A South African Classicist at Cornell

Jeffrey Murray

Jeffrey Murray University of Cape Town

Keywords: Barbara I. Buchanan, Theodore Roosevelt, Charles E. Bennett, Benjamin I. Wheeler, Cornell University, Huguenot College, classical education, women’s education, Second South African War of Independence, concentration camp schools

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).