By George Edmonston Jr.

Margaret Snell as she looked at the beginning of her career. Picture from The Orange and Black, 1938. Snell upon her retirement in 1908. Picture from Adventures of a Home Economist, 1969.

When Margaret Comstock Snell passed quietly away of heart failure on Aug. 23, 1923, Oregon State University lost a giant, one of the truly great faculty members in the history of the university. Educated as a medical doctor and recruited to Corvallis by Board of Regents member Wallis Nash and his wife Louisa, Dr. Snell established a record of achievement few at OSU have equaled before or since. Respected and admired by everyone who knew her, her greatest legacy was in establishing at OSU the first college of home economics in the West. She did so with a beginning class of 24 students, no assistants, almost no budget, and having the use of a single classroom, that on the third floor in the northwest corner of what is today Benton Hall. She was born to Quaker parents near the town of Livingston, New York, on Nov. 11, 1843. Her father, Richard Snell, was the son of an English immigrant. Throughout life he enjoyed telling people he once helped survey the route for the Erie Canal. Her mother was a native of Adrian, Michigan, and died shortly after giving birth to her eighth child. Her name was Margaret Comstock, the same one she gave to the daughter who would one day become a legendary home economist in Oregon. After her family moved to Iowa, daughter Margaret attended Cedar Grove Academy, then graduated from Grinnell College, which, incidentally, is the alma mater of current OSU President Paul Risser. After teaching from 1872-1879 in Iowa City, Miss Snell moved to Benicia, California, to establish a school for young women, the Snell Seminary. In this endeavor, she joined into a partnership with two sisters and a brother.

After her sisters moved to Oakland, Margaret became interested in medicine and in 1883, was admitted to the medical school at Boston University, where she graduated with honors in 1886. Her field of specialty was homeopathy or household economy.

Returning to Oakland to begin her medical practice, Snell also resumed teaching at her family’s Seminary. Shortly after, she is introduced to Louisa Nash of Corvallis, temporarily living in the area to be close to an invalid son undergoing special treatment. Through Louisa, Margaret Snell becomes acquainted with Louisa’s husband Wallis, a powerful member of the OSU Board of Regents (see Part 9 in this series for a discussion of the life of the Nash family). Over the next six months, Nash and Snell would exchange about a dozen letters and at some point, Wallis begun to suggest to Margaret that her future might be in Corvallis and that she might seal the deal if she were to enroll in a cooking class and have that credential at the ready if someone should ask. Someone would, as we will shortly see.

In a letter back to her husband, Louisa gave this description of the respect Margaret Snell enjoyed during her days teaching at the Snell Seminary:

"That she is well appreciated in her sister’s school was plain from the fact of two of the teachers saying to me, ‘I hope Dr. Margaret will not be enticed away from us for I don’t know what we should all do without her.’ "

Snell is often given credit for not only establishing the first home economics college in the West but also in coming up with the idea. The former is true, the latter is not. The idea itself belongs to Wallis and Louisa, who knew that several other land grant colleges "back East" had already established similar curricula. These were Iowa State, Kansas State, the University of Illinois and the Dakota Agricultural College in Brookings, South Dakota. The first three had their programs underway by the mid-1870’s, the Dakota school by 1884. In 1880, Illinois discontinued its home economics college and kept it shut down for 20 years. Thus, OSU is the fourth oldest land-grant institution in the nation continuously offering work in home economics.

Women had always been a part of the student body at Corvallis College and the State Agricultural College, two early names for OSU. The school’s Board of Regents, of which Nash was a member of the Executive Committee, was always looking for ways for providing better education for young women through expanded course offerings and so took an almost instant liking to Nash’s idea for establishing a program in household economy. There was, however, some opposition to Snell getting the job. Letters from Nash to Snell show the reason for the opposition. "Various colleagues of mine on the Board," Nash shared with her candidly, "are somewhat tender on the Lady Doctor idea. You know how much reasonless prejudice exists." The controversy first popped up at a December 1888, Regents meeting, where someone suggested Snell might not be the right person because she did not have a "certificate from a school of cookery.’ "

And so, with Wallis Nash pushing her to move quickly, Snell was on her way back to New York in January 1889, to enroll at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to learn how to cook. That done, on June 26 Nash wired Snell that she had the job as "Professor of Household Economy and Hygiene." Salary, $1,000, making her one of the highest paid faculty members on campus. On August 30, she arrived in the Albany/Corvallis area and made an immediate favorable impression.

During Dr. Snell’s first year at Oregon State, there were 24 women enrolled in the Domestic Economy Course, as compared to 43 in Agriculture, 12 in the Mechanical Course, six graduate students, and 67 in the Preparatory Department. Almost immediately, women studying under Dr. Snell were seen to sport long dark dresses, white caps, and wide aprons. From new laboratories established by Snell came the constant smell of food. Enrollment increased every year.

Two of Dr. Snell's laboratories, cooking at top, sewing at left. Both pictures from The Orange, 1909.

Rather than use her medical degree to chase pain and disease, Snell used her classroom at OSU to embark on a new approach to her profession, one built on the philosophy that the nobler cause was to teach people how to stay well, rather than treat them once they’re sick.

From the September 1923 and June 1924 issues of OSU’s alumni magazine, The OAC Alumnus, we get the following description of Margaret Snell from her contemporaries:

"For 18 years she put her whole soul into the work of developing a course that would teach women the fundamentals of happy living through an understanding of the human body and the relation of outside influences. She served during the administrations of five presidents. Cooking and sewing were the basic subjects she taught, but she surrounded her students with the beautiful, talked of high ideals and quoted Shakespeare, the Bible and Emerson, of whom she claimed to be a personal acquaintance. She hung the laboratory walls with reproductions of master paintings. Little by little, her department grew, until, in 1907, when she gave up teaching, over 200 girls were registered in her classes. In that time, she had but one assistant.

