University of Virginia Library

MRS. W. T. CHANDLER

Alice Scott, the daughter of Mr. Francis Woolfolk Scott (1799-1863)
and Ann Maria Minor (1804-1889), was born in Caroline

county, Va., on the 31st day of August, 1839. She was educated
in the old Buckingham Female Institute in Buckingham county,
then presided over by Dr. John C. Blackwell, a well-known educator,

Student Body of Bowling Green Female Seminary 1908

who married a sister of Governor Letcher, and was one of the
ripest scholars of his day. She was united in marriage to William
T. Chandler, of Caroline, born May 17, 1832, a young lawyer
and Civil War veteran, in 1858, and they established their
home at "Sherwood," near the husband's birthplace. Mr.
Chandler now entered upon the active practice of law, driving

Campus Scene Bowling Green Female Seminary

from "Sherwood" to the county seat each morning and back to
his home each evening. It was not long, before fire destroyed
"Sherwood" and all their personal effects, leaving them without
shelter in those tragic, poverty-filled days which came to
the South in the wake of the Civil War.

Shortly after the burning of their home Mr. and Mrs. Chandler
settled in Bowling Green, the county seat, Mr. Chandler continuing
the practice of law, and Mrs. Chandler establishing a
private school in a part of their residence which came to be known
as the Home School. Possessing rare gifts of personality and
intellect, and having a genius for the work of teaching and
administration, Mrs. Chandler found no difficulty in gathering
around her a splendid group of students—the daughters of the
representative families of the community. The name "Home
School" was soon changed to Bowling Green Female Seminary,
and a commodius and beautiful building was erected to house the
rapidly growing institution. The faculty was enlarged from
time to time, the school having all the departments usually found
in a high-class female academy, and the institution gradually
took its place among that splendid group of schools which undergirded
the South in the dark days of Reconstruction.

Upon the marriage of Miss Emma B. Scott, Mrs. Chandler's
sister, to the Rev. E. H. Rowe, Mrs. Chandler gradually retired
as head of the seminary and Rev. Mr. Rowe became principal.
Mrs. Chandler purchased the Washington Female Seminary in
Atlanta, Ga., in 1891, and continued the work of education until
her death in July, 1904. Mrs. Chandler's dust sleeps in Lakewood
Cemetery, Bowling Green, where rests also the dust of her
husband. There were no children. The Washington Seminary
in Atlanta still flourishes under the direction of her nephew,
Llewellyn Davis Scott, and her niece, Emma B. Scott, associate
principals.

The Rev. Mr. Rowe moved the Bowling Green Female Seminary
to Buena Vista, Va., in 1901, changing the name to Southern
Seminary, and there the institution founded by this brave and
brilliant woman in the soul-testing days of Reconstruction continues
to flourish—a monument to courageous Southern womanhood.

Riding Class in Bowling Green Female Seminary 1908