History
Salem was founded in 1772 by early Moravian settlers who held the view that girls deserved an education comparable to that afforded boys. Among the town's early residents were 16 girls and women who walked more than 500 miles from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to join the new community. One of them was 17-year-old Elisabeth Oesterlein, who would be the first teacher of what is now Salem Academy and College. There were very few girls' schools at the time, particularly in the South; word spread about the girls' school, and the school accepted boarding students in 1802. The school grew considerably throughout the 19th century both in size and course offerings, with college-level courses being offered in the 1860s. As the college-level curriculum expanded, the school officially became known as Salem Academy and College in 1907. Despite such travails as the American Civil War and a measles epidemic in the 1800s, the Academy has never closed its doors in the more than two centuries since those first classes were held.
Read more about this topic: Salem Academy
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)