Fairmount College (1872-1917/18; also known as Fairmount Female College; later, Fairmount School for Girls)[1] was an American girls' school at Fairmont and College Streets in Monteagle, Tennessee. It was established in 1872 with the aid of John Moffatt,[2] a Scottish born temperance preacher and landowner. It was Moffat and business partner Oliver Maybee who convinced Fairmount's first headmistresses, Louise Yerger and Harriet B. Kells,[3] to move their girls' school from Jackson, Mississippi to Tennessee. Among its students, in 1910, the school hosted two of the Soong sisters, one of whom later became Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the other, Soong Ching-ling, who married Sun Yat-sen.[4][5]

Silas McBee, who later gained fame as an author and architect, became principal of Fairmount College in the late 1800s (exact date not recorded). McBee turned the school into a church institution that might be "for girls what Sewanee was for young men".

The school ceased operations in 1917/18.[6] In 1921, Reverend William Stirling Claiborne and Dr. Mercer P. Logan founded the DuBose Memorial Church Training School (later, DuBose Conference Center) on school's former site.

Fairmount College's papers are held in the University Archives and Special Collections of Sewanee: The University of the South.[6]

References

  1. ^ Anchora of Delta Gamma. Vol. 31. 1914. p. 125. Retrieved 30 January 2024. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  2. ^ Manning, Russ (1 December 2011). 40 Hikes in Tennessee's South Cumberland: The True Story of the Kidnap and Escape of Four Climbers in Central Asia. Mountaineers Books. ISBN 978-1-59485-402-6. Retrieved 29 January 2024.
  3. ^ Bratton, Theodore DuBose (1936). An Apostle of Reality: The Life and Thought of the Reverend William Porcher DuBose, S. T. D., D. C. L. A Series of Lectures on the DuBose Foundation, Delivered at the University of the South. Longmans, Green and Company. p. 85. Retrieved 29 January 2024.
  4. ^ "Southeast Tennessee Tourist Association". Southeast Tourist Tourist Association. Archived from the original on 3 October 2011. Retrieved 9 July 2011.
  5. ^ Chitty, Arthur and Elizabeth, Sewanee Sampler, 1978, p. 106, ISBN 0-9627687-7-4
  6. ^ a b "Collection: Fairmount School for Girls Collection - ArchivesSpace Public Interface". archivesguides.sewanee.edu. Retrieved 29 January 2024.
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