Generations of students have trotted their fresh-off-the-press copy around to schoolmates and teachers, imploring them to “Sign my yearbook!” Yearbooks from high school and college are an American tradition.
But they are also documents that can go beyond casual nostalgia. Yearbooks have potential for serious research if handled with care in analyzing their scripts of ritualized images and selective coverage of student life.
A close look at one yearbook
These dusty volumes that end up in used bookstores, garage sales and library storage centers can be thoughtfully mined to reconstruct campus life and student cultures. They are simultaneously a source about the biography of an individual as well as a key to understanding the statistics of group patterns and dynamics of a college or high school class.
Let’s take a close look at the 1926 yearbook of one Susan Leyburn Hyatt (1908-1999), class of 1927, Stonewall Jackson College, Abingdon, VA.
First, some background on the school itself. The local historical marker for the Stonewall Jackson Female Institute reads:
Sinking Spring Presbyterian Church established the Jackson Female Institute, or Stonewall Jackson Female Institute, in 1868 for the education of young women. The school was named for the Confederate general. The Floyd family property was purchased in Feb. 1868 to house the school. Classes began on 15 Sept. 1868, when boarding and day students as young as seven enrolled. It was renamed the Stonewall Jackson College in 1914 when the Montgomery Presbytery assumed joint ownership. On 24 Nov. 1914, the main buildings were destroyed by fire. The college continued to operate until 1930 when it closed because of mounting debts.
The school’s end was in sight
1926 was a sweet spot for students such as Susie Hyatt, an 18 year old junior that year. She was young enough to have escaped the battlefield horrors of WWI personally. She and her classmates had survived the 1918-19 flu pandemic. The stock market crash and ensuing Depression that would wipe out the bank accounts of alumni donors the school depended on were still in the future.
In 1926 Stonewall Jackson College was well established, being in its 58th year. School administrators were optimistic about plans. “Next year the young ladies will have a fine golf course,” reported the Bristol Herald Courier in May of 1927. “The school owns sixty acres of land and the golf grounds will be just back of the buildings.”
But even before the 1929 stock market crash, enrollment at Stonewall Jackson was declining: the 1926 yearbook shows 6 Freshmen; 16 Sophomores; 35 Juniors; and 28 Seniors. The junior class was the largest to date, but it wouldn’t hold.
The ‘Stonewall Girl’
The school’s overall mission was “to send from its walls women who have succeeded not only in getting through text-books and culling knowledge from other sources, but in developing character, as well as mind; women who have learned to think for themselves, and to realize their responsibility in life.”1
The yearbook hammers home that ‘developing character’ notion in a section of the 1926 book that spells out the traits of ‘the Stonewall Girl’ (in order): Intellectuality, Beauty, Authority, Loyalty, Personality, Originality, Sports, Capability, Music, Agility.
Beauty, loyalty, personality? Finishing school qualities. But that’s no accident.
And how are ‘sports’ and ‘music’ traits? They stand out here. Again, intentional. The sports highlighted are tennis, swimming, basketball, and they are thrown into the ‘Organizations’ section of the yearbook, along with a photo of the president of the student body, the YWCA cabinet, and member pages of the Alpha Beta, and Gamma Delta, sororities. An odd mix.
Music front and center
Artistic fluency served as an indicator of refinement and wealth to the elite culture of that time/place, and so Stonewall Jackson emphasized the arts, part of a long-standing tradition within Southern women’s education.
The ‘Clubs’ section of the yearbook opens with a 2-page spread of Dramatic Club photos. All other clubs in the section get 1 page.
Music is even more highlighted, as hinted at in the list of Stonewall Girl traits. Four pages dedicated to ‘the music studio,’ ‘the glee club,’ ‘the quartette,’ ‘the choir,’ and ‘the orchestra’ appear NOT in the ‘Clubs’ section, but at the end of the class headshots section front of book, far ahead of the ‘Clubs’ section.
