It's Women's History Month and we'd like to celebrate two women few have heard of but who had a huge impact on Columbia and the early days of Highway 40.
Saidee May Stean became the principal of Columbia High School (now Jefferson Middle School) in 1921. She held a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science and was one of only a handful of women in Missouri to run a high school as large as ours. The student population was quickly outgrowing their space over on Rogers and Eighth so the Columbia School Board started the search for a location for a new high school.
Mary Hickman owned a 40 acre estate on what is now Business Loop and Providence. Her father, David H. Hickman, had died in 1869, leaving the house and land to Mary who was just 3 years old at the time. She rented the house until 1887, when it was lost to fire. It then became home to a fairground, a horse racing track, and the occasional traveling carnival.
The land was purchased in 1925 by the Columbia School Board and on December 17, 1925, they voted to name the future school, not after Mary, but after her father and it became known as David H. Hickman High School.
Principal Stean oversaw the move into the newly built Hickman High School on Highway 40 in 1927 and continued her tenure there as a well-loved principal until 1938.
Few people today are familiar with the names of Mary Hickman and Saidee May Stean but it’s clear that without them, the history of The Loop would be very different.
This photo of Saidee May Stean is from the 1926 addition of The Cresset, the Hickman High School yearbook.
