Morgantown (WV) Female Collegiate Institute

1866 Catalogue Pages

 

As a graduate of the Morgantown (WV) Female Collegiate Institute in the Class of 1865, Martha "Mattie" Jane (McClaskey) Hanshaw is the earliest known college-educated woman in the extended Minerd-Minard-Miner-Minor family.

The Institute was an outgrowth of the all-boy Monongalia Academy, founded in 1814. The Academy in turn opened the all-girl Institute in 1839, which later was combined with the Woodburn Female Seminary, said William T. Doherty Jr. and Festus P. Summers in their landmark 1981 book, West Virginia University: Symbol of Unity in a Sectionalized State. The Institute's building later hosted the first classes of newly formed West Virginia University in 1867.

Thus in 1865, Mattie received her A.B. degree from the Institute and was one of just six in her graduating class. The others were Ruth A. Dorsey, Leoline R. Bowmon, Margaretta Lee Cook, Mary A. Griffith and Annie L. Anderson. Her course of study included a rigorous program of English analysis, arithmetic, physiology, philosophy, history, penmanship, algebra, astronomy, Latin and French, among others. Copies of tattered pages from the Institute's 16-page 1866 catalogue are featured on this page. Unfortunately, Pages 1, 2, 15 and 16 are missing entirely.

Mattie's name appears on page 4. Just four days before Christmas, in the year of her graduation, Mattie was united in matrimony with Charles Francis Wayne Hanshaw, a storekeeper of Grafton, Taylor County, WV.

 

 

Copyright © 2003, 2021 Mark A. Miner

Minerd.com extends its gratitude for these artifacts to Frank Wayne Hanshaw III.