Catherine Brewer Benson


Catherine Elizabeth Benson, née Brewer was one of the earliest women to earn a college bachelor's degree in the U.S.

Life

Catherine Elizabeth Brewer was born on January 24, 1824, in Augusta, Georgia. She was daughter of Thomas Aspinwall Brewer and Mary Foster Brewer who were married on October 3, 1820, in Roxbury. She had younger sister Adeline and younger brother Edward Ebenezer. Her family moved from Massachusetts to Lexington in the 1820s. In 1838 they moved from Lexington to Macon.

Education

In nearby Gray, Georgia she enrolled in Clinton Female Seminary. The faculty and students, including Benson entered Georgia Female College in 1839 when the seminary merged with the college. The college, chartered in 1836, began offering classes in 1839. She was the first woman to earn a degree from Wesleyan because her name came first alphabetically among the graduates of the class of 1840. She received diploma on July 16, 1840. Her diploma said that "she had completed the regular course and bestowed on her the First Degree", which was commonly referred to the bachelor's degree. She is remembered each year at the annual meeting of the Wesleyan College Alumnae Association when graduating seniors are inducted into the association using the "Benson Charge", taken from a speech she made to the Class of 1888: Members of the graduating class, demands will be made upon you which were not made upon us. Your training, if you are true to it, will amply qualify you to meet those demands. No wiser blessing could I wish for you than that you may be true to every God-appointed work.
Though Benson has been listed as the first woman to receive a bachelor's degree in the U.S., women at Mississippi College had been earning such degrees since 1831.

Marriage and issue

She married Richard Aaron Benson on November 24, 1842, in Macon. They had eight children:
Catherine Benson died at her home in Macon on February 27, 1908, at the age of 86 after several weeks of illness.