Brandt V. B. Dixon, A.M., L.L.D., 1850-1941

President, H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College

In 1887, at age 37, Brandt Van Blarcom Dixon was hired as president of the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College by the Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund. However, his first recorded correspondence with the benefactress of the College was not until 1890, and his first meeting with her, not until 1892. Both delays would be attributed to fear: fears on the part of Tulane University administrators, and fears held by Mrs. Newcomb.

Dixon had been warned against writing to JLN by Tulane University president William Preston Johnston who feared that, “however carefully the letter might be worded,” Mrs. Newcomb “would possibly look upon it as a plea for more money, and somehow take offense.” Johnston had had earlier dealings with JLN, at Washington and Lee University, regarding her plans to fund a memorial building to her late husband, Warren. Johnston therefore undertook all correspondence with JLN from 1886 to 1890. His fear is instructive of his own perceptions of JLN as possibly overly sensitive to the remarks of others, eccentric, and distrustful.

The reasons suggested as to why JLN did not visit the College until five years after its opening also center around a purported fear—a fear that she would inadvertently run into her estranged sister, niece and nephews; or possibly be required to decline an invitation by them for a visit. In fact, her first visit back to New Orleans in over twenty years went very well. While JLN’s first letters to Dixon in 1890 and 1891 are addressed “My dear Sir” and are quite formal, her letters following the visit are addressed to Dixon as “my dear friend.”

It is perhaps well that JLN did not visit the College before February, 1892. The first campus, which had been a residential home located near Lee Circle, was deemed entirely undesirable by Dixon. The Tulane Board had purchased the property before Dixon arrived in New Orleans so he had no voice in the matter, but he quickly set out to find another location. However, the property Dixon selected, the Burnside Place, also had been identified by the Tulane Board as the location for a boys’ high school. Once again, wealthy New Orleanian Ida Richardson, known to JLN since childhood, was brought in and asked to write to Mrs. Newcomb urging her to send a check to the Board for the Burnside Place for the new home of the H. S. N. M. C., along with a promise of $25,000 to cover renovations and improvements. JLN sent the letter and her request was honored. The College moved into the much larger and renovated Washington Avenue campus in January, 1891.

Mrs. Newcomb’s first visit to campus was celebrated with a reception at the College for several hundred students and friends. At this time, she and Dixon also had their first conference meeting and discussion concerning Dixon’s plans for the future of the College. Dixon’s success in articulating a promising vision resulted in a $5,000 check to start a library, an agreement for an advance of $45,000 for the Academy Building, and the promise of another $100,000 for the endowment fund. It was no longer necessary for Johnston to keep Dixon from corresponding with Mrs. Newcomb. In fact, it would appear that during this visit of several weeks, she and Dixon formed a very respectful, affectionate and lasting relationship. At times in subsequent years, Dixon was the only one among her friends and advisors who she trusted fully to carry out her dreams for Sophie’s memorial.

Dixon came to academic life reluctantly. It was only because of his father’s financial setbacks that he accepted his first teaching job, as he reports, “in spite of a prejudice against teaching.” Yet Dixon was a gifted and enthusiastic teacher — and student — who pursued many areas of study with and without formal direction. He details beginning school at age five after following his cousins into the schoolhouse. When the teacher said he was too young to attend, Dixon said he could read, and after doing so for the teacher, was allowed to stay. However, his education was often interrupted by frequent family moves, the Civil War, and financial difficulties. The family moved from Paterson, New Jersey, where Dixon was born on February 27, 1850, to St. Louis in 1858, to Chicago in 1859, then back to St. Louis in 1860. Dixon quit high school to work in his father’s factory making harnesses and saddles during the Civil War. When his father caught him studying algebra, he concluded Brandt needed to get back to school. Dixon caught up with his peers and graduated high school in two years. He then entered Amherst College in September, 1866, but left after just two years to help his father with finances caused by his business slowdown following the war. The oldest of six children, five boys and one girl, Dixon felt a responsibility to help his family. However, Cornell University was just opening in 1868, and offered a course in engineering, which Dixon was greatly interested in pursuing. Resourcefully, Dixon arranged with a friend to borrow $500 a year in exchange for the security of a $2,000 life insurance policy, and the promise of prompt repayment following graduation. Dixon entered Cornell as a junior (the class of 1870), spent the year there playing in the orchestra of Orpheus, and joining Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity and the Chess Club. He was about to enter in the fall of 1869, when he again was called home to help his father with finances. Not quite 20 years of age, Dixon was hired as a teacher and principal of the co-ed, K-12, 150-student Bellevue Collegiate Institute in Caledonia, Mo. There he met Eliza Carson, a student in his Latin class, who in 1873 he would marry.*

