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- Founding - Old
Sem - Name - Women
- First Graduates -
- King Chapel - Physical
Education - May Music Festivals
- OCAAT -
The first woman to receive a baccalaureate degree
in Iowa came from the first graduating class of Cornell College.
Mary Fellows, class of 1858, was one of two women in Cornell's mathematics
program and received her degree on Exhibition Day (someday this
would be called commencement), a daylong event that drew horses
and buggies from miles away in the frontier land.
At the time Fellows was making history, the railroad
had yet to cross the Mississippi and two-thirds of Iowa was still
wild prairie land. In that frontier land Fellows recalled the lack
of fruit and the abundance of meat. "We had meat three times a day,"
she recalled.
The other graduate of the class of 1858 was smitten
with Fellows. Matthew Cavanagh and Fellows married later that year.
Cavanagh went on to become a prominent Iowa City attorney and mayor
of the city. Fellows had taught at Waverly, Iowa, until she married
and became a homemaker. Fellows died in 1925 at age 87. Cavanagh
died two years later at 95.
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