Stuart Female Seminary

The seminary's stone building cost $12,000 and housed up to twenty boarders plus day pupils; its primary department took boys. The four-year collegiate course led to a B.A. for the classical course or a B.S. for the scientific one, which dropped Latin for more English and natural science. Music grew; art, languages and physical education followed. Bible history and weekly church attendance were required, and with no Sunday school in Austin the First Southern Presbyterian Church let one meet here until 1886. An 1893 addition doubled capacity. The building later housed Our Lady of Guadalupe School, from 1951.

What the plaque says

Stuart Female Seminary After 23 years as principal of Live Oak Female Seminary, Washington County, Rebecca K. Stuart Red (1826-1886) founded her own school in 1875. Her husband, G.C. Red, M.D., had a two-story stone dormitory - academic building erected on this site, and the Stuart Female Seminary opened formally in January 1876. Ashbel Smith, M.D. (past board member, United States Military Academy), was first president of the board of trustees. His successor (1886) was D.F. Stuart, M.D., brother of Mrs. Red. Board members included another brother, R.C. Stuart, State Legislator J.N.P. Cramer, Judge Z.T. Fulmore, the Rev. Josephus Johnson, and the Rev. J.W. Miller. On faculty were Dr. G.C. Red and the Red children, William, Clark, Lel, and Harriet (Mrs. S.W. McJunkin); also Miss Janet Downie, and Mmes. Fannie Speed Davies, Anna Ritz, and Margaret Stiles. In 1886, at the death of the founder, her daughter "Miss Lel" Red (1859-1946) became principal. In 1889 Miss Red married the Rev. J.M. Purcell, and they continued the school until 1899, when the Red heirs deeded this site to the Presbyterian Synod of Texas. Here in 1902 the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary began its work. It moved to University of Texas area in 1907, but site has remained in public usage. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Cemetery — steps away
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.3 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Capitol — 1.0 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• James Wales Jones — steps away
• Dr. Gideon Lincecum — steps away
• Robert Crudup — steps away
• Thomas Pliney Plaster — steps away