Soule College Site: 415 N. Maple St.

Located here from 1853 to 1917, Soule College was Murfreesboro’s longest-lived female academy. Operated by the Methodist Episcopal Church South, Soule offered primary education through college, and women always made up more than half the faculty. In 1904, 28 women received diplomas from progressive educator Virginia Oceania Wardlaw. The 1908 catalog emphasized that the college was designed to teach women “how to live as well as how to think.”

Soule students included Kate Carney (who kept a riveting journal during the Civil War and later taught at Soule), acclaimed artist Willie Betty Newman, and Jean Marie Faircloth (future wife of General Douglas MacArthur and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988).