First Faculty
This article describes the members of the first faculty. Most of the sketches were written by the teachers themselves. This and other articles may be found in the University Archives.
Citation for this article is: "First Faculty" The Teco Echo, March 5, 1932.
Top row from left to right
Miss Lewis, Mr. Ragsdale, Miss McKenney, Miss Davis
Middle row - Miss Graham, Miss Jenkins, Mr. Austin
Bottom row - Mr. Wilson, Mrs. Ogborn, Mrs. Bishop HATS OFF
Mr. M.L. Wright once wrote a short aricle named the "American Boy," in which he said, "I take off my hat to the American Boy." The students at this institution today wish to change that expression and say "I take off my hat to the six members of the original faculty that are still teaching here!"
While delving into past volumes of the Teco Echo , I suddenly came to an issue in which I found a short biographical sketch of Dr. Wright, Miss Jenkins, Miss Davis and Miss Graham. So keenly did I enjoy this sketch of early history of these teachers that I at once decided to pass it on to you through this issue of the Teco Echo.
Missing Miss Lewis' name and knowing she was among the first faculty, I immediately gathered the high spots of her life and am likewise passing it on to you.Another name that we are particularly interested in today was missing, Dr. Meadows, who became a member of the faculty here for the first summer session. Dr. Meadows also consented to tell the high lights of his life.
If you wish to spend a few moments of your time in delightful retrospection of the first original teachers that are still with us, I urge you to read these sketches.
If a few terms are out of date, remember that all but two were written four years ago.
President Robert H. Wright
Robert Herring Wright, President of East Carolina Teachers College was born in Parkersburg, Sampson County, North Carolina. He attended public and subscription schools and Oak Ridge Institute before he went to the University of North Carolina, where he got his B.S. degree in 1897. He attended Johns Hopkins University in 1901-02.Mr. Wright taught in the public schools of North Carolina and South Carolina from 1891 to 1894 and at Oak Ridge Institute several years after that. He was head of the department of history in Baltimore City College from 1903 to 1906 and was principal of Eastern High School, Baltimore from 1906-1909. He was made President of East Carolina Teachers College when it was established in 1909, and the college has grown rapidly under his administration. uring the last few years, it has been made a member of the American Association of Teachers Colleges and a member of the Association of Colleges and Secondary schools of the Southern States.
Mr. Wright is fond of fishing and golf, and when in college he was a football star. The following description of Mr. Wright as a football player was written by a man who was his classmate at the University of North Carolina.
Bob Wright, of the teams of 1895 and 1896, was six feet four inches tall, weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds and much the build of Guion, but was a little longer and a little more rangy. He was strong and quick and used his long arms to perfection in keeping an end from boxing him and lift him out for an opening. Wright's long arms would reach over and a hand on a canvass jacket was a sure tackle when it was Wright's fingers that closed upon it. He was never used much in carrying the ball, but when he did run he was apt to bring a gain to his team. He played football as seriously as he thought and lived and studied. It was not play to him, but work and he studied and thought over it. Every movement he made every step he took, every ounce of exertion was for a particular purpose. I have never seen him smile in a game; he was always too busy for that.
Mamie E. Jenkins
I, Mamie E. Jenkins, was born in a Methodist parsonage, and like the famous umbrella, "raised everywhere" -- a North Carolinian, from the state-at-large, Currituck to Cherokee.The itinerant spirit, still strong, crops out periodically, in the annual tour to Washington or wild goose chases from Canada to British Honduras, or just rolling along North Carolina's good roads. "Go" was the first verb learned. "I am going to Europe two years from now." Whenever the formula changed to "one year," a disaster follows, such as the world war or the breaking of a bank or a bone.
Fate has made me a kind of pioneer. One of North Carolina's first kindergarteners experimented with me at three. I was so fascinated with the projecting around with collections, pictures and scrapbooks, I could not be induced to leave the kindergarten. She used me to demonstrate to a skeptical public the new-fangled theory that a child that did not know her letters could learn to read.
I was one of the first four girls to break into a North Carolina boys' college and earn an A.B. degree from Trinity College, which entitles me to a place among the Duke Alumnae, Incidentally, it also makes me partly responsible for the woman problem there and the co-educational college. I was in the first faculty at East Carolina Teachers College.
Since getting my M.A. degree from Columbia University, I have been back in the summer and for a full year to get other courses at Teachers Collge. I wanted to work here. I have browsed around during the summers, once at the University of Wisconsin.
My fingers stained early. I learned to spell by putting together type and seeing words come out. The owner of the printing press promoted me by making me everything on the staff from the printer's devil to associate editor of what was then the smallest weekly in the world.
An early shock to my vanity doubtless changed my whole career. The ugliest man in his country, a great uncle, looked at me with pity, shook his head and muttered, "the family beauty is playing out." I looked at him and realized that, if we had been going down grade two generations after him, my face could never be my fortune. Recently my self esteem was restored by the assurance that I have one claim to beauty, although it is hidden. A specialist said I had the prettiest eardrum he had seen in many a day.
