Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd

Who was Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd?

Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd was an American social reformer who founded Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, Kentucky.

Alice Spencer Geddes was born in Athol, Massachusetts on November 13, 1876 and later studied at Radcliffe College. In her early career in Boston, Alice Geddes worked as a journalist. In 1902, she was publisher and editor of The Cambridge Press, the first United States publication to have an all-female staff.

In 1915 Alice Geddes Lloyd and her husband Arthur Lloyd moved to Knott County, Kentucky, with the goal of improving social and economic conditions, living at first in Ivis. Their initial work involved provision of health care, educational services, and agricultural improvements to the Appalachian region, funded by donations from East Coast states. In 1917 Alice Lloyd and her mother moved to Caney Creek, where she had been offered land for a school. She separated from her husband in 1918 and remained in Knott County. She named her Caney Creek home "Pippa Passes" after a poem by Robert Browning and in honor of donors from the New England Browning Society.

Together with June Buchanan, a native of Syracuse, New York, who joined her in Kentucky in 1919, Lloyd founded 100 elementary schools throughout eastern Kentucky and opened Caney Junior College in 1923. The college offered a free education to mountain youth, who were required to promise to remain in the region or return after completing their education. There was a long waiting list for admission. Lloyd imposed strict rules on the students, including no jewelry, cosmetics, slang, or high-heeled shoes for girls and no tobacco, gambling, liquor, guns or "unauthorized meetings with the opposite sex" for boys.