The First Bachelor’s Degrees: Virginia Faison Pigford and Gertrude Alice Chamberlain

Virginia Pigford (lower left), Gertrude Chamberlain (lower right), and Summer school students in "the College group, 1922
Virginia Pigford (lower left), Gertrude Chamberlain (lower right), and Summer school students in "the College group, 1922" (top). Image Source: The Training School Quarterly, July, August, and September 1922. UA50-03. University Archives, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC.

At its August 1922 commencement, ECTC awarded its first bachelor’s degrees ever. The first and only recipients at that ceremony were Virginia Faison Pigford (1901-1978) of Calypso, N.C. and Gertrude Chamberlain (1908-2004) of Cheraw, S. C. Earlier the school had only conferred high school degrees and certificates of completion for the two-year normal course in teacher training, but not bachelor’s degrees. Pigford and Chamberlain also had the honor of being the first graduates of East Carolina to receive the “A-grade certificate,” then recognized by the N. C. Department of Education as the highest level of teacher training, and best remunerated. Pigford and Chamberlain had begun work on their bachelor’s degrees in the summer of 1921 and finished early, in only one year, due to transfer credits from earlier work at ECTTS as students in the normal course. As East Carolina’s first bachelor’s recipients, Pigford and Chamberlain thus emerged quickly as forerunners of the tens of thousands of four-year graduates who followed. Their varied and unique careers in teaching also foreshadowed not just the regional impact of the new school but its potential outreach in service in the international arena as well.

The two, apparently close friends, were active students at ECTC. Their first summer in the bachelor’s program, Chamberlain served with Pattie Dowell as one of the general editors of the Training School Quarterly, while Pigford was on the News and Personnel Committee for the same publication. Earlier, Pigford, a member of the Lanier Society, had served as the student editor-in-chief for the Training School Quarterly. The two had worked together on their senior play, The Merchant Gentleman (Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, 1670), performed in 1922. The Teachers College Quarterly noted “… to Gertrude Chamberlain and Virginia Pigford we owe the beautiful castle scene, “the tapestry,” which added much to the stage.”

While seniors in the normal course at ECTTS, the two had roles in the opera, The Mascot, staged in April 1920: Chamberlain played the princess, Fiametta, while Pigford, a courtier. Chamberlain had won high praise for her role. The Daily Reflector commented “An experienced professional could not have played better the part of the Princess, Fiametta, than did Miss Gertrude Chamberlain. Not once did she lose the sentimental, airy, doting but charming nature of the Princess.” The Training School Quarterly’s “Prophetic Roll” for the Class of 1920 predicted “Gertrude Chamberlain, with her beguiling smile, will be so great a pleasure that ‘Gaston,’ with his way so gentle and mild, will think he has a treasure.” Pigford’s more adventurous nature was noted: “Virginia Pigford is going West. To reach California, she’ll do her best.”

Pigford also excelled apart from Chamberlain: In 1920, in her senior year as a normal course student, Pigford taught seventh grade arithmetic at the Joyner School, a rural practice facility for students planning to teach in remote, country settings. Then again, at ECTTS’s annual Christmas recital, Pigford joined Thelma Speir in a performance of Ethelbert Nevins’ Ophelia. But often the two seemed inseparable: Pigford and Chamberlain took jobs, initially teaching seventh grade in Washington, N.C. Then, they moved to Jonesboro where Chamberlain taught seventh grade and Pigford, sixth grade. Next, they worked together as elementary school teachers in the Sandhills town of Hamlet.

In 1926, Pigford and Chamberlain traveled together to Seattle before sailing on the S.S. President Jackson for the Philippines – an American colony since the Spanish-American War of 1898. They did so having earlier signed a two-year contract to teach with the Philippine Bureau of Education based in Manilla. An initial report suggests Chamberlain was happy enough during her time in the islands. Her hometown paper, the Cheraw Chronicle – quoted in the Teco Echo “Alumnae” section – ran a communication from her noting that she enjoyed “surf-bathing in December and that when the thermometer falls to 63 degrees the weather is considered very cold, though it seldom goes above 100 and there is little suffering from the heat. The hottest months are April and May and those are spent in Barguino, up in the mountains.”

However, after her initial two-year contract, Chamberlain returned home. Her family had ties to the St. Petersburg, Florida community where they frequently vacationed, and so it was there that she eventually moved. By 1932, a decade after she earned her bachelor’s from ECTC, she took a job with the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce’s radio department. And it was while working in Florida that she met Mr. Eliot Lunt Pilsbury (1911-1971), a native of Gloucester, Mass., who had also relocated to St. Petersburg. The two were married the same year. In the late 1940s, the couple moved to Daytona Beach where Pilsbury worked for the Florida Power and Light Company as an electrician until his death in 1971. Gertrude Pilsbury passed away in Daytona in 2004, age 95.

Pigford stayed in the Philippines and there met her future husband, Edward Heard Johnson (1892-1948), a native of Kansas working as a sales representative for Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company at their headquarters in Manilla. Following their marriage there, the Johnsons lived happily in the Philippines for over a decade as their family grew to include three children, all daughters. However, during WWII, with Imperial Japan’s conquest of the islands, the Johnson family was interned by the Japanese forces at the Santo Tomas Internment Camp (formerly, the campus of the University of Santo Tomas) in Manilla and held there for nearly three years, until the spring of 1945 when American forces, under the command of General Douglas McArthur, finally freed them. Although McArthur was widely publicized as a liberator, Virginia Johnson always found it reprehensible that he had fled the islands earlier carrying with him his two dogs even while leaving behind a substantial American civilian presence.

