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.
According to the 1907 Pedagogue, “Lucy Lee Burleson is possessed of many sterling qualities, arranged in numerical order. The students think she is a first-class book agent.”
In 1879, the first Normal in Texas opened in Huntsville. The skyline of Sam Houston Normal Institute was dominated by what became known as “Old Main.” Conceived by Prussian architect Alfred Muller, most of the design was left to pioneering Texas architect Edward Northcraft. There seems to have been a dispute over the integrity of the foundation, a situation which would replay in San Marcos when SWTN’s “Old Main” was under construction.
SHNI’s Old Main and SWTN’s Old Main are suspiciously similar; with good reason: Edward Northcraft was also the architect for SWTN. Photographs reveal the similarities, but you cannot visit Huntsville to see them; that Old Main burned in 1892.
Should these educational institutions not suffice, Northcraft also designed the State Reformatory at Gatesville.
Backtrack to 1865 when Northcraft and wife Mary Elizabeth Donalson had daughter Lucy Lee Northcraft. In May 1886, Lucy and Dr. Ford McCullough Burleson married in Hays Co. In February of 1887, Emma Lee Burleson was born. Three months later, Ford developed “a fever” and died.
In June, the trustees of the San Marcos public schools hired Lucy as an assistant. In 1892, Lucy attended a teachers’ association meeting in Galveston. That meeting would produce a request that the legislature create a normal school in west Texas. North Texas Normal had already been established in Denton, so that 1892 request probably resulted in SWTN, which was authorized, not born, in 1899. We don’t exactly qualify as “west” Texas, but it was population rather than geography that dictated San Marcos as the site of Texas’ third normal.
In 1895, Lucy was a primary teacher in San Marcos.
In 1900, Lucy and Emma were living with Lucy’s parents and sister Jennie. Lucy was still a teacher with the San Marcos public schools. But in 1901, she became an instructor at Coronal Institute. Then Tom Harris asked Lucy to join him “on the Hill,” and she accepted. She was to be a secretary, assistant in English, and, perhaps more importantly, the first librarian of SWTN.
Over the years, as her position as librarian became more important and time-consuming, the secretary and assistant in English duties dropped away. In 1916, she had an assistant librarian Mattie Nance.
Then, in 1918, her father grew ill and Lucy took a leave of absence to help care for him. Gladys Allison became librarian in her place. Ed Northcraft died in November of 1919, and in January of 1920, Lucy returned to the Normal, not to displace Allison or her successor May Foley, but to be assistant librarian, a position which she held until her retirement in about 1941.
Emma, also a widow, moved in with Lucy; in 1950, they were at 617 Hopkins Street.
In 1958, in recognition of her many years of exceptional service to the University and to the town, the University opened Burleson Hall, a women’s dormitory. After various remodels and extensions, it was demolished in 2019, along with Hornsby Hall, to make way for Alamito and Cibolo Halls.
More information about her grave can be found at findagrave # 21985442.
Check out the virtual cemetery of the complete first faculty at find agrave.com/virtual-ceme tery/1934255.
