Purdue News
A mother-daughter team
The University was fortunate to have her. A pioneer in agricultural education, Meredith
was in part responsible for establishing the field known as home economics.
Perhaps most important, she was part of a mother-daughter team that worked to place
the education of women on the same level as that of men.
Beginning in the 1880s with lectures by Meredith about the farm home and continuing
through the term of daughter Mary Matthews as professor and later dean of home economics,
the pair were true pioneers.
Meredith's involvement with the University began in 1889 as a speaker in the "farmers'
institutes" held throughout the state to educate farmers on the latest science and
technology in agriculture.
Meredith actually began traveling the lecture circuit in 1882, the year her husband,
Henry Meredith, died, leaving her a flourishing livestock ranch in eastern Indiana.
She immediately took over management of the farm and quickly found herself in great
demand speaking to breeders' conventions and farmers' groups.
Even though she commanded rapt attention recounting her successes on the 400-acre
Oakland Farm, Meredith knew that some of the most important work on the farm had
little to do with raising crops or breeding livestock. In fact, the activities she
viewed as the most important on the farm weren't going on in the barn and the fields. It was
the farm home that she viewed as the center of life.
"While she spoke occasionally on one or another phase of livestock husbandry, the
greater number of her addresses were on home-making," says a 1939 biographical sketch
of Meredith in the Indiana Magazine of History. "She was the first to dignify home-making by speaking of it as a profession and declaring it to be in every way as important
and honorable as the so-called learned
professions."
The origins of home economics education can be found in the farmers' institutes of
the late 19th century.
Meredith many years later would reflect on those early days, on her hopes for home
economics education and the role Purdue played: "Long before home economics became
a subject of instruction, farm women attended institutes and appropriated whatever
pertained to the farm home, the farm family and farm income," she wrote in an unpublished
history of Indiana agriculture completed in 1930. "So they were ready and eager to
hear those speakers who came later to discuss, first, domestic science and afterward
home economics."
Of Purdue, whose presidents frequently were petitioned by Meredith before home economics
study was introduced in 1905, she wrote: "Purdue University was somewhat slow in
developing a department of home economics."
According to the Indiana Magazine of History: "It was her dream to see at Purdue University
a department for the girls which would be what the agricultural department was for
the boys - a place where they could be fitted for their life work."
While the division between girls' and boys' work might seem a bit stark, keeping women
in their "place" was not what Meredith was about. She - and daughter Mary Matthews
- intended to elevate homemaking to the level of a profession. The early use of domestic science reveals this. Their intention was to apply scientific principles to the
home.
Meredith, an Indiana native and lifelong resident of the state, clearly hoped to found
a home economics school at Purdue. But the University of Minnesota asked first, in
1897. She was appointed "preceptress of the Girls School," and charged with establishing a home economics curriculum.
Although she frequently returned to Indiana to supervise her farm, she spent six years
in Minneapolis.
It was in 1905 when Purdue President Winthrop Stone introduced a new our-year course
of study and created the Department of Household Economics by writing: "Purdue should
offer to women opportunities comparable in scientific and technical value with those
enjoyed by men."
But not until 1926, five years after Meredith was appointed a Purdue trustee, did
a Purdue president proclaim what she had been waiting a long time to hear.
Edward Elliott, in the annual report for 1926, wrote that establishment of the new
School of Home Economics "will make possible the adjustment of the curriculum better
to suit the needs of the young women and will place the work in home economics on
the same basis as that of engineering and agriculture."
Virginia Meredith's desire to place the work of women, especially work in the home,
on the same plane as any work done by men or women outside the home was realized
with the founding of the School of Home Economics.
Meredith believed in home and hearth, in homemaking as a noble calling.
"Let us dignify our calling," she said in a lecture she often gave on the sanctity
and importance of home life. "Let us exalt our home on the farm by making it the
abode of intelligence, refinement and comfort - the abode of peace."
Beginning in 1890, when she was named "Queen of American Agriculture" after a speech
in Vicksburg, Miss., and continuing through 1930 when the state of Wisconsin honored
her for "eminent service" in agriculture, Virginia Meredith was praised again and
again for her work.
In addition to being an accomplished farmer, rancher, businesswoman, lecturer and
educator, she was for many years an editor of Breeders Gazette, a popular farming
magazine.
At the time of her death in 1936, President Elliott said of Meredith: "Thus comes
to an end a brilliant career of devoted service to the nation, the state, the University
and above all to the advancement of the place of women in our civilization. All who
had the privilege of working with her were constantly the beneficiaries of her kindly
and farsighted wisdom. She was an ideal trustee. The best of her life was built into
the University she loved so well."
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@purdue.edu
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