Preserving The Memory of Ward-Belmont
- Seth Thorpe
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
Walking from her parents’ house to campus, Alice Ann Barge looked forward to attending Ward-Belmont College as a teenager.
Surrounded by music, arithmetic and sweet treats, she hustled from class to class in the Belmont Mansion.
In her free time, she would run around the rose garden and spend time in one of the 10 campus clubhouses with her high school friends.
By the end of the day, she’d head back home as the older girls prepared for dinner in their corset dresses and white gloves.
But she didn’t care.
She knew the next day would look just as exciting.
Barge reflects fondly on her Ward-Belmont days but sharing her memories with those friends becomes harder by the day as they pass away.
At 98 years old, Barge partners with Belmont University to keep the memory of her alma-mater alive and honors her peers whose lives helped define hers.
“It keeps me in touch with my life,” Barge said.
From the perspective of her blue and wool high-back chair, she can look around and see many of the photos and books in her living room rooting back to Ward-Belmont.
Even a skinny, clear glass flower vase she owns wears the words of her school’s graduation song “The Belles of Ward-Belmont.”
“The belles of Ward-Belmont, oh hear they are calling; the old girls, the new girls to meet thee again...”
That melody that Barge can still happily hum started forming in 1890, when Susan L. Heron and Ida E. Hood opened Belmont College for Young Women.
After the two women retired, it soon became Ward-Belmont in 1913 after merging with a women’s school called Ward-Seminary.
With 11 different majors, horseback riding and a swimming pool, both the high school and college women got challenged academically and physically.
“You had to be able to swim the pool and back before you could graduate,” said Barge.
With it being a women’s school in the early 1900s, restrictions came in droves.
The women living on campus had a curfew, strict clothing rules from dresses to gym clothes and boys who visited campus were personally vetted by a butler beforehand.
Still, Barge giggles when recalling how her friends would find ways to break the rules.
“We had one girl who would climb out the window of history class, and Ms. Hayes was so blind she wouldn’t notice that the window was open,” she said.
She best remembers the ceremonies like May Day, where the women would wear long, white dresses while circling a pole with ribbons to celebrate the beginning of summer.
Not long after Barge graduated, the school fell into financial trouble.
Offering to take on its debt, the Tennessee Baptist Convention acquired the land in a deal which upset both faculty and alumni.
Once the news got out, many alumni and faculty pulled the money together to buy the land back, but nothing could reverse the sale.
Becoming history overnight, the memories of Ward-Belmont and its former faculty moved to Green Hills to open Harpeth Hall – an all-girls preparatory school.
Although Ward-Belmont went away, the women who graduated from the school continued to carry its spirit.
Many women like Barge went on to finish their education at schools like Vanderbilt University to become teachers, entertainers and entrepreneurs.
Mark Brown, the former executive director of the Belmont Mansion for over 30 years, worked with many Ward-Belmont women and saw their diverse skillset in action.
“So many of them were majorly active in the community and had the ability to take over and manage their husbands’ businesses if something happened. They may have been managing the businesses all along,” Brown said.
Even if some women were busy managing businesses or leading busy lives, they would find the time to make their Ward-Belmont reunions.
Walking back into the Mansion that shaped them for life, the women yelled with excitement at the annual sight of their old friends.
Inside their old stomping grounds, the women ate ribbon sandwiches, chicken salad and pecan bars and shared the memories of sneaking into the kitchen at night for a late-night snack.
Barge said some of them would go up to the podium and talk about their memories, before bowing in prayer then sang “The Belles of Ward-Belmont” once in unison while crossing their arms to hold hands.
The Ward-Belmont luncheons thrived with joy since the 1960s, but old age started making the reunions more difficult to execute by the year.
“It was coming to an end because it got to the point where someone had to bring them,” said Brown.
“Half would be Ward-Belmont, then half would be their daughter or granddaughter that brought them, then you started seeing the caregivers and nurses bringing them in.”
After the COVID pandemic in 2020, the reunions officially ended.
Director of Donor Relations Holly Newsome started working on campus when these reunions ran strong but had to find ways to stay connected with the original women.
“We were able to go to some of their communities have lunch with them, and take them flowers,” Newsome said.
Despite those successful connections, it became difficult over time to connect with Ward-Belmont alumnae because of many factors.
Recently, Newsome started to reach out to former Ward-Belmont alumni listed in Belmont’s database.
Not many responded.
“I’m afraid time is slowly taking away our Ward-Belmont population,” Newsome said.
For the women whose numbers didn’t go straight to voicemail, caregivers or children would inform Newsome the elderly women passed on or weren’t able to recall their days on campus anymore.
Barge picked up the phone and despite health problems, she gave glowing permission for a visit.
A few days later, she opened her front door by herself to greet Newsome.
At the door, Newsome handed Barge flowers that looked like the ones from the rose garden she used to run around.
The smell of those roses that now sit in her Ward-Belmont vase are many of the small touches that remind her of how much she loves her school and how much she misses those times.
“I’d love to go back and do it again,” Barge said.
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This article was written by Seth Thorpe