Endnotes For Margaret Leonice (Needham) Still

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Endnotes For Margaret Leonice (Needham) Still

2-Margaret Leonice (Needham) Still has three unique claims to history: 1) she was the first woman to graduate from Waynesburg College with a male-equivalent Bachelor's Degree; 2) she was the first woman in Pennsylvania to graduate with a male-equivalent Bachelor's Degree, making Waynesburg College the first institution in the state to offer the opportunity; and 3) via her graduation Waynesburg College became one of the earliest, perhaphs the second, institution in the nation to provide a male-equivalent Bachelor's Degree. Sources: Margaret Leonice Needham, Laura Weethee and Lydia Weethee were the first three women to receive male-equivalent Bachelor's Degrees from Waynesburg College, graduating in September 1857, as identified in: Annual Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Waynesburg College for the Academic Year Ending September 1857 (Waynesburg, Pennsylvania: Pauley and Jennings, 1857), 6, 17. Ongoing research has so far found only one school, the renowned Oberlin College in Ohio, to have graduated women with male-equivalent Bachelor's Degrees prior to 1857, Oberlin having graduated its first degreed females in 1841. Excepting Oberlin, numerous schools in the nation graduated females prior to 1857, Waynesburg included, but diplomas or degrees of a lesser value were awarded, they were not male-equivalent Bachelor's Degrees. Margaret Leonice (Needham) Still was established as the first of the three Waynesburg women to receive her degree in a letter from Dr. Paul R. Stewart (Waynesburg, PA), President of Waynesburg College 1921-1963, to Mrs. C. Tubbs, 11 January 1929; held in 2003 by Bonnie (Watts) Cook - great-granddaughter of Margaret Leonice (Needham) Still. The letter was transcribed and shared in 2003 by John F. Hartman. Stewart says, "it has deve1oped that she was the first woman to graduate from this institution from the same course as the men and with the same degree. This is all the more important since this college was the second college in the world to grant degrees to women on the same basis as men." Additional information on early Waynesburg College female graduates: William Howard Dusenberry, Waynesburg College Story, 1849-1974 (1975: Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio), 41-42, 419n. Additional information on early Oberlin College female graduates: Robert S. Fletcher and Ernest H. Wilkins, "The Beginning of College Education for Women and of Coeducation on the College Level," Bulletin of Oberlin College, New Series 343 (20 March 1937).

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