Salem College and Salem Academy

The oldest female educational institution still operating as a women's college in the United States sits inside a historic Moravian district, which tells you something about what kind of place this is. Salem College traces its founding to April 22, 1772, when the Moravian community established a girls' school in Salem, North Carolina. Elisabeth Oesterlein, who had traveled from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was its first teacher. The school was run in its early years by the Single Sisters — the unmarried women of the Moravian community — who lived together and were economically self-sufficient, which was uncommon for women in the eighteenth century.

The record of who actually attended tells you what kind of institution this was willing to be. Moravian records show that two enslaved African-American girls were accepted at Salem — Hanna in 1785, and Anna Maria Samuel in 1793. In 1826, Sally Ridge, daughter of Cherokee leader Major Ridge, became the first American Indian student. Jane Ross, daughter of another Cherokee chief, also attended — and left in 1838 to join her family on the Trail of Tears.

The oldest building on campus is the Single Sisters' House, constructed in 1785 and the oldest building in the United States dedicated to the education of women. Its original 1785 datestone is in the fourth-floor attic. During a renovation completed on April 22, 2007 — the institution's 235th anniversary — workers uncovered graffiti that had been plastered over. The building shares the campus with Salem Academy, which carries a North Carolina state historic marker.

That continuity — from a Moravian settlement school to an operating college with more than 250 years of unbroken connection to its founding community — is the reason to go.