Biography
Cornelia Phillips was born March 20, 1825 in Harlem, New York City, New York, the youngest of three children born to James Phillips and Judith Vermeule Phillips. (Her brother Samuel F. Phillips served as United States solicitor general under President Ulysses S. Grant.) In 1826, James Phillips took a post as a mathematics professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
She married James Monroe Spencer in 1855 and moved to Alabama, where their only child, Julia (later known as June Spencer Love), was born in 1859. Spencer and her daughter returned to Chapel Hill after her husband's death in 1861, where she began her first book and wrote about the university for local newspapers. She published regular columns in The North Carolina Presbyterian and the Raleigh Sentinel.
She urged the North Carolina legislature to close the university in 1870 to protect the school from Reconstruction politics, later revealed to be her own disagreement with the politics of university leaders at the time.
After Reconstruction, she similarly urged on the school's reopening and, on March 20, 1875, Spencer climbed to the roof of the South Building and rung its bell to celebrate. She contributed to the university by writing hymns for special occasions, organizing community events, and keeping the alumni records. In 1895, she became the first woman to receive an honorary degree from the University.
Read more about this topic: Cornelia Phillips Spencer
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