmond Times announces A Great and Noble Gift by a Great and Noble Woman, with a subheading that reads, The endowment of Sweetbrier Institute to Have a Marked Influence on Southern Culture. This ambitious goal has been typical of Sweet Briar’s 14 decades of existence: training women to be leaders in diverse fields and emphasizing a liberal arts education based on the highest standards.

Despite this admirable mission, the college has often struggled to meet its financial goals, especially during the years when it undertook large construction projects. In 1983, Pres. Nenah Fry encouraged the college to focus on prudent financial management while cautioning against complacency, observing that the times are not congenial for small institutions; enrollment must be our unremitting concern, as well as increased endowment. We must remain watchful stewards of our College’s resources, but always remember for what purpose we undertake that stewardship. This speech could have been given in 1913 or 2013.

Despite these monetary hurdles, the college has always risen to the challenge of balancing its financial obligations with offering a first-rate education to its students. At Sweet Briar’s 50th anniversary, a pamphlet titled Giving Plea argued that the then modest endowment produced a miraculously high quality of education given its small sum of roughly $1 million. The fundraising campaign urged alumnae to double the endowment in order to maintain outstanding teachers, increase student scholarships, and contribute toward the annual operating budget. This plea was echoed decade after decade. Alongside the 1955 fundraising request, the college argued that it needed a new auditorium and fine arts building, another dormitory, and