ATHOL — Two North Quabbin women will be honored Saturday for their role in the founding of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. A legacy wreath laying ceremony to celebrate the lives of New Salem natives Sophia Packard and Harriet Giles will take place at 10 a.m. at the commemorative site of the two women in Silver Lake Cemetery in Athol. Alumnae of Spelman will be on hand for the ceremony, to which the public is also invited.
The event is co-sponsored by the Boston Area Chapter, the New England Chapter and the Northeast Region of National Alumnae Association of Spelman College as part of the NAASC’s Founders Day Celebration. Keva Wright Berry, the president of the alumnae association said NAASC chapters across the country celebrate the founding of Spelman on April 11, 1881 each year with a variety of activities. The event in Athol, she said, is being added to this year’s celebrations. Priscilla Gaignard of Orange has assisted with planning for the ceremony.
After a trip to the South in 1878, Packard and Giles returned to North Quabbin with the hope of raising funds to establish a school to provide vocational training and a Christian education for black girls. After being turned down for funding from the Baptist Church they attended in Athol (it was deemed too dangerous and Packard and Giles, ages 54 and 50, respectively, were “too old”), the two women eventually raised more than $100 from the congregation of the First Baptist Church in Medford and headed south, where they found space for the school in the basement of the Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta.
Originally organized as Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, the school became Spelman Seminary in 1884 and, in 1924, Spelman College. The school was named in honor of Harvey and Lucy Henry Spelman, from whom the school received a gift of philanthropy (the couple were the parents of Laura Spelman, who became the wife of John D. Rockefeller). Packard served as president of the school until her death in 1891. She was succeeded in the position by Giles, who passed away in 1910.
According to Berry, Spelman is part of the Atlanta University Center Consortium (AUCC), which consists of Spelman College, Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University, and Morehouse School of Medicine. The AUCC is, she said, “the world’s oldest and largest association of historically Black colleges and universities.”
A meet and greet at Athol Public Library will follow the wreath laying.
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com