History

Ingham University
Woodward Memorial Library
Woodward Family

Corner of Main Street & Wolcott Street

Ingham University
1837-1892

Ingham University was the first university exclusively for women in the United States. Emily and Marietta Ingham founded it in 1837. Emily Ingham was born on March 5, 1811 in Saybrook Connecticut. She and her sister, Marietta traveled to LeRoy to do missionary work in the West.

LeRoy Female Seminary opened on May 3, 1837 on the corner of what is now Wolcott Street and Trigon Park. There were 41 pupils in the Primary Department and 76 in the higher classes that first summer.

Miss Emily Ingham married Col. Phineas Staunton in 1847 and erected the cottage as their home. It was a Gothic Revival, board and batten house. Eventually it was cut in two sections, moved to Lincoln Ave. and exists as two houses -- #19 and #27.

In 1870 Mrs. Staunton erected the Staunton Art Conservatory as a memorial to her husband who died at Quito, South America in 1867 while on a scientific expedition. This building housed a large collection of stuffed rare birds and natural objects that had been collected in South America by her husband. The second floor gallery featured many paintings by Phineas Staunton.

In 1875, the Art College was added to the Conservatory through the generosity of Mrs. Julia Ingham Frothingham. This two-story building contained studios for painting with skylights and moveable screens and similar studios for drawing.

The final building added was the Alumnae Dormitory, formally opened in 1887. The building was brick with two stories, and a high attic. There were 29 sleeping and 2 reception rooms with a bathroom on each floor.

The last year the school was in existence (1891) the buildings consisted of a University Hall, Boarding Hall, Alumnae Dormitory, the Cottage, the Staunton Conservatory of Art and Science and the College of Art.

Financial difficulties led to the demise of Ingham University. After a little more than 50 years of existence, the charter was revoked, the equipment sold at auction, and most of the buildings demolished.

The Art Conservatory was the last building to be demolished. In 1929 it was dismantled and the stone used to build the Woodward Memorial Library.

Woodward Memorial Library

Inside Library - 1930

On May 29, 1930 the doors of the Woodward Memorial Library opened to the community. The public library was a gift to the people of LeRoy from the five children of Orator and Cora Woodward in memory of their parents. The library was the first free public library in the community; previous libraries were by subscription. Built on the site of the Staunton Conservatory and Arts Building of Ingham University (1837-1891), the library was designed in the English Colonial style using stones from the conservatory.

The Woodward gift included the building and all equipment as well as money to purchase books and endowment funds to help support the library operation. Currently, the income from these funds helps maintain the building and purchase library materials.

The Woodward family had been active business people in LeRoy, and a large part of their fortune came from the manufacture and marketing of Jell-O. The family's generosity aided many LeRoy institutions but perhaps none so much or for so long as the Woodward Memorial Library.

The library was originally built with a small auditorium for community meetings, a museum area and kitchenette on the lower level, and the circulation desk, reference area, reading room, children's reading room and story hour room on the main floor. Gradually, the lower lever was changed to accommodate the children's room and workroom, and the elevator was added in 1988. The library is unusual in that it serves both the school and the community.

Woodward Family

Orator Frank Woodward was not quite 6 years old in 1856 when the Confederate States of America was formed. He was the son of an itinerant book peddler and his father died at the age of 43 fighting as a soldier in the Civil War. Orator grew up in the Village of LeRoy. He quit school at the age of 12, deciding that he would rather earn a living than go to school. He worked as a stable boy and as a footman for an attorney. At the age of 13, he began inventing things to sell. His first success was a medicated nest egg that killed the lice that plagued hens as they were laying and hatching eggs.

With the money from this success, he married Cora Talmage in 1882. Their family immediately grew with the first of four sons born nine months later. After Ernest, five more children were born, Orator Frank Jr., Paul Wilbur, Eleanore Emily, Donald, and Helen.

Orator continued to invent and market proprietary medicines, such as Sherman’s Headache Remedy and Raccoon Corn Plasters. His biggest success before Jell-O was Grain-O, a roasted cereal substitute for coffee and tea.

In 1899, Orator paid Pearl B. Wait $450 for the Jell-O formula, and a year later the product first appeared under the Genesee Pure Food Company label. Two years later sales of Jell-O amounted to $250,000. Orator did not live long to enjoy his fortune. He suffered a slight stroke, his condition deteriorated, and he died in January 1906. He was 49 years old.

Cora Talmage Woodward was born in 1860 and grew up in Pavilion Center. She married Orator in 1882. When her husband died in 1906 she took over as president of Genesee Pure Foods Company working with her son Ernest who later succeeded her as president. When she retired at the age of 57, she lived in Buffalo and then in Pasadena, California. She died in 1923.

     One pastime Cora enjoyed was collecting books and when she died she possessed one of the finest private libraries in the country. Cora was very generous in the community. She purchased most of the land for the original athletic field behind the LeRoy public school; she paid for the land and the architect to build the Municipal Building at the corner of West Main and Clay streets. She also supported the Methodist Church and
donated a pipe organ and established a bequest for its upkeep.

The Children:
     Ernest Leroy was eldest of the six Woodward children and dominated the Woodwards of LeRoy. After finishing school, he worked for his father as a private secretary and took over management of Genesee Pure Foods Company when his father died. He married Edith Hartwell in 1903. Ernest and Edith had only one son, Talmadge. Ernest was an outdoorsman. He loved to hunt and fish and was an astute businessman. He weathered the 1929 Wall Street stock crash better than most. Ernest and his four remaining siblings decided to build a memorial to their parents. Possibly because of Cora’s love of books they decided on a community library.
     Orator Frank was the epitome of the playboy in the Woodward family and his sudden death is still a mystery. The second son of Orator and Cora, he was born in 1884 and died by suicide or by accident in 1952 when he jumped or fell five stories from a luxury suite at the Hotel Sheraton on East Avenue in Rochester. He married and divorced twice; both marriages cost him an enormous amount of money to end. With his first wife, Persis Earle Davis, he produced two children, O.F. Jr. and Ruth. His second wife, Mary Trask produced a son Ernest.
     Paul Wilbur, the third son was born in 1886. He died at the age of 23. Not much is known of Paul except that he contacted pneumonia while visiting friends in Annapolis and died.
     Eleanore Emily, the eldest of the two daughters was born in 1889. She married Dr. John A. Vietor in 1913 and they had two children, John Vietor and Mrs. Edward Townsend.
     Donald Woodward was the youngest of the sons and was neither the philanthropist that his older brother Ernest was nor the playboy his brother Frank was. Donald’s passion was aviation. He was the first person to step from an airplane on LeRoy soil. In 1928, Donald converted 150 acres of farmland into an airport. The Donald Woodward Airport opened in October 1928 attracting what police officials said at the time was the largest crowd ever assembled in Genesee County – 60,000 for the three-day event. Don also built the golf course on East Main, now the LeRoy Country Club. In 1917 he joined with J. Leonard Heimlich as equal partners in forming the LeRoy Lime and Crushed Stone Corporation, which became one of the outstanding producers of crushed stone in the state. Donald sired four children and adopted two. He married three times.
     Helen Woodward Rivas was the “baby” of the family, the sixth child of Orator and Cora. Helen married and divorced twice and kept the last name of her second husband. She was a philanthropist like her brother, but it was done quietly and often anonymously. One of her major gifts was to endow the R Wing in the Psychiatric Department at Strong Memorial Hospital. Besides her residences in LeRoy, she had residences or had lived in Florida, Arizona, New York City and Pinehurst, North Carolina. She had one daughter, Helen Constance (Mrs. Walter F. Stafford).

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