The Oread Institute was a women's college

Women's colleges in the United States

Women's colleges in the United States are single-sex U.S. institutions of higher education that exclude or limit males from admission. They are often liberal arts colleges...

 founded in Worcester

Worcester, Massachusetts

Worcester is a city and the county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, as of the 2010 Census the city's population is 181,045, making it the second largest city in New England after Boston....

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

 in 1849 by Eli Thayer

Eli Thayer

Eli Thayer was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1857 to 1861. Thayer was born in Mendon, Massachusetts. He graduated from Worcester Academy in 1840, from Brown University in 1845, and in 1848 founded Oread Institute, a school for young women in Worcester, Massachusetts...

. Before its closing in 1934, it was one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women

Timeline of women's colleges in the United States

The following is a timeline of women's colleges in the United States. These are institutions of higher education in the United States whose student populations are comprised exclusively or almost exclusively of women. They are often liberal arts colleges...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. According to the Worcester Women's History Project:

"The Oread offered three levels of instruction: primary, academic and collegiate. The four-year collegiate program offered a classical, college-level curriculum and is thought to be the first institution of its kind exclusively for women in the country. It was modeled after the program at Brown University, Thayer’s alma mater" http://www.wwhp.org/News/Newsletters/01summer.html.

Two graduates of Oread, Sophia Packard and ornamental music teacher Harriet Giles, would eventually found Spelman College

Spelman College

Spelman College is a four-year liberal arts women's college located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The college is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman was the first historically black female...

, named after Oread graduate Laura Spelman Rockefeller

Laura Spelman Rockefeller

Laura Celestia Spelman Rockefeller, , , was a philanthropist, the namesake of Spelman College, founded to educate black women in the South, and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, and the wife of John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil...

. Laura Spelman was the future wife of John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...

, having attended Oread while her future husband, who dropped out of Cleveland's Central High School in the 1850s, worked as a clerk. One of Spelman's instructors was abolitionist John Brown

John Brown (abolitionist)

John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...

.

Thayer constructed an enormous Gothic-style castle for his new college, complete with turrets. The college closed in 1881.

From 1898-1904 the building was the Worcester Domestic Science Cooking School and was finally closed in 1934 http://www.wwhp.org/News/Newsletters/01summer.html.

External links

• Oread history from the Worcester Women's History Project
• Oread Institute history, hosted by Assumption College
  Assumption College
  Assumption College is a private, Roman Catholic, liberal arts college located on 185 acres in Worcester, Massachusetts. Assumption has an enrollment of about 2,117 undergraduates...
  
  
• Information about the Oread Institute in an 1856 book about Worcester
• Information about the Oread Institute in an 1879 history of Worcester County