Thomas Bog Slade and Female Education in Early Georgia, 1800-1882: One Mass of Crimson Beauty

A teacher and minister, Thomas Bog Slade, was a prominent advocate for education regardless of gender or class in nineteenth-century Georgia, altering the lives of many and the future of the state.

Thomas Bog Slade was one of the most important reformers in the history of education in nineteenth-century Georgia, yet remains little known to modern students of the subject, especially regarding his significance to the education of women. Born in North Carolina, Slade lived the bulk of his life in Georgia, first as an attorney and then as a servant of the public working for the common good. He founded two schools for girls in Clinton and Columbus, Georgia, was one of the first faculty members of Wesleyan College, in Macon, and led the earliest association of Georgia teachers, campaigning for tax-supported public schools that would be free to all Georgia children regardless of gender and class. Slade was also a Baptist minister who lived the values he professed. He resigned a job as professor over denominational sectarianism but then withdrew from being too exclusive in his own Baptist denomination. This is a story about female education and its connection to the religious history of Georgia as demonstrated through one man, his family, and the thousands of young women from across the country whose lives were changed and went on to continue Slade’s passion and spirit for education into their own families and further generations.

Timothy E. Miller is assistant professor of history and Latin and curator of a historic village at Brewton-Parker Christian University in Mt. Vernon, Georgia, US.