The Giles sisters: Trinity College’s first female graduates

Though they did not attend a regular lecture on campus until their senior year, Mary, Persis and Theresa Giles made history in the 1870s as the first female graduates of Trinity College, Duke’s predecessor institution.

Affectionately known as the Giles sisters, their family name is engraved in stone above the entryway to Giles dorm in honor of the lasting legacy these three women left on the school and their contributions to women’s education in the state.

The Giles sisters were born in Jones County, N.C., to E.S.F. Sr. and Nancy White Giles. E.S.F. Sr. was a farmer and a “public-spirited citizen of Jones County,” serving as a minister with the Church of Christ and a member of the local public school committee.

Throughout the antebellum period, the Giles sisters worked as school teachers in Onslow County. Soon, however, their brother died in the Civil War, and in 1868, their father followed. 

With five children to care for, Nancy Giles decided to move the family to Randolph County in 1873 to allow her only remaining son, E.S.F. Giles Jr., access to an education. He began schooling at Trinity College, and his three oldest sisters joined them later on to teach in the area.

However, they quickly grew more interested in their brother’s education.

“We three sisters had been teaching. But on our arrival at Trinity … we saw what a fine thing it would be to take the same course he was taking,” Theresa and Mary Giles later wrote to Professor William Pegram in September 1925.

When Trinity College reopened in 1866 following the Civil War, women were not accepted as regular students. So, the girls began studying their brothers’ books, at first without the guidance of his instructors.

In all but one subject, the sisters received their education privately with professors in their spare time. However, in their senior year, they were permitted to take President Braxon Craven’s previously all-male metaphysics class, where they were allowed to attend his lectures.

In 1878, the sisters completed four years of studies and passed their senior comprehensive exams. Craven placed their names on the list of recommended students sent to the Board of Trustees for graduation approval, supported by Reverend I.T. Wyche, who proposed the motion in June to grant the sisters their degrees.

While their brother’s graduation attire was purchased in February of that year, long before the event, when the sisters were told they would receive diplomas, they “hastily ordered dresses” for the June commencement ceremony.

Trinity’s Class of 1878 Commencement attracted significant attention. Hundreds flocked to see the spectacle, with blue irises and violets lining the walkways — and the Giles sisters as the main event. The female graduates were escorted to the rostrum by Craven himself.

“In speaking to us of our work, Dr. Craven said pleasantly, ‘I guess I shall have to take you to the college and graduate you,’” Theresa and Mary Giles wrote.

The sisters donned “elegant black silks … with lace ruchings or lace collars about the neck.” As each of the 19 graduating male seniors made a parting address, Theresa, Persis and Mary penned addresses of their own, titled “Live for Something,” “Life’s Disappointment” and “Human Nature and its Varieties,” respectively. The sisters did not read them aloud like their fellow graduates but instead submitted written copies.

Before Craven presented the Giles sisters with their diplomas, he affirmed that they had completed the same coursework as any male student, “passed a most creditable examination and were as much as entitled to degrees as the young men were.” His remarks were met with an uproar of applause.

According to a reporter from the Wilmington Morning Star, the conferral of degrees upon the three women was “unprecedented in the history of North Carolina colleges.”

In 1885, the sisters each received Master of Art degrees from the college, becoming the first female students to obtain graduate degrees from Trinity.

The Giles sisters continued to teach after their graduation. They moved to Greenwood, S.C., where their brother “had married and settled down,” to establish a school they named the Greenwood Female College. After selling the school and teaching in Tennessee for a few years, the sisters returned to Greenwood and opened another school: the Misses Giles School for younger girls. They retired several years later, closing the school permanently. 

Despite the Giles sisters' success at the institution, no other women were enrolled in Trinity College until the 1890s. In 1892, the Board of Trustees voted to formally admit women to the college for the first time. The decision was bolstered four years later when industrialist and benefactor Washington Duke pledged to donate $100,000 to the school on the condition that it “open its doors to women, placing them on equal footing with men.”

Nearly four decades later, the Woman’s College was established in 1930 on what is now East Campus, just six years after Trinity College transitioned to Duke University and plans to construct West Campus began. That same year, Giles dorm was named in honor of the three original sisters and the path they charted for Duke’s female students for years to come.