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Hi, I'm Matthew Tomaszewski, of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Welcome to This Old Hall.
In this episode, we travel back more than 80 years
to explore the life of a woman, whose purse was discovered
in Lincoln Hall during the demolition in 2010.
Thanks to a receipt we found inside,
we have her name: Pauline Martha Hurd,
a student during the Prohibition era and the dawn of the Great Depression.
During our investigation, we learned how much student life
has changed over the years, and yet, how much it remains the same.
A young, principled woman arrives at the University,
opens her mind, falls in love,
and is soon tested by tragedy and hard times.
Pauline passed away in 2008,
but her purse reveals a story that resonates today.
Pauline was born in Urbana in 1911,
the same year that Lincoln Hall opened.
She attended Champaign High School,
where she was described as "tender" by her classmates.
She enjoyed literary activities, such as
the Quill Club, Book Club, and school newspaper.
Pauline was the only child of Dr. Orville Hurd and Bessie Craig,
who were married in Urbana in 1906,
and were leaders in their own right.
Dr. Orville was an osteopathic physician
and back then, it wasn't totally accepted.
He was trying to convince people that this
should be an accepted medical profession.
They believed that manipulation of the spine
and very little use, or if any, of drugs for pain.
Bessie was also very involved in the community.
She was involved with the WCTU, the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
My mother's mother was also, almost a feminist,
a modern woman, so to speak.
And my mom kind of followed in those footsteps.
And my grandmother being, kind of—no wonder my mom was that way—she
—it was kind of unheard of in those days—she put my grandfather through college.
Two uncles that were the brothers of her father, Orville,
George Hurd, and he was the mayor of Urbana from 1939-1949,
before that, her uncle Lyman Hurd was the mayor.
There was just a lot of rich information that started out
with just that purse being found in Lincoln Hall.
Pauline entered the University of Illinois in 1927
at the ambitious age of 16,
and at that time, Lincoln Hall was only half its current size.
But while she was a student, Lincoln Hall acquired
the Lincoln bust in the foyer,
added the theater, and doubled in size.
Given that her purse was found in a first floor women's bathroom,
behind a plumbing chase wall,
it's likely that her purse was stolen and then
ditched in the chaos amidst the building's expansion.
She started off with a major in music and then entered
the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences,
and finally ended up graduating with a bachelor's of science in education.
So it's not uncommon even for students in the past
to have changed their major a number of times.
She was involved in Lambda Omega, Bethany Circle, the Jamesonian Literary Society,
the Anonian Literary Society, and the Inter-Literary Council.
Found in her purse were a bunch of tickets from the Woman's League Fashion Revue.
These are the secretary notes from the Woman's League.
They were telling of the plan for ticket sales.
And they announced that a cup would be awarded for the most number of tickets sold.
So that's probably why she had so many tickets in her purse—
she was trying to win the award.
Just in terms of population, today we have
approximately 31,000, 32,000 undergraduates,
but at the time when she was here,
we had 10,873 graduates when she was a senior,
of which, 3,000 were women.
The eternal flame bench and pillar next to Lincoln Hall and the English Building
would have been here on campus when she was here.
But other things that we take for granted as campus landmarks
such as Assembly Hall was not yet constructed.
The Alma Mater was actually dedicated while she was a student here in 1929.
Pauline remembered a particular rhetoric professor at U of I who influenced her life.
In her memoirs, she wrote: “That professor’s advice was more than academic,
for when I was a freshman…my smugness and piety were challenged
when she responded to my statement
that I wasn’t sure I would choose friends that smoked.”
For the rest of her life, she seemed to take this advice to heart,
later writing: “It was friends who scoffed at the church and loved their cocktails,
who understood my concerns [and] helped me to become
self-confident and to find my own independence.”
Being such a young student, too, to start college
she was probably not real grown up.
Young as she was, she captured the heart of a hardworking civil engineering student
and professional musician, seven years older: Frank Matteson from Joliet.
Frank played tenor and baritone saxophone in U of I’s
concert band and first regimental band,
under pioneering director Professor A. A. Harding
and even legendary bandmaster John Philip Souza.
They had the mutual friend that introduced them.
In fact, I think it was someone mom had been seeing.
Mom said that daddy came to pick her up one time and he was—
Mom wasn't quite ready.
So when she came into the room
my dad and my grandfather were playing pool together. He had a pool table.
And she said she knew right then he was the one for her.
Pauline and Frank got married the same summer she graduated, in 1931.
In the throes of the Great Depression, they moved to
wherever the jobs were and encountered several hard knocks.
When I was born, we lived on a farm.
And dad made $25 a month plus a bottle of cream.
I mean, it was pretty tough times then.
As preserved in her memoir, Pauline provided us with the rest of her story.
By age 30, she learned to drive so she could attend business school, work,
and see Frank 75 miles away in a sanitarium
to treat his second bout of tuberculosis.
Pauline taught high school, volunteered,
and later worked at the University of Colorado.
Shortly after their 35th wedding anniversary in 1966,
Frank and Pauline were in a car crash and only Pauline survived.
She found solace through church, and
among her proudest accomplishments became one of the first
female elders in her church.
Pauline continued to fill journals reflecting on her spiritual journey.
She passed away at age 97 in Colorado.
Pauline’s children said she always wanted to write a book.
She never did, but she serendipitously became the heroine
of this mystery-slash-love-story episode of This Old Hall.