What was Chatham like 100 years ago? We checked out the 1915 yearbook to find out.
1. Pennsylvania College for Women published its first yearbook in 1915. Named The Pennsylvanian, the book had a big purpose: “Our purpose was to show, to some degree, the regard in which our class held its alma mater and to embody some of the zeal for her advancement engendered in her daughters soon to leave her shelter.”
2. There were only 25 faculty members listed in The Pennsylvanian. Of those, only three were men.
3. Students still come to Chatham for the small class sizes, but they’re not nearly as small as they used to be. There were only 10 students in the Class of 1915.
4. We may have a Ukelele Club now, but PCW students used to rock out in Mandolin Club. Of the eighteen members, seven elected to play guitar: an exciting new development.
5. The Omega Society was a cross of the Minor Bird, Creative Writing Club and Beyond the Page Book Club. They studied the greats – Tolstoy and Ibsen – but they also celebrated students’ work at an annual meeting. The prize for the best short story? $5.
6. Students in 1915 took courses in many of the same subjects we do now: social service, French, economics and history included. There were slight variations in the liberal arts curriculum, though: students opted to take astronomy and explored classes in expression.
7. The ads in the yearbook were a bit different than ads you might see today. Advertisers included the Pittsburgh Ice Company, a stationery and engraving service, and Tettenborn Solid Porcelain Refrigerators. Of course, today’s debt-strapped students can still relate to The First National Bank’s ad: “Friends are always needed, but the only friend you can absolutely depend on at all times is a bank account.”
8. PCW inaugurated a new president in 1915: Dr. John Carey Acheson, formerly the President of what would become Kentucky College for Women. He served on the Board of Commissioners for a School of the Deaf and did years of charity work with the YMCA.
9. The President of the Board of Trustees, Oliver McClintock, graduated from Yale in 1861. He recalled that, at the time, all he had to do was wait three years and pay $5 to get his M.A. (an inexpensive investment after the Civil War). He joked, “My M.A., at five dollars, was not a successful investment, for having chosen a mercantile life, I never found any advantage in it, other than the enrichment of the college treasury to the extent of five dollars.”
10. Lorna Burleigh, a member of the Class of 2015, wrote a poem called “A Revery” in the yearbook. It ended with a toast:
“Drink, dear Friends, to life that’s more than seeming.
Drink to all we hope some day to be;
Joy and love and truth are not mere dreaming.
Friends are friends to all eternity!”