Queer Places:
Mount Holyoke College (Seven Sisters), 50 College St, South Hadley, MA 01075
Huguenot College, 1 Kollege St, Wellington, 7654, South Africa
Abbie Park Ferguson (April 4, 1837, Whately, Massachusetts - March 25, 1919)
was founder and president of Huguenot College. After graduating in 1856 from
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, Massachusetts, Abbie Park Ferguson taught in
America before travelling to Paris to teach, where she became caught up in the
Franco-Prussian War. She returned to Connecticut to work in city missions and
in 1873, at the invitation of Rev. Andrew Murray, sailed to Cape Colony where
in the following year she founded the Huguenot Seminary in Wellington, the
first institution of higher learning for women in the country, which in 1898
became a college with Ferguson as President.
Abbie Park Ferguson and Anna Bliss
She graduated from Mount Holyoke College (then Mount Holyoke Female Seminary)
in 1856. She taught in Niles, Michigan until 1858 and later in New Haven,
Connecticut from 1867 until 1873. In 1873 Ferguson and another Mount Holyoke
graduate (1862), Anna Bliss, moved to Cape
Town, South Africa and established the first women's college in the region,
Huguenot College in 1898. Abbie Park Ferguson was president of Huguenot
College (which eventually became Huguenot University College) until her
retirement in 1910. She took a leave to return to the United States from 1905
to 1906 during which time she received an M.A. from Mount Holyoke. In 1912,
Mount Holyoke honored her with a Doctor of Letters. She died at Huguenot on
March 25, 1919, aged 82.
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14428151/abby-adeline-manning
- The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis: A Narrative Biography
Harry Henderson, Albert Henderson
Untreed Reads, 2012