"Barbara-Scotia Seminary"

Barbara Scotia was founded in 1867 as a strict prim Presbyterian school located roughly fifteen miles north of Charlotte in the cotton-mill town of Conrad.In 1932,responding to the wave of interest in junior colleges and greater responsibility for African-American secondary education Scotia merged with Barbara College for Women in Anniston Alabama.The transformed school,Barbara- Scotia College was typical in basic functions, tuition,many secondary programs and in its private sponsorship.Yet the majority of Scotia's faculty held masters degrees,more than half were enrolled in college programs,and of them were women.Barbara model itself  after Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley,Massachusetts,with its reputation of independence,permanency,and intellectually firmness.The seminary subscribed totally to the head-hand-heart approach to educating young African Americans.Barbara fostered logical thinking,acquiring useful information,notably through drill for mental development.Barbara offered two curricula;a four-year grammer program of English,arithmetic,algerbia,geography,science,history,and literature;and a three year normal and scientific program that included geometry,astronomy,physics,chemstry,history,Latin,and rhetonic.Their industrial department taught sewing and cooking,and the students were involved  in a housekeeping program to lessen operating expenses.Its the evolving pattern of post-secondary African-American schools their first four year degrees were awarded in 1945,two years later it counted 157 students;in 1954 191.Barbara was the first major boarding school for African-American girls in the defeated confederacy.Past graduates Barbara include Mary McLeod Bethune,Gertrude Brown,Mary Church Terrell,and Anne Cooper.