EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN THE SECOND HALF OF 1800: HELEN MAGILL WHITE P/19

                                                                   Read Part One HERE

In this post I will focus on a woman named Helen Magill White. She lived from 1853 - 1944. Helen was born in Providence Rhode Island, USA. She was one of five daughter of Quakers Edward Hicks Magill, a classicist, and Sarah Beans Magill. Her father's commitment to the education of women allowed for all the Magill girls to become sufficiently well educated to pursue careers as college teachers. 

Helen showed special promise as a student, and when her father assumed the position of sub-master at the prestigious Boston Public Latin School for boys, she became the only girl to study there. At age 15, she enrolled in the first class of the recently founded Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, shortly before her father became the school's president. 

After graduating in 1873 as the second in her class, Helen spent two more years at Swarthmore in what would now be called postgraduate studies. She then began studying Greek at Boston University. In 1877, she became the first American woman to earn a doctorate, with a dissertation on Greek drama. The following four years, she spent in England, pursuing classical studies at Newnham College of Cambridge University.

Read Part Twenty HERE