College Beginnings

Creating a College Campus

Preparing for a New Century

Cadwallader Washburn

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1846
Mazzuchelli opens Sinsinawa Mound College for men at “the Mound” in Sinsinawa. It is a short-lived venture, closing within 20 years, fraught with faculty problems and a decline in the student population because of the Civil War. The building will serve a half-century later as part of St. Clara College for women and eventually become a residence for the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa.

1847
Samuel Mazzuchelli establishes the community of Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters, Sister Seraphine (Mary McNulty), Sister Ermeline (Mary Routane), Sister Mary Ignatia (Mary Fitzpatrick), and Sister Clara (Margaret Conway).

1848

• By the close of 1848, the Dominican Community numbered seven women.
   
• Wisconsin becomes 30th state in the Union.
   
• Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is elected president of a new French republic.
   
• The First Women’s Rights Convention is held in Seneca Falls, New York.
   
• Karl Marx and Frederich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto.

1849

• When three of the seven Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters leave, the remaining four nearly decide to disband, but the decision of the youngest member, Sister Mary Rachel (Ellen Conway) holds the community together.
   
• The Gold Rush in California spurs rapid growth of Pacific coast cities, including San Francisco, now home of the “Forty-Niners.”

1854-1855
John W. Ashmead, a Philadelphia lawyer, impressed by the beauty of the area, purchases a wooded lakeside site from Governor Farwell. On it, he builds Edgewood Villa, designed by a young Samuel Chase. It boasts broad verandas, white columns, and soft yellow paint. On either side of the front hall were large rooms with long French windows. At the end of the hall is an imposing stairway. Ashmead’s wife dies shortly thereafter, and grief-stricken, he decides to sell his home.

1856
Samuel W. Marshall of Milwaukee, co-founder of M&I Bank, buys the mansion, and to it adds arbors covered with rare vines and trellises mounded with roses. He takes special pride in his gardens and entertains numerous guests, including the victorious General William Tecumseh Sherman who comes to visit in 1865, after his scorching Civil War campaigns through Georgia and South Carolina.

1860

• The Pony Express is established, with the first run going from Missouri to California.
   
• Abraham Lincoln is elected president with only 40% of the popular vote.

1861
The Civil War begins. U.S. Congressman Cadwallader Washburn enlists in the Union Army and after a few months is promoted to Major General. He serves at Vicksburg with General Grant and remains in the service until the end of the war, when he returns to his home in LaCrosse.

1863
The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect, freeing nearly four million slaves.

1864

• A large stone barn and carriage house with servants' quarters is added to the Edgewood property by Marshall.
   
• On a wintry February day, Father Samuel goes to the bedside of a dying parishioner; upon his return, Mazzuchelli develops pneumonia and dies a week later.

1865
The Civil War ends. Lincoln is assassinated.

1866
Washburn founds his mills in Minneapolis, the largest operation west of Buffalo, NY.

1867
Washburn is reelected to the U.S. Congress.

1869
The Suez Canal and the U.S. transcontinental railroad are completed.

1871

• Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters come to Madison to establish St. Regina Academy, located near the capitol at the corner of West Washington Avenue and South Henry Street.
   
• Cadwallader C. Washburn is elected Governor of Wisconsin and moves to Madison where he is inaugurated in January 1872.

1873
Mrs. Marshall, a devout Catholic, decides that the Edgewood home is located too far from church and the roads are too often impassable. The Marshalls move to Milwaukee, and Governor Washburn acquires Edgewood Villa.

Washburn takes great pride in the grape arbors and the trout ponds which he adds and enjoys rowing about Lake Wingra in his little blue boat. As a gentleman farmer, he raises Cotswold sheep. His daughter, Jeannette recalled that, “although my father did not spend a great deal of time at Edgewood, as his business called him away frequently, he always was glad to get back and enjoyed the place greatly...When he bought the place, my father fully expected to be re-elected, and so intended to make Edgewood his home for a number of years.”

However, Washburn loses his second gubernatorial bid and decides to reassert his efforts into the development and expansion of his flour mills in Minneapolis. He moves back to his home in LaCrosse, where he also had a lumber business, and occasionally staying at Edgewood.

1875
Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone and people have been talking ever since.

