Mary Baldwin College - Bluestocking Yearbook (Staunton, VA)

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ADMINISTRATION and FACULTY

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' « » « « ' 7 - t J-i-cit » ? w 0- tsr rsi a. xt t S n . s 5C y 53 t ' r ■ f OJ ky,t,ff A Partial I.isi of Subscriptions For The Main Building— 1843 tinned to live in the vicinity for some time. Later he went to Texas, where he died as president of Austin College. He had projected and organized the school. It was the work of the Board for the next thirteen years to keep it nourishing. And no one who reads Waddell ' s record of this period can doubt that it was hard going, or that the present college owes them a great deal. In the first place, it was hard to obtain a Principal who was at once satisfactory and satisfied. There were five regularly appointed ones between 1849 and 1863 — Matthews, Campbell, Browne, Marquiss, and Tinsley. One made it a condition of his staying That the Board secure to the Seminary the privacy becoming a female boarding school. (He objected to members of the con- gregation walking through the yard!) In addition to this list of principals, there was one supervisor for a short while in 1856 whose name interests us. Dr. Wilson, member of the Board and minister at Presby- terian church, where his son, Thomas Woodrow was baptized the next year. Even more vexing than the problem of securing leadership was that of financing a growing child. The first building unit had proved al- most immediately inadequate, and two wings had been added. But paying for them was difficult; in fact, this had to be managed finally by the personal notes of several of the Board members. The settling of this debt was a long and troublesome process. The faithful fifteen met often and transacted much, all of it important, although the appointing of a committee to inquire into the exped- iency of raising a fund to procure a chemical and philosophical apparatus may sound a trifle mysterious to us. Times grew more, not less crucial. Above all else during the later fifties loomed the coming cataclysm though there are no references to it in the Board min- utes. If one may say so, the Civil War certainly came at a had time for Augusta Female Seminary, in 1862 it looked to be one of the first war casualties. Mr. Tinsley, whose success for a number f years was apparently satisfactory to him, he having a number of boarders, and many da) scholars, in 1863 faced a situation that to him seemed insur- mountable. The number of pupils was reduced, the places of boarders being filled by refugees from places in the vi- cinity of the contending armies. Vir- ginia Female Institute and Wesleyan Female Institute had both been suspend- ed and their buildings turned into hos- pitals. Across the street from the broad green Yard stood the arsenal, where ammunition and sev- eral cannon were kept, guarded by soldiers. The Sem- inary building was almost unfurnished, and it was impossible to secure furniture. All the schools in Staunton and in fact many schools in Virginia and the far South had been closed. War left little money for education, and travel was both difficult and dangerous. What was going to become of Mr. Bailey ' s experi- ment ? ■ a a • ■ ST a w r male Vminirv. o

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LEWIS WILSON JARMAN PRESIDENT