Cherokee Female Seminary

The Cherokee Female Seminary, (not to be confused with the first Cherokee Female Seminary), serves as the centerpiece of Northeastern State University, located in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, United States. The building was constructed to replace the original Cherokee Female Seminary that burnt to the ground Easter Sunday 1887. The Cherokee Council chose to rebuild the school on a 40-acre (160,000 m2) site north of Tahlequah. Two years later, on May 7, 1889, the dedication ceremonies were held in honor of the new building. The Female Seminary was owned and operated by the Cherokee Nation until March 6, 1909 when the State Legislature of Oklahoma passed an act providing for the creation and location of Northeastern State Normal School at Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and for the purchase form the Cherokee Tribal Government of the building, land, and equipment of the Cherokee Female Seminary. At the start of the next academic year, on September 14, the first classes were held at the newly created Northeastern State Normal School, now Northeastern State University.

Female seminaries were a larger cultural movemenet across the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, by which time they had taken over the role played traditionally by the boarding school, which had offered a more family-like atmosphere.