Discover Lottie Moon’s student world through the institute’s 1858–1859 catalogue and the research surrounding it.
Before she became known for missionary service, Lottie Moon was a student. The 1858–1859 catalogue gives us a way to look inside that educational world: names, subjects, teachers, and even examination questions.
On printed page 7, the student list includes “Moon, Lotte D.” Your accompanying Albemarle research notes connect this student with Lottie Moon. Compare her entry with the subject abbreviations and with the rows around it.
The trustee page lists Rev. J. A. Broadus as president. The officers-and-teachers page names John Hart as principal and Crawford H. Toy among the teachers. These are institutional roles as listed in this particular session.
The English examination asks students to explain changes in the language since the Norman Conquest. The moral philosophy examination lists “Pantheism,” “Skepticism,” and “The Beautiful.” Look at the actual questions before deciding what nineteenth-century women’s education involved.
Discussion prompt: What does this curriculum suggest about the school’s ambitions for its students?
The catalogue shows the school in operation. John Hart’s Report to the Board of Trustees, dated July 1, 1858, looks back at how it took shape.
On printed page 4, Hart says that he and the board’s president initially did not know how fully Virginia’s system could be applied in a female school. He describes an unsettled first three months, followed by confidence that the model could be applied fully.
This is a particularly useful companion to the dissertation’s argument: a contemporary explanation of the experiment, rather than only a later recollection.
The same page lists seven schools, from ancient languages to English language and composition. Read across the spread to the discussion of lectures, recitations, and independent thought.
The report’s final page turns to the school’s religious life and bears Hart’s name and the July 1, 1858 date.
Read the complete 1858 report ↗
Added source: John Hart, Report to the Board of Trustees of the Albemarle Female Institute, Setting Forth the History, Organization and Prospects of the School (Charlottesville: Jas. Alexander, 1858). The supplied file has five scanned PDF pages; some images reproduce facing printed pages. The name and report date appear on printed p. 8.
Catalogue of the Albemarle Female Institute, session 1858–1859 (Richmond: Ellyson’s Steam Presses, 1859), supplied 27-page PDF. Images retain the source text. OCR has been used for discovery; the page image controls the reading.
The accompanying Albemarle Female Institute.docx provides research notes on Charlottesville, Broadus, the institute, and Moon. Its author is not identified in the supplied document; it is used as a research guide rather than treated as an original institutional record. The two uploaded catalogue PDFs are byte-for-byte duplicates and are represented here by one copy.