First in the World

In December of eighteen thirty-six, the Georgia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church did something that had never been done anywhere in the world. They chartered a college that would grant degrees to women. Not certificates. Not diplomas of completion. Actual bachelor's degrees, identical in standing to those granted to men at institutions that had been doing so for centuries.

Wesleyan College opened in Macon in January of eighteen thirty-nine as Georgia Female College, becoming the first college in the world chartered to grant degrees to women, a distinction sometimes credited instead to Mount Holyoke, the Massachusetts institution that opened two years earlier but did not become a degree granting college until decades later.

The college was, in retrospect, far more radical than its founders may have fully intended. By eighteen fifty-one, students there had formed the Adelphean Society, which became Alpha Delta Pi. By eighteen fifty-two, the Philomathean Society had followed, later renamed Phi Mu. Two of the oldest sororities in America were born in Macon, on a campus where women were already doing something that most of the country had not yet imagined them doing: earning degrees.

The Soong sisters, who would become central figures in twentieth-century Chinese history, both attended Wesleyan. Soong Mei-ling graduated and returned to China to become the First Lady of the Republic; her sister Soong Ching-ling later became Honorary Chairwoman of the People's Republic. Their Macon diplomas, from a college chartered in eighteen thirty-six, opened more than domestic doors.