Still, Dixon graduated Cornell University in 1870, one of just twenty-three members of Cornell’s second graduating class. A letter from the University acknowledged that as he had taken a double course his junior year, and was now in charge of an academy, the faculty was willing to award him a diploma, if he would come to accept it at commencement. His acceptance also required him, along with the other seniors, to give a commencement speech. Dixon’s was entitled “Ideal Education.”

That summer, with a railroad pass from Kansas City to Denver given to him by a friend, he began his engineering adventures in the West. He read books on chemistry, mines and mining, and became something of an expert on assaying iron and zinc mines and analyzing wells and river water. He also began a somewhat checkered pattern of teaching during the school year and exploring Colorado mines in the summer. He writes he was not reconciled to a career of teaching but nevertheless accepted a position teaching high school in St. Louis in the fall of 1873. There he started a chemical laboratory of his own, and then convinced the principal to equip a laboratory in the school basement, which he believed to be the first high school chemical laboratory in the country.

His son James Carson Dixon was born in October 1874, and son William Ackerman Dixon, in January 1878. In 1877, he and Eliza bought a home of their own in St. Louis. Returning from his summer work in Denver in 1879, he attempted to jump from the train to the platform and missed. The fall knocked him unconscious and caused permanent deafness in one ear.

In 1884, he took another break from teaching to work with friends who began a company smelting silver in Rico, Colorado. However, a drop in silver prices required that he again return to teaching — a move that greatly pleased Eliza, but left his preference for engineering and exploration wanting. In 1886, as Principal of Central High School in St. Louis, he was called upon by Mr. Robert Holland, an Episcopal minister, who informed him that he had been selected president of a woman’s college, the soon to be H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College.

Dixon accepted the invitation to visit New Orleans but turned down the Board’s offer of becoming Newcomb’s first president. He considered Mrs. Newcomb’s initial donation too small to begin a college, and the girls in the city unprepared for college work. Yet the Board persevered, offering him a lifetime appointment on the Tulane faculty and a free hand in the development of the College. Ultimately, Dixon welcomed the challenge as the adventure missing in his life. As he writes, he came to recognize in the students “a responsiveness to ideals, a growing persistency of purpose, and an initiative which I had not at first suspected. I gradually came to the belief… that the chief cause of Newcomb’s success was the beautiful college spirit which, in time, came to abundant life in the student body, a spirit of loyalty and ambition, eager and confident, willing to serve.”

Dixon’s selection proved fortuitous. It is unlikely another would have devoted his life so completely to the building of the institution. Tulane University historian John Dyer described Dixon as “plump, bushy browed and ruggedly handsome … a captivating speaker, a man of broad culture, and an indefatigable planner and worker.” Dyer also credited Dixon, “more than any other single person” with having “charted the future course of the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College.” The task of building an institution of higher education without precedent in the U.S.; hiring and developing a suitable faculty in a city with a weak educational system; developing a rigorous curriculum and gaining accreditation as an “A” college; determining academic policies that would allow young women to one day support themselves; designing and overseeing the physical facility; negotiating Newcomb’s position within the University’s administrative structure; and gaining the trust and confidence of the College’s benefactress required the diplomatic skills, intelligence, wide-ranging talents, and commitment Dixon possessed.

Dixon saw the College grow and in 1918, move to its third campus adjacent to Tulane University. He retired in 1919. Dixon was Newcomb’s only president, those following him being named dean as was customary for heads of the colleges within Tulane University. It is unlikely any received the level of respect and affection from students and alumnae that Dixon enjoyed. Much of the early history of the College is recorded in his A Brief History of the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, 1887-1919: A Personal Reminiscence. Dixon received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Tulane University after his retirement.

**The details of Dixon’s life come largely from his unpublished autobiography of some 40 pages “A Personal Reminiscence.” Newcomb Archives.