Mary Mitchell Birchall

Mary Mitchell Birchall (1840-1898) was the first woman to graduate from a college in New England when she received a bachelor's degree from Bates College in 1869.[1] She later served as a professor at Vassar College and founded a girls' school in Boston.[2]

Mary Wheelwright Mitchell was born in 1840 in Dover, Maine to John and Charlotte (Littlefield) Mitchell. She graduated from Bates in 1869 while working in a local textile mill to support herself, and she reportedly turned down a scholarship.[3] After graduation, Mitchell taught high school in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Miss Anna Brackett's School in New York, before becoming a professor at Vassar College in 1876-77.[4] In 1891 she founded a girls' school in West Chester Park in Boston, which she ran until 1897. Mitchell also taught school in Laconia New Hampshire. She married Frank Birchall and had two children Robert Birchall and Sara Hamilton.[5] She died in 1898 in Dover, Maine and was buried in the South Section of McAllister Cemetery in Dover.[6]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.bates.edu/150-years/bates-greats/mary-w-mitchell/
  2. ↑ General Catalogue of Bates College and Cobb Divinity School, 1863-1915. Bates College. January 1, 1915.
  3. ↑ Larson, Faith by Their Works, (Bates College Honors Thesis, 2005) Chapter 3, http://www.bates.edu/150-years/history/progressive-tradition/chapter-3/
  4. ↑ The Vassar Miscellany - Volumes 5-6 - Page 52 https://books.google.com/books?id=SGIiAAAAMAAJ
  5. ↑ https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=23310472
  6. ↑ General Catalogue of Bates College and Cobb Divinity School, 1863-1915. Bates College. January 1, 1915.
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