(Previous Image) Mary Caffrey Low, Colby 1875. 2004. Pastel monoprint/paper.44x30

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(Previous Image) Mary Caffrey Low, Colby
1875. 2004. Pastel monoprint/paper.44x30.
Margaret Libby. Mary Caffrey Low, a
Waterville native, was the first woman to attend
Colby and was among the first women in New
England to attend college. It was considered
unseemly at the time for women to aspire to
higher education, and Mary Low was very
courageous to apply to college after three years
of teaching. She was the only female student
until 1873. She and the four other women started
a national sorority, Sigma Kappa, in December of
1874, to give themselves a literary and social
support group. Mary Low graduated first in her
class and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She was
not allowed to give the valedictory address as
first in her class, but instead delivered the
Class Prophecy in Latin. It was a hot muggy day,
and she was required to dress in a high-collared,
black taffeta dress with long sleeves which
covered her wrists. After teaching for two
years, she married Leonard Carver of the class of
1868 in 1877. They had two children, Dwight, who
died at age six, and Ruby, who graduated from
Colby in 1904. She went on to become a
cataloguer at the Maine State Library, beginning
the arduous task of creating a card catalog for
the library, and indexing and recording other
important city of Augusta and state documents.
She spearheaded the protest against President
Smalls proposal to divide Colby into a mens and
womens division, writing a series of letters to
enlist the influential support of Louise Helen
Coburn. She wrote a sixteen page pamphlet
Co-Education at Colby protesting the division.
In a newspaper article she is quoted as
saying, I have long been of the opinion that
women who do the same work as men, and equally as
well, should receive the same compensation, and I
hope this will be brought about in the near
future all over the country. She traveled
to Europe with her daughter Ruby in 1904, and
lived with Ruby and her husband in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, until her death in 1926.
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(Previous Image) Louise Helen Coburn. Class of
1877. Mixed media(charcoal, pastel, cut dollar
bills)/paper. 2004. Margaret Libby. Louise
Helen Coburn was one of the first five women to
come to Colby and a graduate of the class of
1877. She was a founding member of Sigma Kappa, a
member of Phi Beta Kappa, and the first woman to
serve on the Board of Trustees. Her prosperous
family was based in Skowhegan and supported Colby
as well as Coburn Classical Institute. When
Louise died, she continued that legacy by leaving
90,000 to schools, churches, public
institutions, and individuals, including Colby.
Louise was a trained botanist, poet, and
author of Skowhegan on the Kennebec, a two-volume
history of Skowhegan. Her botanical article,
Flora of Birch Island, is in Special
Collections, as well as copies of several poems
and the volumes on Skowhegan.
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Memorial to Lizzie. Elizabeth Gorham Hoag. Member
of the class of 1877, died June 15, 1875.Mixed
media(acrylic, pastel, sepia ink wash, dried rose
sewn onto page)/paper. 2004. Margaret Libby.
Elizabeth Gorham Hoag was one of the founding
members of Sigma Kappa, a national sorority
started by five Colby women, Mary Caffrey Low,
Frances Mann Hall, Ida Mabel Fuller, Elizabeth
Gorham Hoag, and Louise Helen Coburn, in 1874.
Colby has no file on her, but the History of
Sigma Kappa Sorority 1874-1924 compiled by Emma
Elizabeth Kinne has several pictures of Lizzie
and a short biography written by Louise Helen
Coburn. Coburn talks of Lizzies love for music
and art, and her humor and her melancholy eyes.
Part of Lizzies final note to Louise in March of
1874 reads, Adored Goody, Ive gin out. I shant
probably brighten our pleasant retirement with my
radiant presence this week anyway. Please
communicate with me as to the state of your
feelings. Yours in the depths of despair, An Imp
still. Lizzie died in June. Here is a
description of Lizzie by Frances Mann Hall, from
page 20 of The History of Sigma Kappa Sorority,
She was a slender, dark-eyed girl, whose
flashing smile kindled her sensitive face into
rare beauty, whose brilliant conversation,
intellectual gifts and musical attainments made
her a center of attraction in whatever company
she might be. Her temperament was essentially
artistic, and art in every form applied to her.
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Bertha Erased, and en face with the Men (Bertha
Louise Soule, Class of 1885.) Mixed media(erased
charcoal, graphite, sepia ink wash heightened
with white)/paper. 2004. Margaret Libby.
