The concept for Texas Woman’s University dates back more than one hundred twenty years. An article from March 24, 1897 in the Bryan Eagle, Bryan, Texas referenced a Dr. Ellen Lawson Dabbs (there shown as “Dobbs”) who advocated for the creation of a Girl’s Industrial College to be located in Bryan with the only stated opposition coming from a Mrs. Stoddard of Waco who favored that the location of the proposed school would be in Waco. Proponents of the Bryan site favored the location there in association with “A. and M. College” (now Texas A&M University) which was already in operation there, and served only male students. The female school was to be an annex to the existing college. Dr. Dabbs was quoted as saying, “The bill we wish is the only one having the ghost of a chance. This legislature is pledged to retrenchment and cannot afford to appropriate hundreds of thousands of dollars, even if Mrs. Stoddard does permit it to go to Waco. That same bait was offered to me that it might come to Ft. Worth if the Woman’s Council would work for it, but I am not out on this as a local matter. I do not regard public funds as a private snap or even a town snap. I am working for Texas girls and the best interests of all concerned, and through you I beg all our people, men and women, to write their representatives at Austin and urge their support of this measure to open the Agricultural and Mechanical College to girls.”
A national movement sponsored by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), a national organization, along with several Texas groups for the creation of educational facilities for Texas women. The WCTU was officially founded in 1874 as a social reform group to promote temperance, women’s issues including voting rights and other related matters. It is still in existence as a not for profit organization.
Dr. Dabbs was a native Texan, born in Rusk in 1853. She was well educated and earned a medical degree after she was an adult. She practiced medicine in several Texas towns. Dr. Dabbs was active in women’s issues and was influential in a group known as the Woman’s Congress, formed around the time of the 1893 Texas state fair in Dallas. Dr. Dabbs was named as the chair of a committee organizing the next meeting that was to be held in 1894 at the fair. A newspaper article in the Perry (Oklahoma) Enterprise on September 28, 1894, gave this description of the group: “It is non-sectarian, non-political and committed to no doctrine or belief. Its aim is to bring into closer relation through an organic union the various associations of women in Texas, whether literary, education, scientific, musical, philanthropic or of a reformatory nature.” She was influential in the promotion of women’s education and the new college the groups were trying to promote.
An equally strong proponent for the establishment of a woman’s college was Helen M. Gerrells Stoddard. Like Dr. Dabbs, she was a prohibition advocate and member of the WCTU. Mrs. Stoddard was born in Wisconsin in 1850. Unlike Dr. Dabbs, her education was geared toward her becoming a teacher. She graduated from a seminary in New York in 1871 and married S. D. Stoddard in 1873. The couple moved several times and were living in Florida when Mr. Stoddard died in 1878. After one move to the midwest, she moved to Texas where her parents had resettled and lived there for the rest of her working career.
The Austin American-Statesman in its issue of March 8, 1899 noted that a petition signed by 1,112 women of Texas asking for a girls’ industrial school. Different cities lobbied to host the proposed school, including Waco, again, and Greenville. In 1901, the institution was approved by the 27th Texas Legislature. The bill was signed by Governor Joseph D. Sayers on April 23, 1901 to create such an institution. It was designed to be a counterpart to A&M College and to maintain curricula that would enable women students to obtain an education in a wide variety of liberal arts and career fields. On February 20, 1902, Governor Sayers appointed the following individuals to constitute the first board of regents of the school (initially named Texas Industrial Institute and College for the education of White Girls in the Arts and Sciences). They were: A. P. Wooldridge, Mrs. Helen M. Stoddard, Clarence N. Ousley, Mrs. Birdie Robertson, V. W. Grubbs, Eleanor Brackenridge and John Hann. Their first meeting was to be held April 2, 1902. Due to the support of public spirited individuals who had raised an offered a $30,000 cash bonus, on its 76th ballot the commission charged with selecting the location chose Denton as the most desirable site.
Dates of significant events: The school opened later in 1902 with a faculty of 14 and a student body of 186. The name was soon shortened to to Girls Industrial College in 1903 and was once again changed to College of Industrial Arts in 1905.The school offered its first four-year college curriculum in 1914, and the first bachelor’s degrees were awarded in 1915. The name was changed once more in 1934 to Texas State College for Women. It continued under that name until 1957 when Governor Price Daniel signed the bill changing the name to Texas Woman’s University. The school admitted its first African-American student in 1961 and opened its enrollment to men in 1994. Despite the latter change, the student body has always remained overwhelmingly female. In addition to Denton, it now has campuses in Dallas and Houston in the medical districts. Current enrollment is around 16,000 students, roughly 2/3 undergraduate level and 1/3 graduate level and is about 88% female.
A beloved landmark is a small campus building constructed in the late 1930s called the Little Chapel-in-the-Woods. The building was dedicated in 1939. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt participated in the dedication ceremony and closed her remarks by saying that she hoped that the structure could be a blessing to the students. Since that time, it has been the site of countless weddings, memorial services and other events. The building had been in continuous use for over sixty years when it was renovated in time to celebrate the school’s centennial in 2003. Another revered landmark is the pioneer woman statue, nicknamed “Minerva,” which has a long and interesting story of its own. It was designed by sculptor Leo Friedlander and was unveiled in 1936.
Finally, John Philip Sousa, the famous march king, composed “Daughters of Texas” in honor of the school. Sousa had brought his band on tour to a concert in Denton, Texas in the fall of 1928. The composer/conductor was asked by representatives of the College of Industrial Arts to view a petition signed by seventeen hundred students of the school that requested that Sousa compose a march for them. Sousa is said to have consented and requested that they send him some of their college songs to incorporate into the composition. In the end, Sousa came up with an original composition which, according to the United States Marine Band website, was originally named “Daughters of Denton” but came to be known as “Daughters of Texas.” Just short of one year later, completion of the work was announced in North Texas newspapers and in April of 1930 several lucky students received the first printed copies of the new march. It is now a regular part of the Sousa body of compositions.
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