Julia A. Tevis

Julia A. Tevis (December 5, 1799 – April 21, 1880) was a pioneer educator of women from Kentucky. After teaching for several years in Virginia, she founded the Science Hill Female Academy in Shelbyville and led the institution to gain a national reputation for excellence. Teaching her students math and science, rather than how to be accomplished seamstresses, Tevis prepared young women for colleges.

Julia A. Tevis
1860 portrait by Charles V. Bond
Born
Julia Ann Hieronymous

(1799-12-05)December 5, 1799
Winchester, Clark County, Kentucky
DiedApril 21, 1880(1880-04-21) (aged 80)
Shelbyville, Shelby County, Kentucky
NationalityAmerican
Occupationteacher
Years active1819–79
Known forfounding Science Hill Female Academy

Early life

Julia Ann Hieronymous was born on December 5, 1799, near Winchester, Clark County, Kentucky[1] to Mary "Polly" (née Bush) and Pendleton Hieronymus[2] Her father's family were German Methodists and her mother's family were English Baptists[3] Hieronymous was the oldest daughter and second child in the family.[4] Though she began her schooling in Clark County, studying with Mr. Pettichord,[5] when she was seven years old, the Hieronymous family moved to Winchester, Virginia, as they felt schooling opportunities would be better.[1][5] She attended the female academy there until 1813, when they moved again to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D. C..[1]

In Georgetown, Hieronymous studied drawing, embroidery, music and French with various private tutors.[1] She enjoyed a privileged life, meeting dignitaries and attending festivities when Congress was in session. During the War of 1812, Hieronymous was barely able to flee during the British attack on Washington.[6] In 1815, she entered a finishing school run by an Englishwoman, Mrs. Stone and graduated when she was nineteen years old.[1] A business reversal of her father, required that Hieronymous earn her own living.[7]

Career

At twenty, Hieronymous began teaching at a school in Wytheville, Virginia.[1] After teaching a little over a year in Wytheville, she moved to Washington County, Virginia to teach the daughter of a general who lived in Abingdon.[7] When her father died, Hieronymous brought her mother and sister to live with her and took on the responsibility for their care. She converted to Methodism and met a circuit rider, John Tevis, with whom she had a brief courtship.[6] On March 9, 1824, Hieronymous and Tevis married[1] and traveled to Kentucky on their honeymoon trip to see the property his parents had given them as a wedding gift. She convinced John to allow her to open a school in the home.[6]

John was appointed to serve the Louisville Station and Tevis, who remained in Shelbyville[7] founded the Science Hill Female Academy on March 25, 1825.[1] In the early days of the school, the Methodist church helped with funding,[8] but it was only nominally associated with the church. Tevis sought to teach her students to have a strong social conscience,[9][10] but more importantly, she felt that women were as "capable of mastering the sciences as were young men".[11] While daily attendance at chapel was a requirement, Tevis felt that chemistry and mathematics should take precedence over embroidery and sewing. Famous educators, speakers and writers of the period presented lectures as part of the lyceum circuit for the school[9] and she taught history, math, rhetoric, science, and Latin[11][12] All teachers she hired were required to have had a classical education and be proficient in languages.[13]

Shortly before the school opened, Tevis gave birth to her first child. As she would with its six siblings, she continued working and simultaneously raising her family.[14] A cholera epidemic in the 1830s nearly forced the closure of the school, but Tevis persevered and built the student body from its initial thirty-five pupils to 250 by 1857.[7][13] Her husband John, had a stroke in 1857 and thereafter suffered from ill-health. He died on January 26, 1861, just prior to the beginning of the Civil War.[13][15] Around the same time as her husband's death, Tevis' likeness was featured in the Nashville-based Home Circle newspaper's February 1861 issue.[16] It is unknown if the engraving published in the Home Circle was taken from the portraits painted of the Tevises by Charles Bond, probably in 1860.[17]

Tevis believed in the emancipation of slaves and was not a supporter of the Confederacy, which was shocking to her neighbors.[13] As most of her students also came from Southern states, though she had pupils from throughout the country, her kindness and reputation allowed her to keep the school open during the conflict. Several students from Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, remained with her through the duration of the war without means to contact or return to their families. She cared for them as if they were her own children, until the war was over and normal travel was resumed.[18]

In 1875, the school held its fifty-year reunion and alumni from three generations came to pay tribute to Tevis. Though she had begun relinquishing some of her duties, she continued to instruct Bible classes and chemistry.[19] In 1878, Tevis published her autobiography, Sixty Years in a School-room.[20] The following year, she sold Science Hill to Dr. Wiley Taul Poynter[13] and on her birthday a large "founders celebration" was held in her honor at the school. It was attended by former students, teachers, local dignitaries and friends.[21]

Death and legacy

Tevis died on April 21, 1880 at Shelbyville, Kentucky[22] and she was buried in the Grove Hill Cemetery of Shelbyville. The month after her death, her former students and children erected a cemetery marker to her memory.[23] A statue in her honor was erected in 1885 in Shelbyville.[24] The school Tevis founded maintained a reputation as one of the premier college preparatory schools of the South, training some 3,000 young women over its 114-year history until 1939.[23]

