NOTE TO MEDIA: This is the sixth in a series of columns by Dr. Sam Dicks, university historian, concerning the history of what is now Emporia State University and the people who helped the university get to where it is today. The name of his column, "Wave the Old Gold," is taken from the title of a song that served as an alma mater (school song) in the early years of the institution.
Mary Clapp -The First Woman Regent in Kansas
EMPORIA - Kansas Governor John P. St. John sent a letter on July 14, 1882, to Mrs. Dexter E. Clapp of Yates Center: "I write you first to assure you of my very deep sympathy with you in the loss of your husband, and my very good friend, and second to tender to you the appointment as your husband's successor as Regent of the State Normal School, with the hope that you may do me the favor to accept. An early reply will be very much oblige." The letter was signed "Your friend, John P. St. John."
Mary Clapp replied on July 19: "Amid the gloom of my desolate home yours [your letter] came like a ray of sunshine. You will all miss Dexter but you can never know how much I have lost. I, trembling, accept the appointment, hoping I may serve you faithfully and satisfactorily."
Mary Clapp became the first woman to serve as a regent in the State of Kansas.
Dexter Elisha Clapp and Mary Van Slyck, both students at Genesee College in New York, were married shortly before the Civil War and Clapp entered the Methodist ministry. The Civil War was soon to change both their lives.
Colonel Clapp, under General Benjamin F. Butler, raised and commanded the 38th New York Regiment of United States Colored Infantry. He was breveted a brigadier general of the United States Volunteers for his leadership and bravery at New Market Heights (September 29, 1864), a victorious battle in which many Union soldiers perished. General Butler later stated in Congress that when Clapp "rode over the field of New Market Heights, and saw the hundreds of black faces turned appealingly to heaven, cold in death, he swore a solemn oath that he would never waver in his defense of the race, whose representatives had so gallantly confronted death in defense of the rights of man."
Captain George T. Anthony (later Kansas governor) also played a critical role under Clapp's command in the same battle.
Mary Clapp was often with her husband during the war and served as a volunteer nurse and a teacher of freedmen. General Clapp, also interested in the education and well being of former slaves, headed the Freedmen's Bureau in the Central District of North Carolina.
Later they joined many Union veterans who came west to settle in the new State of Kansas. The Clapps built their home, which they named Hope Farm, seven miles west of Yates Center in Woodson County. General Clapp also served two terms in the Kansas House of Representatives.
In 1878 Governor Anthony, with the concurrence of his successor, John P. St. John, appointed his former commander to be a regent for the Kansas State Normal School.
General Clapp was in frail health by the summer of 1882, but he came to Emporia to sign the student diplomas at the June Commencement. Three days after returning to Hope Farm he died. He was 52 years old.
After a series of Republican governors, the State of Kansas in November 1882 elected its first Democratic governor, George Glick.
On January 7, 1883, Mary Clapp wrote the new governor: "Pardon this intrusion on your time. But having heard my loved husband speak of you with expression of high esteem, I venture to ask of you a favor which is of great importance to me, and it is in your power to grant. I have filled the place of regent of Normal school, made vacant by the death of my husband, Dexter E. Clapp for six months. May I ask of you my appointment to the same, assuring you that I will do all in my power to fill the position creditably and faithfully."
Elected officials and community leaders from Woodson County sent Governor Glick a petition pledging their support for Mrs. Clapp. Endorsements also came from others throughout the state. Charles Vernon Eskridge, publisher of the Emporia Republican, was a loyal supporter of the Normal School, but had also been a fierce opponent of women's suffrage. He was one of Mary Clapp's strongest champions:
"Mrs. Clapp is a lady of scholarly attainments and since her appointment to this responsible position has filled the place with credit to the state, the school, and herself. Having been appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband, her term expires sometime next March, and we hope that the governor will honor himself by re-appointing."
Governor Glick wrote to Mary Clapp that he did not believe it was proper to appoint women to any office.
Today it is no longer unusual to appoint a widow to a governmental position previously held by her deceased husband, but such a step was radical then. Many men in that era held that women had a role in the home and perhaps in the schoolroom, but not in the rough and often corrupt worlds of business and partisan politics.
Early attempts by Kansas suffragists to gain the right to vote in all elections had failed in 1861 and again in 1867. Yet Kansas remained ahead of most of the country -- women had gained the right to vote in school elections and serve on school boards in 1861 because of their role as mothers in the nurturing of children. Disgruntled male voters complained that women often caused taxes to rise as they provided the margin of victory in school bond elections for the building of new schools. Women would later, in 1886, also gain the right to vote in town elections and soon were electing women as mayors and city council members. Kansas women finally gained the full franchise in 1912, eight years before the national suffrage amendment was adopted.
A woman regent was especially appropriate for the Kansas State Normal School since it was the only state college with a majority of female students, most of whom planned to become rural schoolteachers.
It would be over four decades after Mary Clapp's appointment before another woman would be appointed regent in Kansas. State colleges by then no longer had separate boards, and new schools at Hays and Pittsburg had been added to the state system. Mae Colburn Patrick of Satanta in Haskell County
, former president of the Kansas Authors Club and Republican presidential elector in 1924, was appointed to the statewide nine-member board of regents by Republican Governor Ben Sanford Paulen in 1925.
Mary Clapp of Yates Center stands alone as the only woman regent in Kansas during the first six decades of statehood.
(I wish to thank ESU Professor Joyce Thierer, a specialist in Kansas history, for her assistance in this column.)
CONTACT: Dr. Sam Dicks, 620-341-6431
Last Updated July 2, 2007>