Bertha Louise Soule was the only woman in the
class of 1885, and its last survivor until her
death in 1956 at age 93. She was born in Bath,
Maine, and taught classics in Bath, Skowhegan,
and Bangor after her graduation. She moved to New
York in 1906, where she taught 28 years at Manual
Training School in Brooklyn. She was an
authority on Latin, and wrote several books and
poems, two of which were biographies of Colby
men. They were entitled Colbys Roman, Julian
Daniel Taylor, (Colbys esteemed classics
professor) and Colbys President Roberts. She
donated proceeds from the books to the college.
Bertha received an honorary M.A. from the college
in 1931.
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Bertha Louise Soule, Class of 1885. 2004. Mixed
media (acrylic, pastel with wax medium and
solvent, oil)/paper. 30x22.5 Margaret Libby.
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Minnie Hartford Mathews (Mrs. William G. Mann)
Class of 1880. Mixed media/paper. 2004. Margaret
Libby. Minnie Mathews was one of three
Mathews sisters from Waterville who attended
Colby in the late 1870s. Minnie was the only
woman in her class, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa
in 1880. She taught school in Maine and Colorado.
She married another Colby graduate, William Mann,
who was a Congregational minister. They served in
pastorates in Colorado and Maine, and eventually
settled in Westbrook. Minnie voted in 1892 in
Colorado, a time when few states granted women
suffrage, according to her daughter Lois in a
letter to Colby in 1952. After her husbands
death in 1921, she lived with her three daughters
and ran a childrens camp called Camp
Kuhnawaumbek in Convene, Maine. Minnie died in
1952 at age 93.
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Emily Peace Meader, Class of 1878. Mixed
media/paper. 2005. Margaret Libby.
Emily Peace Meader was born in Waterville and
graduated from Colby as the only woman to
graduate in her class in 1878. Other class
members were Ida Mabel Fuller, Fannie Elliot
Mann, and Ellen Statira Koopman. We have
very little information on Peace as Louise
Coburn refers to her. Our records consist of
copies of her sheet music and her entry in the
General Catalog of Colby College, 1820-1920. She
died in Waterville in 1914.
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Marion Thompson Osborne, Colby 1900. Mixed
media/paper. 2004-5. Margaret Libby .
Marion Thompson Osborne was the first black woman
to graduate from Colby. She was the daughter of
Sam Osborne, Colbys longtime janitor and freed
slave. Marion attended Waterville schools and
graduated from Colby in 1900. She was class
secretary for two of her four years and graduated
as one of thirteen in the original class of
twenty-six women. She taught school and later
became a bookkeeper. She married Duncan Matheson
in 1917 and moved to New York, where she was a
past matron of the Eastern Star in Brooklyn.
After his death she returned to Waterville to
live with her family on Ash Street. Marion was an
active church member of the Pleasant Street
Methodist Church, sang in the choir, and was
Central District President of Womans Society of
Christian Service of the Methodist church. She
died in 1954 and is buried in the family plot at
Pine Grove Cemetery in Waterville.
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Marion and Her Family. 2004-5. Mixed media/paper.
44x30 Margaret Libby.
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Ruby Carver (Mrs. R.D.H. Emerson) Class of 1904.
oil,charcoal/canvas.2004. Margaret Libby.
Ruby Carver was the daughter of Mary Low Carver
(1875) and Leonard Carver (1868) and graduated in
1904. She was a member of Sigma Kappa and served
the organization in many ways, chiefly on the
Scholarship Award Committee and as National
Vice-President and President in the 1930s.
While her mother was alive, Ruby preferred to let
Mary Low take the spotlight. After her mothers
death, she became more vocal about carrying on
her mothers legacy. She hosted many Boston-area
alumnae meetings, and wrote an open letter to
Colby entitled, Alumnus Suggestions, March 24,
1934. The main idea of the letter, written
shortly after her mothers birthday anniversary,
is that the Alumnus should include more
information on the lives of alumnae, especially
the women. Her gentle words include the
following, Perhaps the suggestion (above) is
already covered by the undergraduate magazine
(issued by the women still, is it?) perhaps also
you would feel it an intrusion upon someones
time-your own is very limited-or it might be that
I wanted some controversial matter between
alumnae and alumni. I do not mean that at all, it
would be inspirational, literary, ethical, and
have nothing to do with practical (so-called)
side of life. Miss Gilpatrick and I exchanged
the idea that when Colby women are once
understood and appreciated the college will have
taken a great step forward, especially in these
times when character and high virtue are so much
needed and demanded
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Mary Low with Pink Slash. 2005.Oil, charcoal,
pastel/canvas. 48x40 Margaret Libby.