In 1939, Rachel M. Varble published Julia Ann a work of juvenile fiction based on the diaries of Tevis.[25][26] Tevis' private papers and those of Science Hill are housed at the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky and contain letters, papers and records of the school from its founding through 1975.[27] The Filson Historical Society is also in possession of the portraits painted by Bond.[17] In 1975 the school was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, because of its significance as both a school and a historical building.[28]

References

Citations
  1. Townsend 1913, p. 107.
  2. Tevis 1878, pp. 41-42.
  3. Appleby 1997, p. 71.
  4. Appleby 1997, p. 72.
  5. Appleby 1997, p. 74.
  6. Appleby, Cheng & Goodwin 2015, p. 181.
  7. Redford 1870, p. 249.
  8. Redford 1876, p. 393.
  9. Passet 2008, pp. 68-69.
  10. The Louisville Daily Courier 1867, p. 1.
  11. Cronan 1975, p. 3.
  12. Piston 2007.
  13. Kleber 2015, p. 791.
  14. Appleby 1997, p. 70.
  15. Tevis 1878, p. 36.
  16. The Clarksville Chronicle 1861, p. 3.
  17. Pennington 2011, p. 113.
  18. The Tennessean 1880, p. 3.
  19. The True Northerner 1875, p. 4.
  20. The Recorder-Tribune 1878, p. 3.
  21. The Lexington Intelligencer 1880, p. 1.
  22. Townsend 1913, p. 108.
  23. Matthews et al. n.d., p. 14.
  24. The Daily Advocate 1885, p. 3.
  25. The Daily Mail 1939, p. 6.
  26. Davis 1939, pp. 221–222.
  27. Filson Historical Society 1975.
  28. Cronan 1975.

Bibliography
  • Appleby, Joyce; Cheng, Eileen K.; Goodwin, Joanne L. (2015). Encyclopedia of Women in American History. Abingdon, England: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-47162-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Appleby, Joyce Oldham, ed. (1997). Recollections of the Early Republic: Selected Autobiographies. Boston, Massachusetts: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 978-1-55553-301-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Cronan, Mary (June 1975). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form: Science Hill School". Washington, D. C.: National Park Service. Retrieved January 20, 2017.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Davis, Winifred L., ed. (1939). "Books for Children and Young People". Wisconsin Library Bulletin. Madison, Wisconsin: Division of Library Services, Department of Public Instruction. 35 (10): 217–222.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Kleber, John E. (2015). The Encyclopedia of Louisville. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-4974-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Matthews, Betty; Long, Charles; Puckett, Duanne; Harrod, Mike (n.d.). "Historic Tidbits: History Notes" (PDF). Grove Hill Cemetery. Shelbyville, Kentucky. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 21, 2017. Retrieved January 21, 2017.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Passet, Joanne (2008). Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeanette Howard Foster. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-7867-2154-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Redford, Albert Henry (1870). The History of Methodism in Kentucky. Nashville, Tennessee: Southern Methodist Publishing House. OCLC 656740260.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Pennington, Estill Curtis (2011). Lessons in Likeness: Portrait Painters in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley, 1802-1920: Featuring Works from the Filson Historical Society. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2612-6.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Piston, Jim, ed. (January 23, 2007). "Science Hill Female Academy". Kentucky Educational Television. Lexington, Kentucky: Kentucky Life Series, Season 13. Archived from the original on August 29, 2016. Retrieved January 20, 2017.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Redford, Albert Henry (1876). Western cavaliers: embracing the history of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Kentucky from 1832 to 1844. Nashville, Tennessee: Southern Methodist Publishing House. OCLC 662594210.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Tevis, Julia A. (1878). Sixty years in a school-room: an autobiography of Mrs. Julia A. Tevis. Cincinnati, Ohio: Western Methodist Book Concern. OCLC 7583825.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Townsend, John Wilson (1913). Kentucky in American Letters, 1784–1912. I. Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press. pp. 107–108. OCLC 166621102.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • "Children's Books This Year Stress International Friendship and Vocations". Hagerstown, Maryland: The Daily Mail. November 13, 1939. Retrieved January 20, 2017 – via Newspaperarchive.com.
  • "Home Circle". Clarksville, Tennessee: The Clarksville Chronicle. February 8, 1861. Retrieved January 21, 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  • "Mrs. Julia A. Tevis". Lexington, Missouri: The Lexington Intelligencer. January 10, 1880. Retrieved January 21, 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  • "Report on Education". Louisville, Kentucky: The Louisville Daily Courier. September 25, 1867. Retrieved January 21, 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  • "Science Hill Female Academy". Filson Historical Society. Louisville, Kentucky. 1975. Archived from the original on April 25, 2016. Retrieved January 20, 2017.
  • "Statues to Women". Newark, Ohio: The Daily Advocate. February 2, 1885. Retrieved January 21, 2017 – via Newspaperarchive.com.
  • "Tennessee River News". Nashville, Tennessee: The Tennessean. May 9, 1880. Retrieved January 21, 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  • "(untitled)". Paw Paw, Michigan: The True Northerner. May 21, 1875. Retrieved January 21, 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  • "(untitled)". Holton, Kansas: The Recorder-Tribune. April 18, 1878. Retrieved January 21, 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
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