Our first yearbook, the 1899 Maconiana, was published just six years after the first classes began. It contains the following:
The
U.S. Commissioner of Education, in his official report, pages 1732-1733, names fourteen colleges for women
in the United States as entitled to rank in Division A—
1st. Randolph-Macon Woman's College is one of them.
2d. It is the only college south of the Potomac so classed.
3d. It is the youngest of all, but already ranks (in resources and numbers) eighth of the fourteen.
4th. Its course for A. B. demands 2,137 1/2 recitation hours after the New England entrance requirements
are satisfied. Wellesley demands 2,100, Vassar and Balto. Woman's College 1,980, Smith 1,750.
5th. It is a Southern college, where the Southern atmosphere is maintained and the Southern type of womanhood
is admired and perpetuated.
6th. It is the least expensive of the fourteen.
We fancy Randolph-Macon Woman's College is the very best on the face of the earth. It is for us.
We fancy that we have the best teachers and the nicest lot of girls, and the brightest, purest, best home-life to be found in any college.
Who says so?
WE say so.
Who are we? Who are we?
Girls of the R. M. W. C.
Who else says so?
EVERYBODY.
The 1899 yearbook also records statistics about the girls that year which make an interesting comparison with girls today:
Average height, five and a half feet.
Average size of shoe, No. 3 1/2.
Average size of collar, thirteen.
Average size of glove, six.
wenty-six per cent. wear braid or rats.
Sixty per cent. are engaged, but only five per cent. in love.
Fifty-five per cent. keep light after light-bell.
Thirty per cent. study on Sunday.
Forty per cent. attend social evening.
Seventy-eight per cent. dance.
Sixty-five per cent. play cards.
Twenty years average age.
Thirty-two per cent. wear glasses.
One hundred and thirty pounds average weight.
This information was taken from The Maconiana, Randolph-Macon Woman's College's first yearbook.
The Past Master,
additional articles about our history
Images
taken from student drawings in our earliest yearbooks
Frances E. Webb
Reference Librarian
Lipscomb Library
Randolph College
2500 Rivermont Avenue
Lynchburg, Virginia 24503
page last revised March 28, 2008
site graphics adapted by Frances E. Webb
from a drawing by Evelyn Dornin for the 1901 edition of the Helianthus
With thanks to
Kusum Singh, class of 2004
and
Andrea Yassemedis, class of 1999