While a student at Waynesburg College I once heard a guest-speaker tell an uncertain history undergrad that a true historian knows their calling by an urge to hold history. To hold what they held, to touch what they touched – that internally something happens in the process that would make the connection to the past quite clear and profound.

Defining me absolutely, this sentiment shapes the perspective with which I enter upon my research. It is of little surprise then that the day I first held the actual Annual Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Waynesburg College for the Academic Year Ending September 1857 that I felt that clear, profound connection to the important events unfolding in its time. Turning the delicate pages in my own hands, thinking of who might have done so a century and a half before me, this little book was my first introduction to the history-making ladies of the Waynesburg College Class of 1857.

Margaret Leonice (Needham) Still1

150 years ago, though graduation occurred in September rather than May, it was the addition of the names of three young women for the first time beside those of four young men in that 1857 Annual Catalogue, that were scribed to change the path of female education. It was no Philadelphia, Pittsburgh or other large city school, it was here in Waynesburg that for the very first time in the entire state of Pennsylvania a woman stood up and held out her hand to receive a Bachelor’s Degree equal to that of her male classmate. That woman was Margaret Leonice (Needham) Still. She was followed by Laura (Weethee) Jennings and Lydia (Weethee) Sparrow. Their accomplishment was not as simple as enrolling in the male classes and passing the exams. These girls and the administration and faculty that made their education possible took on culture and society to see the first three through to graduation. In his Waynesburg College Story, 1849-1974, author William Howard Dusenberry, provides an indication of the social unease over coeducation when a public meeting on the matter held at the Greene County courthouse “nearly came to blows.”

College president Rev. J. P. Weethee didn’t let, or perhaps couldn’t get, just anyone to be in the first class of females; he made special requests of family and friends to recruit the girls who would participate in this experiment of equal opportunity. All three ultimately came from out of state. Margaret’smatriculation file contains a letter written by her brother Hawley Varnum Needham in 1928 to then Waynesburg College president Paul Stewart, which tells us that, “While living in Mass. and R. I. our father became intimately acquainted with Rev. J. P. Weethee later President of your college. This led to my sister going there for her education.” Laura and Lydia Weethee, cousins, were Rev. Weethee’s nieces from Ohio where forward-thinking Oberlin College was the first in the entire nation to provide equal education with equal results. Through the participation of these three women, Waynesburg joined Oberlin in the historic ranks, by becoming the first school in Pennsylvania, and perhaps the second, certainly one of the earliest, schools in the whole country to provide Bachelor’s Degrees to women. Though other schools in the United States claim early female graduates, they were generally handing them something less than the degree the men could earn.

Laura E. (Weethee) Jennings1

Dr. Thomas West Sparrow & Lydia Ann (Weethee) Sparrow1

As early as 1852 women did graduate from Waynesburg College, but via its Female Seminary, from which females received diplomas more like today’s high school graduates than degrees equivalent to today’s college graduates. In 1857, six women continued to graduate from the Female Seminary with diplomas separate from the three women who graduated from Waynesburg College with degrees. Dusenberry quotes one Female Seminary classmate as having said, “those three girls deserted us and went over to the men.” The Female Seminary evolved into the Female Department which existed as a compromise for the practice of early co-education. The Female Department was headed by Margaret (Bell) Miller, and under her guide and that of her husband, Alfred Brashier Miller, who later became College president, the diplomas were phased out entirely for degrees. Though listed as a separate department in name, the men and women were in classes together and received the same degrees. Returning to the 1857 Annual Catalogue, I enjoy a line at the bottom of page 14, quite near the booklets end, that reads simply, but historically and, perhaps bravely, “Students completing this course, whether gentleman or ladies, receive the degree of BACHELOR OF SCIENCE.”

Margaret, Laura and Lydia all graduated cum laude, refuting those who believed that the delicate female could not handle the rigorous college education; and walked away degreed women in spite of those who thought it was ridiculous to bestow a “Bachelor’s Degree” upon a bachelorette.

Beautiful, bright and bold, these ladies set an example that female graduates of Waynesburg College continue to follow, whether or not they are aware of their own proud history. The lady graduates of 2007 may not know the anniversary that they are marking, but I hope that someone will be sure and tell them.