In Fall 2019, Archives, Special Collections, & Community (ASCC) had the privilege of working with Dr. Rose Stremlau’s “HIS 306: Women and Gender in U.S. History to 1870” course. Over the course of a semester, students researched the history of women and gender in the greater Davidson, North Carolina area using materials in the Davidson College Archives and other local organizations. The following series of blog posts highlights aspects of their research process.
Courtney Clawson is a junior history major at Davidson College. She is from Winston-Salem, NC and is a proud alumna of Salem Academy (the revised name of Salem Female Academy) where she first discovered her love of history. Courtney is grateful to the archivists at Davidson College and at Salem Academy and College for their assistance during her research process.
Founded in 1772, Salem Female Academy — now called Salem Academy and College — is the oldest all-girls school in the United States.1 Mary Graham Morrison, wife of Davidson College’s first president Rev. Robert Hall Morrison, attended Salem Academy, as well as four of the Morrison’s six daughters. Salem’s remarkable history is well preserved within the Salem Academy and College archives, where they keep records of each student who has attended the school dating back to the early 19th-century — including information about the Morrison women.
Mrs. Mary Graham Morrison enrolled at Salem Female Academy in May of 1815, a month before her fourteenth birthday, and concluded a year later in 1816. Her daughters Isabella Sophia, Harriet Abigail, Mary Anna, and Eugenia Erixene each attended Salem Female Academy in the 1830s and 1840s.2 Salem has a rich history of its own. Founded by a group of Moravian women from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Salem is proud to have existed since “four years before the Declaration of Independence was signed.”3 Salem Female Academy became Salem Academy and College in 1907 and remains to this day the oldest, continually-operating all-girls school in the country.4
The Morrison family clearly valued education for their daughters, although this education prepared them for their lives as wives and mothers. Mrs. Mary Graham Morrison’s alumna card lists her occupation as “12 children.” Additionally, her card reads: “wife of first president of Davidson College – and mother of Marry Anna Morrison, Salem 1847-1849, wife of [General] “Stonewall Jackson – Mary Graham’s four illustrious daughters attended Salem, and all married distinguished men.”5 The use of “distinguished” to describe Mrs. Morrison’s sons-in-law is intriguing, as three of the four men were generals in the Confederate army.6 Salem claims that “students of diverse backgrounds were accepted as members of the school community” beginning in the 1780s with two slave girls.7 When I attended Salem Academy, the administration made an important decision regarding the institution’s history of slavery. The most outstanding senior received the Elisabeth Oesterlein award, named for the first teacher at Salem; however, in 2017, the school’s leadership decided to rename the award “The Oak Award” due to Ms. Oesterlein’s ownership of slaves. This served as a monumental moment for the academy. It is fascinating to examine Salem’s history — particularly their wording in describing the men who married Salem alumnae — in this contemporary context.
Bibliography:
Salem Academy and College. “History.” Accessed November 7, 2019. https://www.salemacademyandcollege.org/history
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