Location: Market St. at entrance to Greensboro College, Greensboro
County: Guilford
Original Date Cast: 2021
Lucy Henderson Owen Robertson taught literature and history at Greensboro Female College (GFC) and the State Normal and Industrial College for Girls from 1878 until 1902. That year, she became GFC’s president, and the first woman college president in North Carolina. Robertson served as president until 1913, when she retired and lived on campus, continuing her lifetime of civic and social activism at the local and state level until she died in the campus infirmary. During Robertson’s time, the College’s enrollment, faculty, and curriculum grew and modernized. It changed its name to Greensboro College in 1912 and began granting A.B. degrees in 1913. In the meantime, Robertson encouraged the students to be involved in Progressive era reform activities, as she and many other middle and upper class “New Women” of the “New South” were, on behalf of church mission work, public education, Prohibition, poor relief, and women’s rights.
Women’s college education in America had grown since GFCs’ founding in 1838 and Robertson’s arrival in Greensboro in 1872, but men dominated the leadership of those institutions, especially in the South.
Lucy Henderson Owen was born in Warrenton, North Carolina, September 15, 1850, the daughter of Henry Owen, a merchant, and Catherine Watkins Owen. After the family moved to Hillsborough in 1855, Lucy Owen attended the Misses Nash and Kollock School for Young Ladies. Owen then entered Chowan Baptist Institute in 1865 just as the Civil War was ending. Owen’s uncle was president. After graduation in 1868, she returned to Hillsborough and on Nov. 1, 1870 married Dr. D. A. Robertson. They had two sons, Charles Henderson and David William. The family then moved to Greensboro in 1873. GFC President Rev. Turner Jones hired Lucy Robertson in 1878 as an assistant in the literary department. This was only three years after the College had reopened after being closed for a decade due to fire and the hardships of the Civil War. Robertson eventually became department head in 1890. Since its founding, GFC’s curriculum had been closer to a full college course of study in mathematics, science, logic, elocution, literature, music, and languages than most of its contemporary female academies and institutes and it continued to gradually expand in the 1880s and 1890s. For example, students were finally allowed to study Greek and Latin, rather than one or the other, since fear of Trustees had diminished that dual study would cause young women’s brains to grow too much, thus shrinking their uterus. Robertson was the only female faculty member, but she was active in college administration, student government, and other aspects of college life. In the meantime, her husband had died in 1883. Her sons grew up on campus.
In 1893, Roberson left GFC to become head of the history department at the just opened State Normal and Industrial College for Girls (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro). Founder and President Charles Duncan McIver was intent on hiring women as well as men. Robertson joined a few other female faculty, including Harriett Elliott, and they remained life-long colleagues in education and reform work. Robertson and Elliot developed a curriculum in history and political science that emphasized engagement with current events. From the 1890s through the 1900s, schools like GFC and UNCG supplied the bulk of North Carolina’s schoolteachers.
GFC President Dr. Dred Peacock lured Robertson back to GFC in 1900 to become lady principal and teach history. In 1902 the Board of Trustees unanimously elected Robertson president. It was a dubious honor as GFC’s enrollment and endowment had plummeted over the past few years. In 1903, the Trustees were close to selling Greensboro College to fellow United Methodist institution Trinity. Robertson and GFC alumnae Nanny Lee Smith raised $25,000 in 30 days to save the college. Under Robertson’s leadership, the college recovered over the next decade. The student growth rate jumped to 2 percent annually by 1910. Robertson also helped build up a $100,000 endowment and used that to expand the library and other facilities. GFC changed its name to Greensboro College for Women in 1912 (later to Greensboro College in 1920) and began granting A.B. degrees, as opposed to graduation certificates in 1913 to an inaugural group of seven seniors. The curriculum had also expanded to include secretarial skills and other “professional” courses deemed appropriate for young women.
Robertson, like many older, middle and upper-class women of her generation, was active in a variety of civic and social reform movements and organizations and encouraged GC students to do the same. She had been active in the Methodist Women's Foreign Missionary Societies most of her adult life, serving as president of the Western Conference for thirty-six years. She was also president of the United Society of Foreign and Home Missions. She pursued Prohibition through the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, as did GFC students, and lived to see North Carolina become the first state to ban alcohol in 1908 and then the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution be ratified. Robertson led the Woman’s Club of Greensboro, an affiliate of the North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs, and thus connected with Sallie Southall Cotten, 1863 GFC alumnae, who served as state president. Robertson invited Cotten to deliver the 1908 commencement address at which Cotten made particular note of the fact that GFC finally had a female president.
Robertson retired as president in 1913 and was replaced by Rev. Samuel Turrentine. The Trustees granted Robertson President Emerita status and provided her an apartment in Main Building in which to live alongside her former students. The College endowed a chair of religious education in Robertson’s name and it remains today.
Robertson continued her civic activism for the remainder of her life. She helped found the Greensboro Community Chest, a predecessor to the United Way, in 1916. In recognition the Chest dubbed Robertson “Mother Greensboro” in 1926. Robertson supported the mobilization effort during WWII, as did most other women in Greensboro. Robertson served on the Executive Council of the North Carolina Division of the Women’s Committee, an umbrella organization of statewide women’s groups, during the War, and likely spurred GC students to support the war effort, as did their neighbors at UNCG under Prof. Elliott’s direction.
After a long illness, Robertson died in the infirmary of Greensboro College on May 28, 1930. She was buried in Green Hill Cemetery, Greensboro, next to her husband. Rev. Peter Doub, the founder of the Methodist Church in Greensboro of Greensboro College, also rests nearby.
REFERENCES:
Ethel Arnett and Walter Clinton Jackson. Greensboro, North Carolina: The County Seat of Guilford, 1955.
Samuel Ashe, “Lucy Robertson” in Biographical History of North Carolina, Vol. 2, 1905.
Anna Jeanette Bass, “Robertson, Lucy Henderson Owen.” NCpedia, https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/robertson-lucy-henderson.
Lucy Robertson exhibit, Brock Museum, Greensboro College.
Kate Gladstone Craver, “Lines from the Past Greensboro Female College and Its New Women.” Masters Thesis, Wake Forest University, 1994.
Gayle HicksFripp, Greensboro: A Chosen Center: An Illustrated History, 1982.
Paula Stahls Jordan, Women of Guilford County, North Carolina: A Study of Women's Contributions, 1740-1979. Women of Guilford, 1979.
James Leloudis, Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self, and Society in North Carolina, 1880-1920,1996.
William A. Link, The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1800-1930, 1992.
Lynn Salsi and Burke Salsi. Guilford County, Heart of the Piedmont, 2002.
Kathlene McCarty Smith, “Lucy Robertson: Academic and Activist.” Spartan Stories, http://uncghistory.blogspot.com/2018/10/lucy-robertson-academic-and-act….