It was clearly understood by the time of the school’s closure in 1930 that the arts were an acceptable career path for women.
A pecking order in club importance
Speaking of clubs, the yearbook (known in 1926 as an ‘annual’) presents groups that feel specific to that era: Cosmopolitan Club; Home Economics club; S.O.S Club [student outreach services? Doesn’t say, though that page pictures a drawing of a brain among the member headshots: could be for super smart students].
More recognizable to us, perhaps: French club; Latin club; Spanish club; and the Art club.
Susie Leyburn Hyatt’s photo appears only twice throughout Stonewall Jackson’s yearbook: once in the junior class headshots, and once on the member page for the Theta Zeta Pi sorority in the ‘Clubs’ section.
The yearbook editors must’ve thought slightly less of this sorority than of the Alpha Beta, and Gamma Delta, sororities mentioned above. Theta Zeta Pi is only identified by its logo, not named as the other two are, and is placed in the ‘Clubs’ section on p. 95, whereas Alpha Beta and Gamma Delta are named, and appear in the ‘Organizations’ section, 20 pages earlier in the book.
The typical student
Hyatt’s time spent in Theta Zeta Pi’s charitable activities clearly had a lifelong impact: her 1999 obituary tells us she was active in the P.E.O. Sisterhood (Philanthropic Educational Organization) for 50 years. Also as an adult she was active in the Girl Scouts, served on the board of the North Carolina Symphony Society, and as chairman of the Altar Guild of St Mary’s Episcopal Church in Kinston, NC.
Susie Hyatt’s background was typical of her classmates’ backgrounds: she was a local girl from Norton, VA. Of a class of 36, most (24) were also from VA—southwestern VA at that; 1 was from SC; 3 were from NC; 5 were from TN; 1 was from AL; 1 was from KY; and 1 was from WV.
She was also typical in race and class. The 1926 student body of Stonewall Jackson was 100% white, and well heeled.
A photo styling template
Susie’s father Horatio Eugene Hyatt had taught mathematics and chemistry at VMI; future general George C. Marshall was one of his students. The Bristol Herald Courier cites Hyatt as a “prominent business and civic leader of Southwest Virginia” in its 1950 obituary of him, and says of Susie’s mother (also Susan) in her 1936 obituary “both she and her husband were leaders in every progressive community activity.”
In 1926 only 3-4% of Americans graduated college. It was very much still the province of the well to do.
Susie’s photo styling in the yearbook is duplicated many times over throughout the book: she presents seriously, no smile, she’s wearing a very fashionable mid-20s bob hairdo, her clothing is a solid color cotton or linen sack dress, modest scoop neck, no jewelry, no makeup. She appears to be wearing a corsage, and those don’t appear often in the various portraits.
The different types of inscriptions
To judge by the inscriptions (fountain pen only, the ballpoint pen didn’t arrive for another 10 years) in the book, Susie Hyatt was popular! The book has 2 pages for ‘autographs’ at the back of the book, and 21 students have scribbled their name & city/state on page 1. Page 2 had only 2 inscriptions. Human nature: very few people want to sign where no one else has.
Most students, however, sign next to their photo (count: 41). In total, 59% of the students signed her book (62 out of 111 students).
What do they say? The “please don’t forget me” genre is well represented. “Sue, all I can say is that I love you just lots and lots—always lovin’ you.” And inscriptions that reference a very specific class/time spent together are also common. “Sue, hon, you know what fun we had this year — well, we’ll be havin’ more next year in our ‘model suite’.”
Susie Hyatt’s future husband, Reverend John Askew Winslow (1901-1976), wasn’t on the horizon yet when the 1926 Stonewall Jackson College yearbook came out. She wouldn’t meet him until 1934.
More articles on college culture:
Graduation time in Abingdon VA(Opens in a new browser tab)
A certain girl in the Senior Commercial room wrote the following(Opens in a new browser tab)
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