August 26, 2010

Sophia Sawyer, an 1823 graduate of Emerson’s female seminary in Massachusetts, pursued a teaching career as a missionary to the Cherokee in Georgia. She moved to Arkansas with a Georgia Cherokee group and settled in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1839. Shortly after her arrival there, she founded a school known as the Fayetteville Female Seminary. The school, which enrolled both Native Americans and whites, was officially incorporated in 1859, five years after her death, and remained in operation until it was burned after the 1862 Battle of Prairie Grove.