Mary Lockwood Matthews (1882-1968)
To help celebrate Purdue University’s 150th anniversary in 2019, the Purdue University Retirees Association (PURA) recruited some of its members to portray historic characters from Purdue’s past.
The reenactors researched their characters, developed costumes and personas, then appeared at a number of public events sharing the stories of these important Purdue figures with the public.
Olivia Wood, pictured here, portrayed Mary Lockwood Matthews.
Photo courtesy of Nanette Julian, Greater Lafayette community member.
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Continuing PURA’s series on historical Purdue figures, this month’s installment focuses on Mary L. Matthews, first Dean of Purdue’s School of Home Economics, being portrayed this year by PURA’s Olivia Wood.
Matthews was born in 1882 in Peewee Valley, KY. By seven years of age she had lost both her parents to illness. She and a younger brother were adopted by her mother’s close friend, Virginia Claypool Meredith* (featured in the August 2019 edition of The PURA News). Virginia Meredith’s influence in Mary’s life was instrumental in shaping her future.
In 1897 Virginia went to the University of Minnesota to start the program in Home Economics. Mary graduated from the St. Anthony School of Agriculture in 1900 and entered the University of Minnesota, where she became the first woman to receive a B.S. in Home Economics in 1904.
In 1907 Mary moved to Lafayette, Indiana, to teach clothing in the Lafayette Industrial School before returning to the University of Minnesota to teach for a year. In 1910 she was hired as an instructor in home economics extension in the Purdue School of Agriculture.
One of her first responsibilities was to organize courses taught in Purdue’s first summer school. Purdue had started a program in Household Economics in the School of Science in 1905 and Mary became the head of the program in 1912, with an enrollment of 50 students. In 1919 she established a Practice House experience as part of the curriculum for seniors in Household Economics but refused having a “practice baby,” which was common in other Home Economics curriculums in the U.S. at the time.
The Household Economics Department became the School of Home Economics in 1926 and Mary served as Dean until her retirement in 1952. The original school had five departments: applied design, clothing and textiles, foods and nutrition, home administration, and institutional management, with 369 undergraduates and 3 graduate students enrolled.
Mary Matthews devoted her career to expanding opportunities in the science of Home Economics. She wrote both high school and college texts which were revised multiple times and used for several decades. She was selected as an outstanding teacher and served as a faculty advisor to numerous student groups.
In 1926 she established the first nursery school in Indiana. In 1932 she was appointed Chair of the Indiana Federation of Clubs of the State Department of Education, a position she held for twenty years. After WWII she refused an administrative mandate to fire married female employees whose husbands had returned from the war, and this led to a change in policy at Purdue regarding employing married women.
In 1946 she added a sixth department to the School of Home Economics, the Department of Family Life. At the time of her retirement in 1952, Purdue’s School of Home Economics was the second largest among U.S. land-grant colleges.
Dean Matthews served as President of the Purdue Women’s Club (PWC) in 1930-31 and initiated “interest groups”, still a hallmark of PWC in 2019.
Mathews Hall, constructed in 1923, was named in her honor in 1976. She is listed in the Purdue Book of Great Teachers. The Mary L. Matthews Club was established in her honor in 1952 and has remained an active group of professional women. It was not until 2012 that her portrait and a plaque was finally placed in her honor in Matthews Hall through the efforts of The Mary L Matthews Club and The Purdue Women’s Club.
Additional information about Mary L Matthews can be found in the book Divided Paths, Common Ground by Angie Klink, and published by Purdue University Press.
*Virginia Meredith became nationally known as a woman farmer and is widely considered the “mother of agriculture”. She became the first female appointed to the Purdue Board of Trustees in 1921. Meredith Hall is named in her honor.
Virginia Meredith is also a PURA Historic Character.
Return to PURA Historical Character Project Page