Browse Items (13 total)
- Collection: The Presidential Papers
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Smallpox at Montevallo
This letter dated November 24th 1904 was sent by a parent of a student attending the Alabama Girls Industrial School, now called the University of Montevallo. This letter is a response by a parent having been notified of a smallpox outbreak at the…
School Tuition in 1900 & 1903
The Alabama Girls Industrial School empowered women through education. Although classes offered in the early 1900s reflected what society deemed appropriate and useful at the time, the promotion of higher education for women is one proud heritage for…
President Reynolds with his Faculty
The Alabama Girls’ Industrial School opened in 1896 with a faculty of six (five women and one man) and a student body of 145. During Reynolds' three years as president, he acquired 25,000 acres of public land from Congress and built the first…
President Palmer Improves Campus Safety
One important thing President Palmer did during his tenure as president was to address several safety issues that acquired a sense of urgency in the wake of a 1908 fire in Main Hall that tragically killed a student named Condie Cunningham. This…
Permission to Leave Campus
The independent freedoms that students enjoy today at the University of Montevallo are quite different than the freedoms during the 1904 era. The school, then called the Alabama Girls Industrial School, required students to remain on campus unless…
Kenney Flushometer System
In the December 1899, University of Montevallo (then called Alabama Girls Industrial School) President Francis Peterson received a letter from the Ahrens and Ott manufacturing company. This company sent a brochure to Peterson of the items that they…
Ice Company Petitions President Peterson
During the late nineteenth century New England merchants dominated the global ice trade, shipping frozen water around the globe. The city of Montevallo received rail shipments of naturally harvested ice from northern firms through the port of Mobile,…
Fire Escapes and Water Tower Additions to Main Hall
President Palmer addresses the building committee and said he had already asked twice that the building committee approve a much needed water tower. In March, because of the tragic accident with Condie Cunningham, this time when President Palmer…
Dr. Thomas Waverly Palmer
Dr. Thomas Waverly Palmer (1860-1926) was the third president of the University of Montevallo, and one of its most influential. Having previously served as a Dean and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Alabama, he became president of the…
Dr. D. L. Wilkerson
Dr. D. L. Wilkerson was the physician responsible for the care of the students during an outbreak of smallpox at the Alabama Girls Industrial School which is now the University of Montevallo. Dr. Wilkerson served the Alabama Girls Industrial School…
Captain Henry Reynolds
Henry Clay Reynolds, first president of the Alabama Girls’ Industrial School, was not an educator, but rather an enthusiastic advocate for public education. A businessman and town notable, Reynolds lobbied for the state to build a school for girls in…
Acetylene Gas Machine
In 1899, the President of the University of Montevallo (then called Alabama Girls Industrial School) Francis Peterson was given an advertisement for an Acetylene Gas Machine from the Craig Reynolds Foundry Company.
This “illumination machine”…
This “illumination machine”…
A Faithful Horse
This short newspaper clipping humanizes President Palmer and shows us a softer side of the gargantuan figure who oversaw Montevallo for nearly two decades. This document, commemorating the death of Dr. Palmer's horse of twenty five years, Old…