1878
In May, an explosion occurs, completely destroying Washburn’s Minneapolis mills and killing fourteen employees. The Saint Paul Daily Globe of May 3 reports that “ the roof of the Washburn A mill rose hundreds of feet into the air, followed instantly by a sheet of flame.” After two years of litigation with insurance companies and a severe decline in his own health, Washburn succeeds in rebuilding the mill even larger and better.

1879
Thomas Edison invents the electric light bulb, just one of the inventions which earned him 1,093 patents.

1880
Washburn, Crosby & Company flour products win the gold, silver, and bronze medals of honor at the Millers’ International Exhibition. “Gold Medal” Flour was first sold under that brand name in August.

1881
Former Governor Washburn decides to give away his Madison estate.  Accounts maintain that he offers it to the Sisters only after being turned down by the University, the city of Madison, and the State, all of whom supposedly claim it is too remote, being two miles from town. The St. Clara Convent annals state, however, that  "we must ever be grateful to ...Rev. Pettit, pastor, and Major Nicodemus, Dean of the Military School at the University... who by their loyalty to the Sisters at Madison and devoted praise of the Sisters' work, did much to influence the Governor's choice of a religious order to whom the donation should be made."

Although the reasons for his final choice of recipient are uncertain, in May, he deeds his 55-acre estate to the Sisters with the stipulation that it always be used for educational purposes.

When discussions are completed, he gives a tour of Edgewood to Mother Emily Powers, Sister Magdalen Madigan from Sinsinawa Mound, and Sister Mary Alexius Duffy, head of the St. Regina Academy in Madison, pointing out the orchard and other trees imported from Japan, Spain, and elsewhere. He also graciously gives the Sisters his little rowboat which they immediately christen “The Colden.” Very shortly afterward however, the boat disappears, only to be seen later at someone else’s dock wearing a new coat of paint! In September, the Sisters open St. Regina Academy at Edgewood.

1882
Washburn writes from Switzerland, “I am much pleased to hear that you are progressing so well at Edgewood, and that your school promises to be popular and useful. The place is beautiful and I never had a doubt but that you would make a success of it and that it would be no dishonor to me.”

1883
Cassie Matthews is the first student to graduate from St. Regina Academy at Edgewood.

1885
Louis Sullivan builds the world’s tallest building — a “sky scraper” — in Chicago, setting a new style for urban architecture.

1889
The bicycle is introduced to the United States and bicycle clubs begin to spring up.

1890
The “Billion Dollar Congress” gets its name for being the first to pass a budget of that amount.

1893
Construction of a new four-story building begins in June and is nearly completed when on November 16 a fire breaks out on the floor of the mansion and eventually spreads to the new building. Two young children die of suffocation in the fire, and a third dies the following day of smoke inhalation. Sister Bertha McCarthy, collapses while trying to carry several children out of the building. Both buildings are completely destroyed, leaving only the carriage house and several small outbuildings standing.

A reporter for the Madison Democrat writes the following day that “The matter of rebuilding is in doubt...but it is more than probable that the valuable property will not be relinquished, and that ultimately another noble educational institution will be found there.”

1894

• Though the brick building is unredeemable, the stone walls of the colonial mansion are pulled down and the material sorted. The good stone is sold for $30.00 and the remaining crushed stone is used to make driveways. Construction of a new brick building, identical to the one which burned, begins again in the spring over the old site.
   

• The basement of the carriage house (now Marshall Hall) is made into a boiler room and vegetable cellar, while the first floor becomes a bakery, sewing room and laundry. The laundry has stationary tubs and washing continues to be done by hand — still, it’s an improvement over the rusty, greasy, black cook stove and copper boiler of earlier days!

1895

• In September, the school reopens with a new name, Sacred Heart Academy. The Madison Democrat covers the opening gala and reports, “The appointments of the beautiful new academy and the handsome and delightful grounds elicited the admiration of every visitor, and the cordial hospitality of the Sisters won for them a host of friends.”
   
• The Supreme Court declares income tax unconstitutional; the tax is eventually adopted with passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913.

1896

• A telephone is installed in Sacred Heart Academy and electric bells and fixtures are put in.
   
• Henry Ford builds his first car.
   

• The Olympic Games of ancient Greece are revived and held at Athens with contestants from 13 nations.

1897

• An extension to Madison’s trolley service is added, bringing cars all the way to Wingra Park, a new suburb.
   
• The Academy purchases a refrigerator.

1899
Mail is delivered to Edgewood by a postal carrier for the first time, eliminating the three-mile drive to the central post office near the capitol.

