Maudine Ormsby made national headlines when she was named Ohio State University's homecoming queen in October 1926.
It wasn't because she was popular, though she was certainly beloved by her friends in the agricultural school. And it wasn't because of her looks, though she had big brown eyes and shiny black hair.
No, her homecoming crown was headline worthy because Maudine was a 1,200-pound Holstein cow.
Ohio State's 1926 homecoming celebration was marred with election fraud and disappointment from the human women on the court when it ended with a cow winning the crown. But a century after she was crowned, Queen Maudine still reigns supreme in the hearts of many Ohio State students and alumni.
In honor of the 100th anniversary, Ohio State named
Maudine Cow as the Grand Marshal for the 2026 homecoming parade to be held on Oct. 9 beginning at 6 p.m. A tractor will pull Maudine in a decorated trailer along the parade route.
"They took the original Maudine in the parade then, so we're taking her in the parade now," Karissa Ayers, an Ohio State student and president of the Buckeye Dairy Club, told The Dispatch.
This century's Maudine is a 1-year-old Holstein cow from Ohio State's Wooster ATI campus. Ayers said she and others in the dairy club have been working with Maudine to get her comfortable with the trailer. She's easily bribed with grain, Ayers said, which is like candy for cows.
Graham Cochran, Ohio State's associate dean for the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, said it's a special honor to bring Maudine back into the homecoming festivities given the university's roots as an agricultural college.
"The cow is the silly fun thing that gets to bring the college front and center," Cochran said.
Maudine the Homecoming Queen
So how exactly did a heifer take the homecoming crown?
Before she was queen, Maudine already had quite the reputation of her own. She was an award-winning Holstein with four world records to her name, including one for producing more than 743 pounds of milk and nearly 29 pounds of butter fat during a weeklong test.
Her milk-pumping prowess gave her celebrity status among Ohio State's College of Agriculture students. She was so beloved that in 1926, students decided to nominate Maudine for homecoming queen.
According to a Nov. 8, 1926, edition of The Lantern, Ohio State's student newspaper, College of Agriculture students tried to submit Maudine's name for the ballot, but the homecoming committee removed it because her name was not in the student directory. Disappointed, they nominated one of their peers instead to represent the college.
What the students didn't expect, however, was a ballot-stuffing scheme that would ultimately change the winner.
Ten women were nominated by their peers, but "election officials disregarded their votes when it was learned that their supporters were guilty of illegal tactics," according to The Lantern.
Though there were fewer than 10,000 students enrolled at the time and 3,000 printed paper ballots for the election, more than 12,000 votes were cast. According to The Lantern, it “was impossible to determine all the legal votes from the illegal ones, and as information was available that the backers of candidates had used underhand methods to elect their favorite, the election committee chose its own queen.”
Their choice? Maudine, the only "candidate" they could guarantee didn't receive any fraudulent votes.
"Our decision was reached only after we found it totally impossible to name any one of the nominees as queen, owing to illegal balloting, illegal voting, and stealing of a ballot box," the election committee told The Lantern. "This committee asks students to take this selection merely as a bit of comedy, preceding the homecoming dance and revue."
The Dispatch at the time called it the “most stupendous farce ever staged at Ohio State University.”
The story quickly got picked up by national outlets. "Ohio State College Votes Cow as Queen of Campus Beauties" The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, wrote. The Lansing Journal in Michigan published images of the homecoming court and the cow with the headline, "Meet Maudine! She's a College Beauty Queen." The Oakland Tribune in California ran with, "Holstein Cow Named Queen of Homecoming."
Though Maudine was officially the 1926 Homecoming Queen, she did not appear at the Crystal Slipper ballroom to be crowned. Professors in the Department of Animal Husbandry vetoed her appearance because she "might suffer from nervous excitement" and risk damaging her milk supply, according to a Nov. 10, 1926, article in The Lantern.
The homecoming committee had to settle for a proxy of two men dressed in a cow costume.
Maudine did get her flowers though as she was allowed to appear on a homecoming paraade float.
'But for Maudine, here lies the queen'
Had Maudine not been the write-in winner, the woman who would've been named queen was Rosalind "Rosie" Morrison Strapp.
Strapp had the most votes in the tainted count and honorably withdrew from the race.
“Her friends stuffed the ballot box for her to make sure she won,” Strapp's granddaughter, Amy Blackford, told the Ohio State Alumni Magazine. “She was disappointed because she always said she would have won without their help.”
Though it stung for a while knowing she lost to a cow, Strapp's loved ones said she took the event in stride. She grew to love her connection to the story.
"She liked to talk about it," a friend of Strapp's told The Dispatch in 1986. "She said if it wasn't for a cow she would have been homecoming queen, but if she had won the contest she would have been long forgotten."
Strapp was a flapper in college and was known for good style through her whole life. She worked as a buyer for Montaldo's women's clothing store until 1967, and then taught English at Crestview Middle School and North High School until early 1972.
Strapp attended every Ohio State homecoming from her graduation in 1927, and she was honored in 1980 at the age of 75 in the homecoming parade.
"Our class has a tremendous sense of unity, perhaps because of our prank," she told Ohio State University Monthly in 1980. "We all look forward to the reunions and Maudine always manages to steal the show. We never seem to milk her dry!"
Strapp died in 1986 at the age of 80. She specifically requested an epitaph that honored her connection to Ohio State, but the Catholic cemetery where she was buried only allowed names and dates.
A few years after she passed, one of her grandsons had a small gold plaque made and glued it to her tombstone himself: “But for Maudine, here lies the queen."
Higher education reporter Sheridan Hendrix can be reached at shendrix@dispatch.com and on Signal at @sheridan.120. You can follow her on Instagram at @sheridanwrites.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State brings back Maudine the cow for homecoming parade
