Silvia Pettem is the author of “Separate Lives: Uncovering the Hidden Family of Victorian Professor Mary Rippon.“
Mary Rippon is highly respected as the University of Colorado’s first female professor, although societal mores forced her to clothe her private life in secrecy. She entered the male world of academia in the late 19th century, when professional women were not permitted to have families. The reasoning, at the time, was that working women would take jobs away from men with families to support. Forced to separate her public and private lives, Mary hid her husband and child beneath a Victorian veil of secrecy.
Mary arrived at CU in January 1878, at the beginning of the second semester of the university’s first academic year. She taught German language and literature for 10 years before Will Housel entered her classroom, and she continued teaching afterward. He was 25 years old, and she was 37. Mary and her student developed a romantic relationship, but it was known only to themselves. Ironically, the class read and discussed Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s classic drama, “Faust,” in which the main character stepped outside the bounds of morality.
Mary and Will secretly married in St. Louis, Missouri. Later, Mary gave birth to Miriam Edna Housel on an overseas sabbatical. After a few months, Mary returned to Boulder and continued to teach as if nothing in her life had changed. Before long, she became department chair. Even so, her salary was less than that of the male professors. Still, she financially supported her child and largely provided for Will.
The long-concealed story of Mary’s life was revealed in the 1980s when an elderly man entered the small basement room in Norlin Library that housed the CU archives. There, he donated “Miss Rippon’s” diaries, account books, journals, and some photos. Much to the librarian’s surprise, he identified himself as Mary’s grandson.
My interest in the Rippon collection began in 1993 when the same librarian suggested that the documents might be of interest to me. I also traveled to Kendall County, Illinois, where Mary was born, and I learned that future CU president Joseph Sewall had been one of her high school teachers.
When Mary was 18 years old, she inherited money from her late father’s estate. She hoped to attend the University of Illinois, but it didn’t admit women. Instead, she traveled to Europe where she ended up staying for five years. While there, she attended university classes in Germany, France, and Switzerland, but never earned a degree. She did, however, keep in contact with Joseph Sewall.
When CU opened its doors in September 1877, Sewall, as president, invited Rippon to join the faculty. Mary also became a role model for her female students. At the time, there was only one other professor, and the entire university was housed in one building, now called Old Main.
After Mary and Will’s marriage, Will remained at CU to complete his senior year. He graduated in 1889, then temporarily joined his wife and baby daughter in Europe where they placed Miriam in an orphanage. Before returning to Boulder, Mary paid for Will to attend a German graduate school.
Two years later, Will left Miriam in yet another orphanage and returned to Boulder. Mary and Will never lived together as man and wife, but their diaries show that, for a time, they often spent time with each other. When Miriam was four years old, Will brought the child back to the United States and took her to Mary’s extended family in Illinois.
Mary appears to have valued her career over family, but she may have, instead, realized that she needed to work to financially provide for her daughter’s care.
Eventually, Mary and Will divorced. Will remarried when Miriam was eight years old and provided his daughter with a home, but he lacked an adequate income. Still earning less than her male colleagues, Mary continued to support her daughter, as well as her divorced husband, his second wife and, eventually, their four children!
Mary retired in 1909. She died in 1935 and took her secret to her grave. By then, Miriam had moved to Boulder and also taught languages at CU.
Seemingly, Mary’s life was forgotten, but in 2006, and with lots of support from CU’s then-sociology chair Mike Radelet, the CU Regents awarded Mary Rippon a posthumous honorary doctorate degree. Mary’s great-grandson, Eric Rieder, came from out of state to accept her diploma. At the time, Regent Cindy Carlisle stated, “Rippon shattered the glass ceilings of the day. Not only was she a scholar and a teacher, she was a revolutionary. She was a magnet for students who were ready to break the mold.”
Mary was all that, and a mother and grandmother, too.
Sylvia, my mother who was born on September 29, 2015, in Baker City, Oregon, would love this story. She and her year and a half older brother were as close as siblings could be, but his being male left him with all of college opportunities and she with none–because men needed to be able to support a wife and family. This was a great hurt in her life.
With my father, she raised five daughters, and the question to each of us as young children was a what do you want to be when you grow up, “a nurse or a teacher”. All five of us graduated with bachelor’s degrees and two of us went on to get M.A.s.
I have a B.F.A. in theatre and an M.A. in playwriting; never did up my day job.
Thanks for a lovely article.
Thanks for your kind words and for sharing your background, although I think you mean 1915. Maybe you should turn Mary Rippon’s story into a play…
Oh, but that baby Miriam was adorable! It must have been heartbreaking for Mary to leave her behind. I do wonder about the emotional price she paid for her mother’s revolutionary life.
Mary was never a mother, she gave birth but was not a mother. She has grandchildren and great grandchildren but was not a grandma. I completely understand her situation and have many women in my family who faced the same thing and still were present for their family.