A South African Classicist at Cornell

Abstract

Barbara Isabella Buchanan (1854–1944), the first Chair of Classics at Huguenot College in Wellington in the Cape Colony, was the first South African-born woman to gain a Master’s degree. To date, historians of women’s edu­cation as well as classical education in South Africa have erroneously credited her with a doctoral degree from Cornell University. This article supplements lesser-known aspects of Buchanan’s biography, and in doing so, sheds light on her experiences in South Africa during the Second South African War of Independence (1899–1902).