Mary Sharp College (1851–1896), first known as the Tennessee and Alabama Female Institute, was a

women's college Women's colleges in higher education are undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations are composed exclusively or almost exclusively of women. Some women's colleges admit male st ...

, located in

Winchester, Tennessee Winchester is a city in and the county seat of Franklin County, Tennessee, United States. It is part of the Winchester micropolitan area. The population of Winchester as of the 2020 census was 9,375. History Winchester was created as the seat o ...

. It was named after the

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world. The first country to fully outlaw slavery was Kingdom of France, France in 1315, but it was later used ...

Mary Sharp.

History

The college was first chartered in 1850 and was directed by Dr. Zuinglius Calvin Graves and the Baptist Church. It "was the first women's college in the United States to offer degrees equivalent to those offered at men's colleges." Mary Sharp College
Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture Graves offered a radical curriculum. He patterned the classical curriculum at Mary Sharp College after those offered at

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zepha ...

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

, and the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...

. He emphasized religious and moral training and required every student to attend chapel. Students at Mary Sharp, unlike those at other female colleges and academies, studied algebra, geometry, and trigonometry; Latin and Greek; English literature, grammar, and composition; ancient, English, and American history; philosophy and rhetoric; geography and geology; and botany, chemistry, astronomy, and physiology. The college awarded its first degrees in 1855. The economic depression of the 1890s led to its closure in 1896.

Notable people

Teachers and administrator

* Edwin M. Gardner (1845–1935) Confederate veteran and painter * Adelia Cleopatra Graves (1821—1895), educator, author, poet * Zuinglius Calvin Graves Jr. (1816–1902) Baptist preacher and educator, the first President of Mary Sharp College * Mary Louise Nash (1826-1896), American educator and writer

Alumni

* Annie Somers Gilchrist (1841–1912), writer * Eva Munson Smith (1843–1915), composer, poet, author

References

External links

The Mary Sharp Project
Former women's universities and colleges in the United States Universities and colleges established in 1851 Female seminaries in the United States Defunct private universities and colleges in Tennessee History of women in Tennessee 1851 establishments in Tennessee Winchester, Tennessee {{Tennessee-university-stub