After being freed from Japanese captivity, the Johnson family – like other survivors of Japanese internment – was severely emaciated and in poor health, and so transported to Australia for basic health care. They later returned to Goldsboro to recuperate further. In 1946, the family returned to the Philippines, but then departed in May 1947 due to Mr. Johnson’s ill health. He passed away in January 1948, in Goldsboro, and was buried in the Faison family cemetery. During her last three decades, Mrs. Johnson traveled occasionally, but did not return to the Philippines. She passed away in 1978, and was buried in nearby Clinton, N.C.

As the first recipients of ECTC’s bachelor’s degree, Pigford and Chamberlain merit standing in East Carolina’s history of achievement and success. However, their service as teachers first in rural eastern North Carolina schools and then as teachers half way around the world, in the Philippines, establish them as pioneers in East Carolina’s broadcast of its mission in service beyond the confines of the region and well into the global arena.

Sources

  • “Alumnae.” Teco Echo. April 26, 1927. P. 3. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37829v
  • “Alumnae News.” Teco Echo. December 7, 1926. Vol. II, no. 5 P. 4. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37819
  • “Annual Christmas Recital.” Training School Quarterly. Vol. VII, no. 2. January, February, March 1920. P. 169. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37026
  • “Capacity House Witnessed Opera Mascot By Training School Seniors Last Night.” Greenville News. April 15, 1920. P. 1.
  • “Class of ’20 Honored.” Teco Echo. Vol. XX, no. 14. May 19, 1945. P. 4. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37955
  • “Commencement at School.” Daily Free Press. August 5, 1922. P. 1.
  • Cornell, Sandra Johnson. “The Edward Heard Johnson Family.” March 11, 2007. https://cnac.org/emilscott/johnson02.htm
  • “Deaths and Funerals: Edward Heard Johnson.” News and Observer. January 9, 1948. P. 12.
  • “E.C.T.C. To Give Degrees to 77.” Charlotte News. June 4, 1932. P. 5.
  • “Edward H. ‘Johnny’ Johnson.” Civilian Prisoners of the Japanese in the Philippine Islands: Years of hardship, hunger, and hope, January 1942-February 1945. Turner Publishing, 2002. Pp. 93-94.
  • “Engagement Is Announced At Lawn Fete: Miss Gertrude Chamberlain Will be Married to Eliot Pilsbury.” Tampa Bay Times. June 12, 1932. P. 6.
  • “Freed From Santo Tomas.” News and Observer. March 4, 1945. P. 5.
  • “History Of Graduating Classes At ECTC.” Teco Echo. May 31, 1945. P. 2. https://iiif.lib.ecu.edu/cantaloupe/iiif/2/00037956_0002.jp2/full/2000,/0/default.jpg
  • “Obituaries: Mr. Eliot Lund Pilsbury.” Orlando Sentinel. August 26, 1971. P. 39.
  • Pace, Lida Taylor. “Alumnae News.” Teachers College Quarterly. Vol. X, no. 1. October, November, December 1922. P. 108. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37037
  • “Schools At Hamlet Will Open On Sept. 8.” News and Observer. August 15, 1925. P. 7.
  • Smith, Grace. “Alumnae.” Training School Quarterly. Vol. VIII, no. 1. October, November, December 1920. Pp. 73-74. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37029
  • “Stage Management of the Senior Play.” Teachers College Quarterly. Vol. IX, no. 3. April, May, June 1922. Pp. 346-351. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37035
  • “State News.” Daily Free Press. August 3, 1922. P. 1.
  • Stephens, Minnie Love and Gertrude Chamberlain. “Prophetic Roll.” Training School Quarterly. Vol. VII, no. 3. April, May, June 1920. Pp. 238. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37027
  • “Student Editors.” Training School Quarterly, Vol. VII, no. 1. October, November, December 1919. P. 32. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37025
  • “Summer Courses Close At E. Carolina College: Two Teachers Receive A. B. Degrees First Ever Conferred by College—Diplomas Awarded.” Charlotte Observer. August 7, 1922. P. 3.
  • “Summer Term Editors.” Training School Quarterly. Vol. VI, no. 2. July, August, September 1919. P.  170. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37024
  • “Teacher College Ends Term.” Hendersonville News. August 16, 1922. P. 5.
  • “Teaching in the Joyner School.” Training School Quarterly. Vol. VII, no. 3. 1920. Pp. 247-48. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37027
  • “The College Group on Editorial Staff.” Training School Quarterly. Vol. VIII, no. 4. June, July, August 1921. P. 366. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37032
  • “The Mascot.” Training School Quarterly. Vol. VII, no. 3. April, May, June 1920. Pp. 256-259. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/37027
  • “This Year of Special Significance to AB’s.” Teco Echo. Vol. XIII, no. 14. May 20, 1937. P. 1. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/38057
  • “Will Teach In Schools In Philippine Islands.” The State: Columbia, S.C. July 3, 1926. P. 3.

     

     

Related Material

Virginia Faison Pigford traveling in Egypt with Gertrude Chamberlain, ca. 1920s. Image Source: Ancestry.com 

Gertrude Chamberlain. Image Source: Tampa Bay Times, June 12, 1932, p. 6. 

Citation Information

Title: The First Bachelor’s Degrees: Virginia Faison Pigford and Gertrude Alice Chamberlain, 1922

Author: John A. Tucker, PhD

Date of Publication: 3/13/2022

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