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REV. WILLIAM H. SAMPSON |
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Born September 13, 1808, at Brattleboro, Vermont; converted in May, 1829;
educated at Ovid Academy and Genesee Wesleyan Seminary; joined Indiana
Conference on trial October, 1838, and admitted into full connection with
Michigan Conference in 1842. He married the daughter of Rev. Julius Field.
He was the first principal of Lawrence University believed that the college
should be placed “for both male and female students where each and
all should be entitled to equal educational advantages”. Sampson
engaged in a on-going battle over this point with Lawrence’s first
president Rev. Edward Cooke who initially insisted on setting up a special
course for women, lasting on three years instead of four, which culminated
in a L.B.A. (Ladies Baccalaureate of Arts), a sort of B.A. lite. To Cooke’s
disappointed, only a minority of women students choose this route and
it was dropped. Cooke also listed the females in the back of the University
catalogue in a separate “Female Branch” and held the Ladies
commencement exercises the night before the men’s. He was given to
remind the women in after-chapel lectures to “remember that they
constituted only a co-ordinate branch of the institution and were present
simply on sufferance”. While Sampson lost most of these battles with
Cooke in the short run, it was Sampson’s vision of equality that
eventually won out. Sampson died at Tacoma, Washington, February 5, 1892.
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created 2 April, 2003 updated 30 April, 2003 The space for this web site has been provided courtesy The Capital District, Wisconsin Conference United Methodist Church www.WisconsinUMC.org/Capital. The content of these pages are the responsibility of Sandy Kintner. Please send feedback to archives@wisconsinumc.org | |