Giles sisters of Jones County were academic trailblazers

By thinking “outside the classroom box,” Professor Lemuel Johnson helped three Jones County, N.C., sisters earn their baccalaureate degrees in 1878 from Trinity College in Randolph County.

 

(Trinity College would move to Durham in 1892 and change its name to Duke University.) 

It’s a fascinating story that should prove tempting to amateur genealogists. Here’s what we know, primarily plucked from the annals of the Duke library: 

Edward Starkey Franck (E.S.F.) Giles was a Jones County farmer as well as the minister at the Church of Christ in Trenton during the mid-1800s. 

After E.S.F. died in 1868, his widow, Nancy White Giles, relocated to Randolph County, where E.S.F. Jr. was admitted to Trinity College. The boy’s three older sisters, Mary, Persis and Theresa, all found work as schoolteachers, but were desirous of receiving “the same education” as their brother. They applied to enroll at Trinity but were denied.

 Mary, Persis, and Theresa Giles

 

Mary Giles said the sisters were told, “Trinity is a male school.” She added: “We were barred.” 

E.S.F. Jr. did his best to tutor his sisters in the evenings after he returned home from classes. “It soon became evident, however, that he was unable to answer all their questions, having just learned the material himself. Insistent on learning what their brother was, the sisters approached their neighbor – Prof. Lemuel Johnson. He agreed to tutor them after-hours.” 

Amy McDonald, an archivist at Duke, said Prof. Johnson “was the mathematics department” – teaching courses in arithmetic, mensuration, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus. He also performed the duties of college treasurer, librarian and alumni association president.

 

McDonald wrote that Prof. Johnson would later say that “among his most memorable achievements as an educator was tutoring the gifted Giles sisters every evening in his parlor.” 

Mary Aline Fertin, a law school student at Duke and freelance writer, said Prof. Johnson persuaded the other professors at Trinity to offer private “classes of three” to the Giles sisters, “teaching them exactly the same lessons that the men at Trinity learned.”

 

“The Giles sisters did attend one class with the men, metaphysics, taught by University President Braxton Craven,” Fertin said.

 

Mary Giles wrote: “We were very ambitious, and we thought we could do anything anyone else could, but I suppose we were curiosities.” 

“By 1878, Mary, Persis and Theresa had completed all requisite coursework at Trinity College,” McDonald said. “As such, they were allowed to stand for the comprehensive exams taken by all students wishing to graduate. They passed, and President Craven went on to submit their names, along with those of the male students who passed, to the Board of Trustees for consideration.”

Trustees authorized that each Giles sister be awarded the degree of Bachelor of Arts. “As a result of this extraordinary measure, Mary, Persis and Theresa Giles are considered the first female graduates of Duke University, despite never having been officially admitted or enrolled at Trinity,” McDonald said. 

The Giles sisters were called back to Trinity’s campus in 1885, so the college could confer Master of Arts degrees upon each Giles sister – another first for the Duke graduate school record books. 

Together with their younger sister, Sue, the Giles family in 1885 established Greenwood (S.C.) Female College. (Their brother had chosen to set up a law practice in Greenwood.) 

The Giles sisters would later sell the college. In 1898, they established the Misses’ Giles School for younger girls in Greenwood.

 

Giles Residence Hall on the Duke campus was dedicated in 1928, named in honor of Mary, Persis and Theresa Giles.