Dr. Grady Early, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, taught math and computer science at Texas State University for 29 years, serving briefly as interim chair of the newly-formed Computer Science department. After retirement, Early began researching his family history and gained some familiarity with various research tools: ancestry, familysearch, newspapers, San Marcos Record archives, findagrave and many more. This made it easy for him to segue into the histories of non-family members, which is how he began to write a story about Southwest Texas Normal in San Marcos, also known as San Marcos Normal, which is now Texas State University. This series will highlight the first staff at Southwest Texas Normal.
“Maud Margaret Shipe was a methodical, psychological, physicist; a propounder of questions and dogmatizer of Newton’s Laws of Motion; specific gravity, 1.23,” according to the 1907 Pedagogue.
Maud Margaret Shipe was born in 1879 in Bells, Grayson County, where her father Columbus Washington Shipe was a school teacher. Perhaps he was a traveling teacher. Shipe’s parents had married in Paris, Lamar County. When Shipe registered for classes at the University of Texas in 1896, she was from High, Lamar County. In 1899, still a student, she hailed from Annona, Red River County. All of those places are in the far northeast corner of Texas.
In 1900, Shipe received a Bachelor of Literature degree and a Teacher’s Permanent Certificate from the University of Texas. Her thesis was “A Sketch of the History of Education in Texas.” She stayed with the University as assistant in pedagogy [the science and art of education] and earned an M.A. in 1901.
Also on the faculty was Alfred Freshney, chemistry. Shipe and Freshney were soon to be comrades- in-chalk at Southwest Texas Normal in San Marcos.
In 1903, Thomas Green Harris selected Shipe to be Principal’s Assistant and member of the Department of Pedagogy — or assistant in professional work; accounts vary.
In addition to teaching, Shipe was active in the Texas State Teachers’ association. In December 1904, she read a paper “Psychology for the Primary Teachers” or “Psychology for Elementary Teachers”; accounts vary.
In 1907, Shipe took a one-year leave of absence. She had won a Gould Southwestern Fellowship in the School of Pedagogy in New York university where she did graduate work in pedagogy, which was termed “splendid.”
In summer terms, Shipe took special work in education and philosophy at the University of Wisconsin and at Columbia University.
In 1909, Shipe was back in harness at SWTN, still as an assistant in professional work.
In 1910, Willie Swann had married and resigned her position in the department of history and civics. Swann was replaced by Alton William Birdwell. In 1911, Shipe and Birdwell, and other SWTN faculty, attended the State Teachers’ Association meeting in Waco.
Love bloomed. In 1915, Shipe and Birdwell married, and in 1916 their daughter Anne was born, named after Shipe’s sister Columbus Anne Shipe.
Texas was still in the process of creating normal schools for the education of teachers. A normal in East Texas was proposed, and the citizens of Nacogdoches successfully petitioned the legislature to choose their town as the site of East Texas Normal school, which was quickly dubbed Stephen F. Austin State Normal. Funding, building construction and WW1 delayed the opening of SFA Normal. Finally, Dr. Alton W. Birdwell, dean of faculty at SWTN, was appointed SFA Normal’s first president. He arrived in Nacogdoches in August 1922 and opened SFA on his 53rd birthday, Sept. 18, 1923.
Birdwell served until 1942 when Dr. Paul L. Boynton became the second president of SFA on May 14. Birdwell died in Nacogdoches in 1954. Shipe moved to Indiana, to be near her daughter Anne (Birdwell) Meek, where she died in 1961.
Information about her grave can be found at Findagrave # 226799875.
Maud Margaret Shipe
