Vassar Quarterly - Fall 2017 - 31

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Group portrait, Karl Rabe

Main, the weather, and the difficulties of travel to
and from the college. She writes about staying at
Vassar over the winter holidays along with some of
the other girls because the journey to Ohio was too
difficult during the winter months.
Glidden was the president and valedictorian of her
class. Though not named by the "Occasional Correspondent" to the New York Times, it was undoubtedly
Glidden described in this paragraph in the lengthy
article about that year's commencement activities in
"Vassar College. A Woman's Impressions," published
in the June 27, 1869 edition: "The valedictory completed the day, and was delivered by the President of the
Philalethean, her topic being 'Culture a Means, not an
End.' She urged that mere intellectual adornment be
not accepted as a desideratum of an educational system,
but rather that symmetry of character which must
grow out of the grand possibilities of a recognized
individuality. She closed with an eloquent appeal to
her class to ever honor their Alma Mater."
After graduation, Glidden returned home to Portsmouth for a time before going to medical school at
Michigan State University in Ann Arbor (we don't know
whether she ever actually practiced medicine) and
then marrying Frank Houts, a lawyer, of Warrensburg,
Missouri, in July of 1874. The year 1875 finds them
living in Milwaukee where their first two children
were born-Elizabeth in 1875 and Catherine in 1877.
It's at this point that things get particularly
interesting. We know from an account published over
50 years later by Bev Bunce, Elizabeth's son and
Glidden's grandson, that Houts moved the family to
Decatur, TX, to take up ranching. "Forsaking the legal
profession for a turn at Texas ranching, he was one of
the first three men to import Hereford cattle into that
state to replace the wild longhorn, and he is credited
with being the first man to stretch a barbed-wire fence
in Texas," she wrote.

Researchers on the history project: genealogist D.B. Brown,
Dean Emeritus of Students; Vassar Historian Colton Johnson,
Professor Emeritus of English; and Heather Kettlewell '18.

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The six students in the class of 1868 who called themselves Maria Mitchell's "hexagon."
Clockwise from the top left, Helen Storke, Mary Watson Whitney, Mary Reybold, Sarah Glazier,
Clara Eaton Glover, and Sarah louise Blatchley

In 1882, Houts made one of the last cattle drives from Texas to Kansas on the
Chisholm Trail. Glidden, three daughters, and their English governess, Miss
Allison, made the trip with him-and Glidden kept a diary of the trip, generously
excerpted in Bunce's article. She describes the food, the cowboys, encounters with
Native Americans, crossing flooded rivers, and storms. "The tent blew over on us,
and we had to lie on the wet ground, and all the hands were riding herd and singing
to prevent a stampede," she wrote. "When daylight finally came, the cook saw our
plight and let us up to dry around his fire. Never has a hot breakfast tasted so good."
The next news we have of Glidden comes under this tragic headline six years
after the cattle drive: "SUICIDED. Sad Death of Mrs. Annie Glidden Houts.
Mournful Ending of a Pure and Beautiful Life." This unusually detailed obituary
describes Glidden's "bad health, which at times affected her mind." According
to the article, she had twice previously attempted suicide and had been sent to
Chicago for treatment. When she returned, she "seemed in better health than
ever. ... For two or three days she was in good spirits but grew despondent on the
departure of her husband for this city [Fort Worth] on business."
What led to such a tragic end? According to the obituary, "Mrs. Houts was a
great social favorite, and her home was said to be one of the happiest in the State."
It's unlikely that we will ever know the answer, but it seems clear that Glidden
suffered from a mental illness, and such conditions are even now inadequately
understood and often stigmatized.
Like so many of her Vassar classmates, Glidden earned the descriptor "pioneer"-
fully equal to the challenges of a rigorous education, eager to push the envelope of
social conventions, willing to pull up stakes and leave family and friends behind for
a life on the frontier-but she was also a creature, and a victim, of her time and place.
Want to know more about the lives of Vassar's earliest students? Visit the Vassar Encyclopedia
(vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu) and search "first-students."
VA S S A R Q U A R T E R lY

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http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vassar Quarterly - Fall 2017