"She was familiarly called the "apostle of fresh air" by her friends. ‘Open the windows and let in a little of God’s air’ was her frequent expression, and her life exemplified that thought. She believed with Emerson that the acquisition of some form of manual skill and the practice of some form of manual labor are essential elements of culture. Her ideal has been to carry culture and education into all phases of industrial work, to dignify and ennoble labor.

Miss Snell was an idealist, a visionary. All the few who have stood at the outposts of progress have been visionaries. Her dream was of a new womanhood; her method of realization...education. That Miss Snell chose this new line of endeavor is proof of her independence of thought, and her fairness in carrying out her convictions. The beaten path had no allure for her. Those of us who sat in her classes learned far less of cooking, far less of sewing, far less of special hygiene, than we learned of ‘idealism and its importance to daily life’. While our hands were occupied with the practical duties of the course, our minds were kept on lofty thoughts."

Her students also remember that "fresh air" was only one of several "laws" Snell suggested for how young women could achieve the ideal lifestyle. The others included a well-balanced diet, plenty of exercise, a cold bath each morning, and proper clothing.

Her idea of what was "proper" was "loose fitting and hanging from the shoulders." These "commandments" for health, Snell emphasized to the young women in her charge, were the never-failing elixir for youth, and according to those who knew her, Snell practiced what she preached. One alumna remembered: "her (own) personal appearance was proof of its efficiency."

During many of her years on faculty, Snell also had charge of Alpha Hall, an early women’s dorm. For a time, she actually lived in the Hall with her students so that she could focus her attention on education for homemaking both in class and in a campus living situation. For laboratory equipment, Snell used a wood burning stove, a couple of sauce pans and two sewing machines. Snell hated greasy foods, thought that people consumed way too much of them and was constantly encouraging women everywhere to "throw away your fry pans." If you were invited to her home for a meal, it generally consisted of cookies or a fruit salad and a glass of milk.

And yet Margaret Snell knew that preparation for homemaking consisted of much more than cooking and sewing. In a book she co-authored with Kenneth Munford in 1969 (Adventures of a Home Economist), Ava Milam, herself a legendary OSU home economics dean, remembered this about Snell’s unique approach to home economics education:

"She (also) passed on to her girls an appreciation of good art and literature and the importance of human relations. Her graduates have told me that after they had placed their little saucepans on the st

ove for cooking, they would pick up their hand sewing and while they stitched away, Miss Snell would read to them. She read from the Bible, Shakespeare, Emerson, Tennyson, and Byron, and discussed the problems raised by the authors. These readings and poetry (which) she encouraged them to memorize had a lasting influence on her students.

Snell organized instruction (in what she would eventually call "household science") into eight courses, beginning with general hygiene..."since good health," she would constantly harp to her students, "is acknowledged as one of the prime factors of success in life."

Next came courses in sewing, dressmaking, and cookery. Advanced students took classes in etiquette, the art of entertaining, the art of conversation, and aesthetics. The eighth course, something Snell called "Domestic Lectures," was reserved for the third term of the senior year.

Milam and Munford conclude: "Through this instruction, Miss Snell inspired her girls to sense the significance of the home and the influence of the wife and mother on the quality, character, and success of the entire family."

Herself a very hygienic person, Snell was tall and robust, with a striking appearance. Her hair was prematurely gray and she often wore it in a knot atop her head. Her clothes were loose fitting (in a day of corsets) and comfortable and she could always be seen wearing low-heeled shoes. She could walk for miles just for the sheer joy of being outside in "God’s fresh air."

In 1903, at 60 years of age, Snell announced that she might like to retire but OSU did not find a replacement for her until 1908. After retiring, she devoted her remaining years to the study of literature and to civic affairs around Corvallis. Many of the white birch and maple trees just west of the business district downtown, particularly along the blocks surrounding the Central Park neighborhood, were all purchased, planted and cared for by Snell.

Apparently as a hobby, and as a source of retirement income in an era when there were no pensions for university faculty, Snell designed and constructed houses and apartments at several locations in Corvallis. One of her houses she named "Tento," and built it with the idea that it would have a roll-away canvas roof to let in lots of fresh air, like a tent with non-removable walls. Most of her friends and neighbors felt the idea was not very practical for weather in the Pacific Northwest and they were probably right. In any case, her construction projects were a reflection of her eccentric personality. Instead of having front entrances open to the dust and noise of the passing street, Snell designed front doors with privacy in mind, always having them open into a shaded inner courtyard. Windows were protected from the weather. Her properties were located at 865 Jackson Street and 2127 Monroe Street. The latter buildings can still be seen and are the only surviving examples that reflect Margaret Snell’s philosophy about what constitutes the ideal living space.

She never married. At her request, she was cremated in Portland and her ashes spread underneath her favorite rose bush on property which at the time included the Episcopal Church but which now is the location of the building and offices of the Gazette-Times. The 1909 Orange, forerunner to the Beaver yearbook, is dedicated to Margaret Comstock Snell.

During her last year in the classroom, Snell supervised the relocation of her department to the newly constructed Waldo Hall, built on ground that had once contained the house Wallis Nash and his family moved into when they first arrived in Corvallis.

Over the years, several campus buildings have been named in Snell’s honor, the latest of which is directly west and across the street from the McAlexander Fieldhouse. It is also known as MU East.

Next week: The 11-Month Presidency of H. B. Miller (1896-97)