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The Alleged Abduction of Milly McPherson and Catholic Recruitment of Presbyterian Girls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

C.Walker Gollar
C.Walker Gollar
Affiliation:
Mr. Gollar is assistant professor of church history at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio.
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Extract

When a Yankee named George Washington rode into the town of Lebanon in central Kentucky during the summer of 1834, most townspeople grew suspicious of what they called “his eastern ways.” Washington assumed control of the eight-year-old Presbyterian school for girls and soon made it his goal to monopolize education in the area. Finding that since 1828 the Catholic Sisters of Loretto ran Saint Augustine's Female Academy in the same town, Washington, according to one report, “did all in his power to bring odium upon” the rival institution. He even encouraged some sort of ill reports about the school's principal, Sister Ann Constantia Spalding, the daughter of prominent Catholic pioneers Henrietta and Richard Spalding. Within that first year, Washington challenged Sister Spalding to select a handful of her students to face a like number of his pupils in a debate so that the public might judge, as he wrote, which “is the best of the two [schools].” “‘Which is the best of the two,’” Spalding responded, [would have been more grammatically written ‘which is the better of the two.’” Having thus asserted herself, Spalding politely declined the invitation. Embarrassed by this exchange, Washington slipped out of town at the end of the academic year.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , December 1996 , pp. 596 - 608
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1996

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References

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