was permissible, in other words, but only to induct women into what Barbara Welter calls “the cult of True Womanhood,” in which a proper woman exhibits “traits of piety, domesticity, and purity.” The ideal of education in this case is indoctrination, not enlightenment, and an unyielding and systematic implementation of gender roles.19
Science Hill was different. To girls thirsting for knowledge, the academy was a kind of miracle. Founded to educate girls in the wilderness in 1825 by the resolute Julia Ann Hieronymous Tevis, with the help of her Methodist minister husband, John, it had indeed initially focused on “education as moral force for women as future wives and mothers.”20 Not so different from the typical southern girls’ preparatory school of its time, it took as its original mission “to make an elegant, cultivated, refined woman for society, and fit for the higher duties of home life.”21 Yet, from the very start, it offered classes not only in ladylike refinement but also in reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, history, rhetoric, and astronomy.
Morality, according to Tevis, must be informed by an educated mind, and, thus, science was an important part of the academy’s curriculum. The fact that science was being taught to girls was so unusual that the school was called Science Hill. Tevis also adopted as the school’s motto: “Woman’s mind is limitless. Help it to grow.” She inculcated in her young students the belief that the world was theirs to explore. With a firm and deferential faith in the divine, she taught that there were no limits, that can’t was an excuse rather than a reality. This was the attitude of Science Hill from the time of its inception to its demise under the Poynter sisters 114 years later. Everything was possible—even for girls.22
During the tenure of Dr. Wiley Taul Poynter as principal, beginning in 1879, Science Hill’s mission changed from preparing women to be educated, good wives to preparing them to be scholars. Poynter saw a changing world and wanted a more prominent place for women in it. Married to an educated woman (his wife, Clara, was the “female principal” and became principal after his death), he saw Science Hill as a place to prepare young southern women for more powerful roles in society. Under the Poynters, the curriculum, especially in the sciences, was expanded. The Poynters insisted that the regular course work be as rigorous as that at any boys’ school, and, thus, Dr. Poynter immodestly claimed: “A diploma conferred by Science Hill means something.”23
The school grew. The building was expanded. Poynter even got Science Hill included in the lyceum circuit, which meant a steady stream of visiting speakers in a chautauqua-like atmosphere. Science Hill became “one of the preeminent girls’ preparatory Institutions in America,” and Shelbyville became a cultural center that eventually featured an opera house at Seventh and Main.24
By the time Katherine Jackson arrived at Science Hill in 1891, the place was a palace. “A large covered court nearly one hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, with a gallery around it, affords all the conveniences of exercise at any time, and especially in bad weather,” boasted the 1890–1891 catalog. The gym included unladylike things like weights, clubs, and dumbbells. All eleven teachers were women, and all those teachers were graduates of northern universities and conservatories, including Smith, the University of Michigan, the New England Conservatory, and Wellesley.25
Jackson attended Science Hill for only her last two years of high school. It is uncertain whether that was due to her parents’ reticence to send her, the cost of the school ($252 without music lessons, the option the Jacksons took for their daughter), or the fact that she was not ready earlier. It speaks well of Jackson’s early education that she could dive into the difficult Science Hill curriculum at that late point and still excel. Setting a pattern for achievement, she was chosen to speak at commencement in 1892.26
Katherine Jackson and Friends, Science Hill Female Academy. Photograph by A. J. Bodnar. Courtesy of Kay Tolbert Buckland.
It took a special kind of young woman to attend Science Hill, a progressive, even radical school that hosted a steady stream of speakers from whom flowed a fountain of mind-opening ideas and prepared its students for a life, not just of the parlor and the nursery, but of the mind. It took an even more special set of parents to recognize the rightness of this opportunity for their daughter. William and Maria changed Katherine’s life by sending her to Science Hill. There is no doubt of this. There is no record of William and Maria’s conversations regarding Katherine’s education. In the end, however, while it was William’s money that sent Jackson to Science Hill, it was Maria to whom Jackson dedicated her doctoral dissertation in 1905.
2
Young Lady from London
Katherine Jackson and her sister Mamie Jackson Catching were hired as teachers at a mission school in Laredo, Texas, from 1895 to 1896.1 “We are all very sorry to see Miss Kittie leave,” mourned the Mountain Echo, “as she is one of the most pleasant and amiable of London’s young ladies and will be greatly missed by all.”2 At that time, a college degree was not needed to teach public school. Jackson took advantage of that, relocating to Texas, and acquiring a year’s worth of experience as a teacher. While home in London in March and June 1895, she prepared for college with tutors. This preparation proved effective; her academic record card indicates that she passed out of all her freshmen and sophomore courses when she entered Ohio Wesleyan University in 1897.3
It was not the norm for women to attend college in the 1890s, but it should be noted that at that time few men attended college either. In 1890, college attendance nationwide was 3 percent of the US population overall, and 20 percent of college attendees (0.6 percent of the overall population) were women.4 As there was little in the way of serious advanced study available to women at southern colleges, many southern women turned to northern schools for their education. The historian Rebecca Montgomery argues: “The lack of colleges in the South was an attempt to keep women in traditional roles. Instead, it propelled the brightest and best of Southern women into the seedbed of Women’s Rights and Progressive Movements.”5 This is, correct in effect, correct, but the causes are more complex.
By 1900, 2.8 percent of southern women attended college. While actually a much higher percentage than the overall figure for women nationwide, this is still quite a low. There were a number of reasons for this. For one thing, the pool of southern students from financially secure backgrounds was somewhat limited. According to Peter Temin, after the Civil War the American South faced three insurmountable financial problems: a reduced demand for cotton, the loss of slave labor, and the physical destruction left by the war. The cost of college tuition was out of reach for many families in the postbellum years. Further, while women’s colleges did exist in the South (Decatur Female Seminary, e.g., was founded in 1889), the curricula of most such schools tended toward grooming students for the traditional role of genteel woman and wife rather than for professional or academic life. This may have been a continuation of conservative southern cultural momentum or perhaps nostalgia for a social order that had come crashing down with the end of the war.6
For that minority desiring a serious education, few colleges in the South offered bachelor’s degrees in rigorous academic programs to women. The only remaining choice for those seeking such degrees was to go north. Katherine Jackson made that choice.7
The best of the southern preparatory schools for women (including Science Hill) had special relationships with and groomed their students for the Seven Sisters: Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, and Barnard Colleges.8 Jackson, however, chose to attend Ohio Wesleyan University, passing its stringent entrance requirements in all subjects, including English, Greek, Roman and medieval history, mathematics, antiquities, natural sciences, and Latin.9
While
