ABSTRACT

In 1845, Reverend and Mrs. Drury Lacy sent their only daughter, Bessie, to Edgeworth Seminary in Greensboro, North Carolina, trusting her to the care of Dr. and Mrs. Morgan who ran the academy. There, Bessie's education included instruction in math, science, Latin, literature, and music. While the Lacys surely hoped that the education they were providing would prove rewarding and useful—Mrs. Lacy wrote to her daughter that Bessie should "endeavor to improve yourself"—they could not have predicted that it would one day provide the foundation for part-time teaching, or for the entry of Bessie's own daughter into full-time professionallife. 1 Bessie Lacy was educated on the cusp of a new kind of white Southern womanhood—schooled in antebellum expectations, but destined to face a society almost completely foreign to her a scarce fifteen years later. The serious expectations that she and her parents held for her education in the 1840s, however, would allow Bessie to adapt to the changes that would confront her during the Civil War and Reconstruction and would enable her to convey to her own daughter a set of expectations for female behavior that was substantially different from that offered by the antebellum culture into which she was born.