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Left Handed Study for Group Portrait (First Five
Women of Colby Mary Low, botton, Lizzie Hoag,
center, Louise Coburn, left, Fannie Mann top
center, Ida Mae Pierce, right) 2005. Mixed media
(charcoal, purple sharpie, sanguine conte crayon,
coffee and charcoal wash)/paper. 44x30 Margaret
Libby. Group Portrait is done from a photo
of the first five women at Colby who were the
founders of Sigma Kappa Sorority. Clockwise from
the bottom they are Mary Low, Colby 1875 Louise
Coburn, Colby 1877 Frances Mann, Ida Mae Pierce,
and Elizabeth Gorham Hoag, bottom center. An
interesting historical tidbit is that only one in
three women graduated from college in the
nineteenth century, and this group is a good
example. Elizabeth Hoag died of consumption
(tuberculosis) at nineteen, and both Ida and
Frances left Colby for various reasons. Only Mary
Low and Louise Coburn, of the Skowhegan Coburns
and Coburn Classical Institute, were to graduate.
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Storyboard for unfinished hand-drawn video
entitled Group Portrait (the First Five Women of
Colby) 2005. Mixed media/paper. 30x22.5
Margaret Libby.
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Study for Young Mary Low (preliminary drawing for
first video sequence). 2005. Mixed media (sepia
ink, charcoal)/gessoed paper 30x22.5 Margaret
Libby.
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Film Still of Mary Low Asleep, erased Talking
Head Above. 2205. Charcoal heightened with
white/paper. 47.5x30 Margaret Libby. In
the first sequence of the video, Mary Low enters
and stands by a chair. Mary Low, as the first
female student, waits alone onscreen. In a close
up view, her shoulders move up and down and her
eyes close then open as if she is dreamlike
state. The animation is deliberately clumsy,
pre-cinematic as it were, as the original photo
is from a time period before the invention of
moving pictures or cinema as we know it today.
The style is also influence by William
Kentridges films, which are hand-drawn and
consist of drawings that are wiped out and
redrawn and refilmed, which is very similar to my
studio practice of drawing, wiping out,
redrawing, until the mark-making and work process
is literally embedded on the surface of the paper.
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Memorial Wall for Colby Women, 1875-1900. 2006
Installation in the Faculty Group Show in the
Colby Museum of Art. Acrylic and collage/paper
(103x51) two DVDs projected onto two 18x24
canvases 148 mortared bricks with collaged
vinyl names of all the female graduates from
1875-1900 eight 7x6 silverpoint drawings and
letters/gessoed panels. Margaret Libby.
This installation is meant to honor all the women
who graduated in this time period. The list of
names is repeated twice, once in a linear fashion
as the names are collaged onto paper by year of
graduation, and again as a name on bricks which
signify these nineteenth-century women as
providers of the foundation of opportunities for
all of Colbys women today. The piece is also
about linking past and present, as the two video
loops show present-day female students hands
laying flowers on the gravestones of Mary Low,
the first woman to graduate, and also on the
gravestone of Marion Osborne, the first black
woman to graduate from Colby. Having the videos
projected onto blank canvases serves as a way to
animate and create a literal flow of time onto
canvas. The silverpoint medium will also change
the drawn images over time, as the silver
oxidizes with air and becomes slightly browner
than its original silvery gray application.
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Screen shots from two videos from Memorial Wall
to Colby Women, 1875-1900. Top Beginning shots
of the gravestones of Mary Low (Carver) and
Marion Osborne (Matheson) as they were projected
onto canvases, and ending stills of their
gravestones with flowers laid by current
students. 2006. Margaret Libby.
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Detail of Memorial Wall with closeup of bricks
with names and partial view of silverpoint
portraits above. 2006. Margaret Libby.
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Silverpoint portrait of Sophie May Hanson, Colby
1881, from Memorial Wall for Colby Women. 2006.
Silverpoint and collaged letters/gessoed panel.
7x6 Margaret Libby.
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Silverpoint portrait of Emeline Marble Fletcher,
Colby 1891, from Memorial Wall for Colby Women.
2006. Silverpoint and collaged letters/gessoed
panel. 7x6 Margaret Libby.