1902
The second floor of the carriage house is remodeled, converting the hayloft into a storage room and creating new rooms for “the men” who helped the Sisters manage the farm chores. After hot and cold water pipes are installed, a gasoline powered engine is purchased to drive the water pumps when the windmill is not working. Three years later, Edgewood is linked into the municipal water system.

1903

• Entertainment and instruction for the boarding students at the Academy are aided by the purchase of a magic lantern at the exorbitant price of $80.00.
   
• The Wright brothers fly the first airplane at Kitty Hawk.

1905
Mr. Henry Vilas offers a 25-acre lakeshore parcel to the Madison Park and Pleasure Drive Association and promises $30,000 to have the marsh dredged on the condition that a continuous drive around Lake Wingra be obtained. Others who live on Wingra pledge $10,000 more toward the project. Mother Emily and the council allow the use of a strip of land along the lake with the condition that the Association build and maintain a fence and cut all dead trees into firewood for the Sisters.

1908

• An additional wing is built on Sacred Heart Academy, providing new dining rooms, a kitchen and a community room, plus five music rooms, and some other classrooms.
   
• Henry Ford produces the affordable black Model T, setting into motion the wheels of mass manufacturing and the advent of the assembly line in 1913.

1909
Explorer Robert Peary is the first person to reach the North Pole and plant the U.S. flag.

1912
The Remington Typewriter gold medal for achievement is won by Sacred Heart Academy student Miss Josephine Kelly.

1913
Jeanette Garr Washburn Kelsey’s biographical sketch of her father is delivered at a Washburn banquet. She also sends a piece of armorial glass from a church window in Bengeworth, England where her father’s family, the Washbornes had lived. The church, built in the 16th century, had been demolished in 1872, but the glass had been saved in an attic and was not rediscovered until 1906. A larger piece is sent to the National Museum in Washington, D.C. and the smaller fragment, bearing the family crest, is sent to Sacred Heart Academy.

1915
Elizabeth Marshall sends a bronze tablet “to be placed on the old barn...” in honor of her “beloved father, Samuel Marshall. May the nobleness of his Christian character be an inspiration to us all.”

1916

• Prioress Mother Samuel writes that three days of preparation be made for Rosary Sunday, begging God through the intercession of the Blessed Mother to have pity on the warring nations of Europe.
   
• Albert Einstein creates a stir in the physics community with his theory of relativity.

1917

• The United States enters World War I by declaring war on Germany.
   
• The Bolshevik revolution in Russia brings Nikolai Lenin to power. Communist rule will last until another uprising in 1991.
   
• Edgewood students provide volunteer service to the Red Cross, knitting sweaters and wristlets, making pajamas and shot bags, and folding surgical dressings.
   
• The school catalog is not printed in order to save paper for the war effort; instead, slips of paper with updated information are inserted in old editions.
   
• Jeannette Washburn Kelsey sends medals to Edgewood which are awarded each year to different girls for various distinctions such as longevity at the school, loyalty to the school and its ideals, and academic performance.

1918
School has to be closed for a month due to an exceptionally virulent Spanish influenza epidemic — as many as forty students are sick at any given time. When school reopens, a shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes is erected near Marshall Hall to commemorate the Edgewood community’s gratitude that no child or Sister died although the flu killed thousands.

1919

• The Madison Women’s Club marks the bird effigy mound, located in the area between what will eventually be DeRicci Hall and the Oscar Rennebohm Library. The mound is one of about 14 that remain on the property today.
   
• The 18th Amendment prohibits the sale of alcoholic beverages.
   
• The 19th Amendment grants women the right to vote.

1924

• Madison parents and pastors support the Sisters' plan to build a new high school at Edgewood. Boys are to be admitted to the school for classes, but only girls are accepted for boarding.
   
• Native Americans are granted United States citizenship.

1925

• Mother Samuel Coughlin works with architect Albert Kelsey to finalize plans for the new building. Kelsey, the grandson of Cadwallader Washburn, designs a building with a magnificent tower, decorated with expensive terra cotta tiles and with doorways surrounded by statues and relief portraits.

1926
October 15, bids for construction are opened and C.H. Findorff comes in with the lowest, $449,601 — more than had been anticipated. The designs are scaled back, and the tower construction is "put on hold." November 4, groundbreaking for the new building is held.