Ward-Belmont College
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Ward-Belmont College was a former "ladies' seminary" located in Nashville, Tennessee on the grounds of the antebellum estate of Adelicia Acklen.
The school utilized the grounds of the former Acklen estate and mansion, with a quadrangle of academic and residential buildings being erected over time on the front lawn. It was regarded as a very prestigious "finishing school" by the more aristocratic families of Middle Tennessee, although some students were from considerably farther away.
One of the more famous alumnae was Sarah Colley Cannon, the woman subsequently known to generations of country music fans as "Minnie Pearl". Another was Elizabeth P. Farrington, later publisher of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Delegate to Congress from the Territory of Hawaii. The singer Grace Moore and the actress Mary Martin also attended Ward-Belmont.
[edit] History
In 1865, William E. Ward and his wife, Eliza Hudson Ward, opened Ward Seminary for Young Ladies in Nashville, Tennessee, to offer “a full and thorough course of instruction, embracing academic and collegiate work.”
In 1870 the Educational Bureau in Washington, D.C., ranked Ward Seminary among the top three educational institutions for women in the nation. The school also placed emphasis on athletics, and organized the first girls’ varsity basketball team in the South and one of the first in the nation. Ward Seminary and Belmont College for Young Women merged in 1913 to form Ward-Belmont, the first junior college in the South to receive full accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.
In 1950, under financial constraints, Ward-Belmont's campus was sold to the Tennessee Baptist Convention to be operated as Belmont College (now Belmont University). A new modern non-residential girls' high school, Harpeth Hall School, was erected in the affluent Green Hills section of Nashville to take the place of Ward-Belmont.
[edit] Sources
- Harpeth Hall School and Ward-Belmont in the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture
