Time Machine: Bowen Collegiate Institute Hopkinton builds a college in the 1850s

Henry Carter, a sawmill operator, was one of the earliest settlers in the northeast Iowa town of Hopkinton in Delaware County.

Carter was from Massachusetts, where Harvard University had operated for a couple of centuries. The settlers' children were sent away to school, including Carter's daughter, Jennie. She went off to Monticello Seminary in Illinois at the same time her father set the wheels in motion to start a college in Iowa.

In 1855, Carter, W.P. Cunningham, Leroy Jackson and Dr. W.L. Roberts met with townspeople to begin planning the school. Fundraising was boosted by Chicago businessman Chauncey Bowen who, while visiting Hopkinton, offered $500 if the school would be named for him.

That was agreed, and James Kilpatrick made and fired the bricks used in the college's first building in 1857.

On August 22, 1858, Bowen Collegiate Institute was chartered, with 64 students enrolled that fall.The first event at the dedication was a dance, with the proceeds going to furnish the classrooms.

The local Covenanter church's pastor, Dr. W.L. Roberts, was Bowen's first president, until the Rev. Jerome Allen, age 28, took over until 1863.

Woman booted

In 1860, Bowen admitted Dr. Mary Edwards Walker of Oswego, N.Y., an 1855 graduate of Harvard Medical School. She had headed west, ostensibly to obtain a divorce from her husband.

Why she landed in Hopkinton is unknown, but she enrolled at Bowen and took an interest in the oratory classes. The story goes that the classes were for men only, but her classmates included her on a program. The school hierarchy deemed it improper for a woman to speak in public and forbade her from participating. She ignored them and was suspended.

Her classmates reportedly paraded the streets of Hopkinton with her to protest and were all suspended as well. But one by one, they abandoned their cause and were reinstated. Walker was not.

It was the bloomers

A story from the school's Golden Jubilee celebration in 1907, however, tells a different story. At the time Walker was there, the school's chapel was divided by a 7-foot partition, putting men and women on opposite sides of the church. Walker, ever a champion of equal rights, often sat on the men's side, creating an immediate foe in the women's dean.

Walker wrote for the school newspaper and contributed more than one essay on women being allowed equal standing with men. Matters came to a head when she insisted on wearing bloomers.

She was called into the administrative offices. No one noticed the presence of a small boy who, 50 years later, related what the president said to Walker: 'Miss Walker, we like you very much. We have no objection whatever to your character or conduct, but only to your clothes.”

Walker refused to stop wearing bloomers and was suspended.

The jubilee celebration story went on to say, 'A few years ago in answer to an inquiry, Miss Walker wrote a letter confirming the above facts.”

Walker returned east as the Civil War started. She became a battlefield surgeon and became the first woman to be awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military honor.

impact of civil war

The Civil War also had a dramatic impact on the institute.

J.M. McKean, who had become the institute's president in 1863, and 91 of the college's 92 students enlisted to fight for the Union. McKean and 27 of those students didn't return.

They, along with other Hopkinton residents who died in the war, were honored by a marble monument erected on the Bowen campus.

The Old School Presbyterian Church of Iowa took over governance of Bowen in 1864. The institution, in need of money, asked the Bowen family to consider helping again, but they declined.

New York millionaire and recluse James Lenox donated $1,000 and, in gratitude, the school changed its name in 1865 to Lenox Collegiate Institute. What the school meant as a tribute instead struck Lenox as highly insulting, and he had no further contact with the school.

Lenox College

In 1875, an addition was made to the main building. The school was incorporated as Lenox College in 1884.

The Civil War monument was rededicated on the 50th anniversary of the school in 1907.

In 1909, James Carleton Young, a well-known book collector, donated 1,000 volumes to the Lenox library in honor of his grandfather, college founder Henry Carter. The gift included some of the rarest books in the world. Young, the son of Jennie, built the old Prospect Place mansion in Cedar Rapids and is the namesake of Young's Addition on the city's west side.

College closes

Facing declining enrollment and ongoing financial difficulties, Lenox College converted to a junior college in 1922. The school's credits transferred to other schools at full value until 1936, when it was no longer accredited. The school closed in 1944.

Two years later, in 1946, a valiant effort was made to reopen the institute as a four-year college. The alumni association's effort to raise $100,000 to renovate the buildings and finance scholarships, however, was unsuccessful.

College trustees transferred the campus and buildings to the city of Hopkinton. It became part of the Maquoketa Valley school district, serving elementary students. The Delaware County Historical Society leased the first floor of Clarke Hall as a museum.

The four-acre campus was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places on Dec. 17, 1976. The Maquoketa Valley district left the campus soon after that, and the buildings became a museum complex.

The Lenox College campus, now maintained by the Historical Society, includes the Civil War monument; Clarke Hall, built in 1890; Doolittle Hall, added in 1900; and Finkbonner Hall, built in 1916.

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