Westminster College
New Wilmington, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Founded by the Associate, now United Presbyterian, Church. Chartered 1852. One of first two colleges in Pennsylvania to grant degrees to women, and the first to grant them the A. B. degree, in 1857.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Chartered in 1852 by the Associate Presbyterian Church—later the United Presbyterian Church—Westminster College took root in the Lawrence County town of New Wilmington. Like its Greene County contemporary, it broke sharply with academic custom by granting degrees to women, and it went further still: in 1857 it became the first college in Pennsylvania to award women the Bachelor of Arts degree. For a mid-century American college, this was a genuinely radical commitment to equal education.
Why it matters
Westminster's pioneering A.B. degree for women stands as a landmark in the movement to give American women full access to the same higher learning long reserved for men.
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