The people in the gallery below have had some relationship to LaGrange College, from alumni to former staff and community members. Additionally, former Archives Specialist Felecia T. Moore began conducting interviews with alumni, faculty and staff members in 2018; click on the tab Oral History Interviews at left to browse these interviews.
Ms. Andrews attended LaGrange Female College for her senior year. She taught at Wesleyan College in Macon, GA, for over a decade, in addition to other schools, and authored books of fiction as well as the autobiographical The War Time Journal of a Georgia Girl. A life-long lover of nature, she also authored two botany textbooks and was the first American woman to be nominated to the International Academy of Literature and Science in Naples, Italy. She turned it down due to her age at the time of nomination, eighty-six, because she was not able to take an active part in the society. Andrews moved to Rome, GA, at the age of seventy and spent much of her time walking the woods around her home. She so loved being in nature that she offered the city of Rome the royalties from her two botany books to establish a municipal forest preserve.
Dr. Buford J. Johnson graduated from LaGrange Female College in 1895, at the age of 14, and was a member of the LC faculty in the Mathematics and Education departments for several years. She graduated with a Ph.D. in Psychology from Johns Hopkins in 1916. A highly respected developmental psychologist, Dr. Johnson was the second woman to achieve full tenure as a professor at Johns Hopkins. She authored three books and many scholarly articles and was the founding editor of the journal Child Development.
Born in 1891, Caroline "Carrie" Fall Benson was LaGrange Female College's beloved first Librarian, from 1922 until her death in 1949. In the image above she stands on the front steps of the newly-built Banks Library (now the Quillian Building), overseeing the move of the library collection across the Quad from Hawkes Hall in 1949. Benson was a prolific writer throughout her life, authoring many poems and plays, and she used her talents to enhance campus life through her pageants and short stories that can be found in a variety of College publications. She also helped to establish the student literary magazine, The Scroll, and advocated for better Library collections and facilities. She donated the proceeds from her plays and her poetry anthology, Every Year an April, published in 1937, to the Library's book fund. The Archives and Special Collections has manuscripts of her writing; click on the Browse Current Finding Aids tab to explore her collection.
Jimmy Carter gave the LaGrange College Commencement address while he was the Governor of Georgia in 1972, and returned to campus in 2003 with his wife Rosalynn to build houses in LaGrange with Habitat for Humanity. Lamar Dodd was a celebrated artist who grew up in the LaGrange area and spent most of his career as a Professor in the Art Department at the University of Georgia.
Celebrated Southern artist Lamar Dodd grew up in LaGrange and took classes at LaGrange Female College from the time he was 12 until he graduated from high school. He took as many art classes as required for a degree, so the same year he graduated from high school he also received a certificate in Art from LaGrange Female College. LC awarded him an honorary Doctorate in 1947. This is a photo from the 1923 yearbook of the Art Club, which lists Dodd as a member.
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