Sallie Joyner Davis
Miss Sallie Joyner Davis, a native of Wayne County received her early training in the Goldsboro City Schools. She spent one year at Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, Virginia; later she graduated at the North Carolina College for Women. She did her graduate work at Trinity College, Durham, N.C., University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California. She taught in Greensboro City Schools, Greensboro College for Women, and was a charter member of the East Carolina Teachers College Faculty.Miss Davis has traveled widely in America and Europe. Her home which she built and called "shingled blessedness," she later exchanged for a lodge in the vast wilderness of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The "keenest regret of my life" she states was "that my husband died in his infancy." Her keenest joy is prodding D's through Hisotry V, and her greatest achievement is horse-back riding.
Maria D. Graham
I was born in Fork Township, Warren County, where my father and mother, both native Tar Heels, settled when they were first married. My father was then a school teacher and continued to teach in Warren County for fifty years.Our family of Grahams has given to North Carolina more teachers perhaps than any other one family in the State.
My ancestors on both sides were fighting stock, and each of us children is a fighter; each is an independent thinker, and has been taught to fight for principle rather than for popularity. My ancestors were not politicians in the usual sense of the term, but shared in all civic and political responsibilities.
All of my life has been spent in the state except two years of childhood, my first two years as a teacher, and the several years I spent in college.
My college career began a few days before my sixteenth birthday in Nashville, Tennessee at "Old Peabody." After several years of teaching experience, I went to Teachers College, Columbia University, where I sat at the feet of Dr. David E. Smith and Dr. Naomi Norsworthy and others. I received my B.S. degree and bachelor's diploma in Mathematics at the end of two years. Since that time I have attended summer school four different summers and spent the year 1923-25 at Teachers College again, when I received my M.A. degree. My first two years of teaching were in a one-room school in Shelby County, Tennessee, under a woman county superintendent, the aunt of Miss Charles Williams of N.E.A. fame.
I then came home and taught English, Greek, Science, and Mathematics in my father's high school. I taught mathematics in the Goldsboro High School the year before I came to Greenville. I have been connected with this institution since its establishment in 1909.
The one big trip of my life was in 1914 when I went to San Francisco by way of Kansas City, Denver, Yellowstone Park, Pikes Peak, Los Angeles and returned by way of Oregon, Washington and the Canadian Rockies.
My avocation has had two phases: one of a religious nature, the other of an athletic or outdoor nature. For thirteen years here in the college I was chairman of the advisory committee of the YWCA. Several hours each week were given to this work and what a joy it was! The "sunshine garden" the Blue Ridge fund, World Fellowship work, the Y Store, all had their beginnings in those days. The store, a suggestion of mine, came into being to serve the girls "first" to make money, "second." Our chief sources of revenue for the Blue Ridge fund were the May Day parade, carnival, etc., picking strawberries, making curtains for the dormitories, and selling ice cream out under the trees.
Having had two brothers and having been brought up with a crowd of boys, I was ever fond of outdoor sports. I rode horse-back, played base ball, croquet, and tennis. In the early days of college I coached the tennis players and directed the annual tennis tournament. Once when the students challenged the women faculty members for a game in tennis, Miss MacFayden and I accepted the challenge and won. The surgeon's knife and the counsel that followed its application caused me to give away my tennis racket and be content with raising ferns in my class room and sweet peas, and nasturtiums outside.
Miss Kate W. Lewis
Miss Kate W. Lewis was born in Halifax County, near Danville, Va. After graduating from Peace Institute, Raleigh, North Carolina, she began teaching in Henderson, Goldsboro and Greenville, North Carolina.She has also graduated from Suen-Froehlich Industrial School of Art in Chicago and from the Borthbay Studio School of Art.
Her summers she spends in going to school. She has attended many in Chicago, at the University of North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia for example.
Miss Lewis declared that she knows nothing about her life that would be interesting to others. To illustrate, she related an incident that occured while she was teaching in Goldsboro. The school superintendent asked all the teachers to plan an interesting exhibit to be sent away. She told him that she did not have anything to send, and knew of nothing she could plan to send. He answered her, and she learned that she was the only teacher that had complained and was likewise the only teacher who had something to be packed. Imagine her astonishment! He was referring to quarterlies that her classes made each term. The pupils exchanged post cards with people from all parts of the world. Then they studied the types of cards, how long a time was required for a card to reach them from the sender and other interesting topics. These cards and what was learned from them were put together in books or quarterlies. And Miss Lewis thought she had nothing interesting for an exhibition.
Dr. Meadows
I was born in LaFayette, Alabama, in the year one; I was the youngest of fourteen children. My father was a school teacher. When I was two and a half years old my people moved to Haynesville, Louisiana, where I grew up on a large farm. A one-teacher rural school, plus my father's library, furnished the background for my life's work. In addition to this training, I sat in class at Peabody, Baylor, Yale and Columbia for seven years. One year in the Crockett Texas High School and twenty-two years at East Carolina Teachers College constitute my teaching experience. I was in the United States Army from August 1917 to September 1919, but did not go overseas.Hunting is my choice of out-door sports; homelife and my library furnish me the greatest amount of pleasure; my hobby, which is probably not a good one, is never to be absolutely idle; my chief ambition is to become a good teacher.
