Elizabeth Female Academy:
First Institution of Higher Learning for Women
Adams County, Mississippi
The pictures on this page were taken by my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter on a
recent trip to Claiborne, Jefferson and Adams Counties.  They visited historic churches,
cemeteries and a synagogue in Port Gibson.  They strolled through the haunting ghost
towns of Rocky Springs and Rodney and visited their ancient cemeteries.

They took photos in cemeteries that author Eudora Welty photographed in the 1930's, when
they had already been abandoned by towns that had all but ceased to be.  And they wondered
at the fragile nature of the monuments we build, believing that they will last forever.

-- Nancy (May, 2019)
The National Park Service marker above reads:
The Natchez Trace was still active and Mississippi had just become a state when the Elizabeth
Female Academy opened its doors in November of 1818.  Much can be learned about the
culture of early Mississippi here in the community of Washington.  As the young state's first
capital, it boasted churches, advanced learning societies and two institutions of higher
education, Jefferson College (1811) and the Elizabeth Female Academy.  Progressive thinking
for the day, it was the first institution of higher learning for women chartered by the state of
Mississippi.  After the capital and population shifted to Jackson, the Aacademy struggled and
finally closed in 1845.
Elizabeth Female Academy was run under the auspices of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, though students of many different denominations attended.  
The curriculum included chemistry, biology, natural and moral philosophy,
botany, Latin, mythology, American and ancient history, astronomy, French, art
and music.  John James Audubon was an art teacher in 1822.  The school closed
in 1845 and the site was reduced to ruins by a fire in the 1870's.  A brick wall is
all that now remains of the first institution of higher learning for women in
the state - and possibly the nation.  

From an article by historian H. Clark Burnett in 2009:
According to Methodist Bishop R. Galloway, in a 1902 article he wrote for the
Mississippi Historical Society, [Elizabeth Female Academy] was the first institution
chartered for the higher education of women in the South - maybe even the United
States - and the first to offer degrees to women.
This claim is disputed by some scholars who argue that it was chartered as a
secondary preparatory school, and that Wesleyan College in Georgia was the first
college for women.
However, curriculum at Elizabeth Female Academy for the senior class was at the
college level and students who successfully completed the courses were awarded a
diploma for the degree of Domina Scientarum.  Elizabeth Female Academy granted
these degrees many years before the founding of Wesleyan College.

The site was placed on the National Register of Historic places in 1977.