Mount Vernon Seminary
 

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John Porter Hunter's two daughters, Olive and Mary (my grandmother) attended Mount Vernon Seminary in Washington DC.

Olive attended between 1905 and 1907, and Mary attended from 1907-1909, graduating with honors in 1909.  The school was then located at 1100 M Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.. 

Notes from Dr. Nina Mikhalevsky, Mount Vernon archivist:

 Mary Chambers Hunter attended Mount Vernon Seminary from 1907-1909 and she is listed as a grad for 1909--this is significant because it means that she completed the "collegiate" course of study--a demanding and substantive set of courses, unusual for the day, and sufficient to have prepared her to enter any one of the colleges and/or universities open to women at that time--and she would have been prepared to come in at the sophomore level (similar MVS grads from that period were some of the first women to attend schools like Cornell, University of Wisconsin, etc. as well as the "seven sisters" Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, etc.).  Mary is listed as attending the University of Pittsburgh 1917-18. She must have been an outstanding student because she received academic honors and was a member of Optima, the academic honors society. I know something about two of her classmates from the class of 1909--Elsie Foerderer, from a very old family from Philadelphia, became the chair of the Board of Trustees and a long time supporter of the seminary--very active--and Isabel Ramage (Mrs. Charles Maddox) who I think was also from Pittsburgh--settled in Washington and became a prominent woman in Washington philanthropic and cultural circles. Your grandmother and Isabel Ramage both had the same roommate at one point, another student named Anne Dugan.

Students at Mount Vernon Seminary took a rigorous course of study--in her senior year, Mary was taking a comp class, 3rd yr French, Political History, Psychology and Ethics, Senior Lit. (and second semester it appears she was also brushing up on her spelling.) The political history class was famous in Washington because Mrs. Somers insisted that her students not only read the newspapers and understand current events, but attend important political functions, observe the Congress and Supreme Court, and write thoughtful papers on the major political questions of the day. The psychology course was taught by a truly brilliant woman, Harriet Belle Walker, and was certainly cutting edge for the day.

There was also a required "Senior Essay" --basically a final research paper for all graduates--once these papers were graded, seniors read their papers to the faculty and students of the school during Commencement week and prizes were given for the most outstanding. The theme for Mary's class in 1909 was "The Child, a Sociological Study" and the papers included, "the extremes of modern society... different commonwealths [including studies of the works of Plato, More, and Bellamy]...of the causes of poverty [including works of George and Marx]...the effect of poverty upon the child and the means of amelioration...modern relationship of the child to the State, as seen in studies of the child labor question...contrasting the position of the child in its relation to society in the past and in the present, as gained through a study of literature..." This latter topic was the area of research for Mary Hunter--the Annual Report notes, "the interpretation of the attitude of the centuries toward the child of the past vs. the child of the present, as emphasized by the study of the changed character of the literature for children, given by Mary C. Hunter."

see also http://www.gwu.edu/gelman/archives/tours/mvctour/