In 1969 the North Carolina Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (formerly named the North Carolina Home Economics Association) named its student scholarship fund, the Ellen D. Brewer Scholarship Fund, in recognition of Dr. Brewer’s “distinguished leadership of the Home Economics profession.

Ellen Brewer’s Contribution

HOME ECONOMICS AT MEREDITH COLLEGE

For 30 years (1965-1995), Marilyn Cook Stuber taught home economics at Meredith College, becoming department head in 1967. After retirement, Dr. Stuber wrote a history of the home economics department, covering 1914 through the mid-1990s.

In the forward-to-the history of Home Economics at Meredith College, Dr. Stuber wrote the following about Ellen Brewer:

“Perhaps the person who had the greatest impact on the Department was Miss Ellen Brewer, chairman from 1922 to 1966, a period of 44 years. Her graduates are lavish in their praise of her, a dedicated, compassionate person who prepared them not only for professions but for life. The Brewer era reflected a stable curriculum with little change. The turbulent yearsof constant adjustment and change would come later.

When the Brewer family home was dissolved following the death of Miss Ann Eliza Brewer, the many scrapbooks and boxes of clippings dating back to events prior to 1900 were given to the Department and the College. Before any written history could be attempted, it was necessary to read all of the clippings and place them in chronological order. They were then placed in additional scrapbooks. A tedious task, this process consumed more than a year (to say nothing of personal household space). It is largely from the news events and scrapbooks preserved by the Brewer family, in addition to the carefully written A History of Meredith College by Mary Lynch Johnson that the Home Economics/Human Environmental Sciences history emerged.

Special thanks go to Deborah Tippett and Ellen Goode for critiquing the manuscript. Deborah’s eighty-year history of the department that she prepared for Alumnae College in 1994was a helpful guide.”

THE 1920's: ELLEN BREWER ARRIVES (1922)

Dr. Johnson continued (A History of Meredith College, 1972), “A warm welcome awaited Ellen Dozier Brewer, ‘18, who came in 1922 after completing two years of graduate work at Columbia. One of the trustees presented her name, and the board unanimously overruled President Brewer’s emphatic protest against the election of his daughter to such a position on the faculty. She had in an emergency served one year as instructor in the department of English. Miss Brewer’s firm foundation in the humanities, which came with her undergraduate major in Latin and Greek, gave her students a breadth of view not narrowed to their specialty; her knowledge and skill in her chosen field assured their professional training; and her rare qualities of character and personality kept before them a pattern of gracious living (7:153).” Miss Brewer was to serve in this capacity for 44 years.

With the arrival of Miss Ellen Brewer in 1922, a new course, Home Appreciation, appeared in the catalogue and was offered for the next 16 years. The description read:

“This course is intended primarily to help students in their adjustment to different kinds of group living. It includes a study of the modern family and its constituent parts, college relationships, responsibility for proper spending of the family income, the individual and family budget, the economics and ethical principles of dress, principles of food selection, and the use of a time schedule under varying conditions (9).”

Two sections of the course were offered, one for freshmen and sophomores in all majors, and a second section for juniors and seniors in all majors.

In 1933, Ellen Brewer was president of the North Carolina Home Economics Association and wrote a history of the association in honor of the sixteenth anniversary. She wrote it as a form of a diary, alluding again to the Great Depression, and finished with these closing words:

I will not dodge my responsibility in the present crisis. I will face it.
I will remember that my education was not for myself alone. I will put my knowledge and experiences at the service of my community.
I will be sympathetic and try to understand the problems of others.
I will examine my material approach and see if I am meeting present-day situations.
I will emphasize the importance of keeping up home standards and will try to put uppermost real values in homemaking.
I will do my bit to restore confidence and job by setting an example of poise and contentment myself.

The new home management house was also completed a short time later in1960. Talcott Brewer, cousin of Ellen Brewer, donated funds to build a home management residence in Miss Brewer’s honor. The house featured state-of-the-art equipment and furnishings and would remain in operation as a home management residence for more than 30 years.

Miss Brewer was ever the gracious hostess, entertaining countless groups of faculty and professional friends in the Home Economics facilities. Some of the extracurricular activities of the 1950's are revealed in news clippings carefully saved by Miss Brewer. MEREDITH IS HOST TO HOME ECONOMICS TEACHERS described the April 1953 meeting of the Home Economics teachers of the Baptist Colleges in North Carolina. Guest speakers who told of the work they were doing were Jolene Weathers Edwards, head of the Home Economics Department at Hugh Morson High School; Mrs. Betsy Jordan Goldston, assistant home demonstration agent in Wayne County; and Albertine Rogers Hooks, homemaker and former assistant dietitian at Rex Hospital.

Miss Brewer was innovative in securing community professional experiences for her students. The Extension Service Reviews for February 1955 described the college seniors who spent the summer as home demonstration trainees. Five fourth-year college girls majoring in Home Economics worked for a two-month period this past summer in North Carolina counties as trainee home demonstration agents. Among the 1954 trainees were Virginia Mumford, who worked in Rowan County, and Patty Melvin, who worked in Wayne County.

MEREDITH SENIORS TOUR WAKE HOME PROJECTS described an excursion to view home demonstration projects in Wake County. The first stop on the tour was the Wake County home demonstration curb market in the basement of the County Building. Next the girls went to the home demonstration specialists’ office at State College to learn of special projects. From there the group visited the home of the Millard Ferrells and the Swift Creek community Center where the home demonstration women served them lunch. They also visited the home of Mrs. J. R. Atkins and Joseph Stephenson. Among the Meredith seniors were Joyce Herndon, Kitty Holt, Betty Frances Smith, Pat Swann, Sally Everhart, Shirley Spoon, LaRue Taylor, Melinda White and Jeanne Tong.

The 1960's brought a significant change to the Home Economics Department. Dr. Mary Lynch Johnson wrote in A History of Meredith College, “In two years, the department of Home Economics had a double loss. Miss Hanyen after thirty-four years of valuable service, retired in 1965; Miss Brewer, who came to the faculty in 1919, retired the same year; but when it seemed impossible to find a capable successor, at the insistence of the administration she consented to stay another year. Only her deep self-sacrificing love for Meredith made her willing, and only heroic will power made her able to continue her work in spite of arthritis which made every movement difficult and painful