LYDIA CRANE, ELIZABETH HOLLEY, MARGARET COLEMAN, MARTHA
REAGEN, ELIZABETH MCGILL, REBECCA BRYANT, MARGARET WING,
SAVANNAH MORRILL, SERENA MORGRIDGE, NANCY FIELD, MAR-
THA DAVIS, MARY BRUSCUP, JULIA HEASLITT, MARY VANCE,
SOPHIA WOOD, JANE ROBINSON, MARGARET CARBOY, ELIZABETH
LATTA, LUCRETIA PADDOCK, ELIZABETH SLAYBACK.
It is time to tell of another woman of early Cincinnati, not a teacher but one who co-operated enthusiastically in the establishment of the city’s earliest high school. This was MRS. ABIGAIL WOODWARD, wife of William Woodward, a prosperous farmer and business man, who as early as 1818 became deeply interested in the education of children who could not attend private schools. Even were there not old documents to indicate it, we could safely assume that Abigail Woodward was as deeply interested as her husband in plans, which they often talked over with Nathan Guilford and Samuel Lewis, for giving all children of their community a chance to obtain an education. It so happened that Thomas Hughes, a shoemaker, whose modest little farm stood on the southwest shoulder of Mt. Auburn, was a friend of the Woodwards. Both families were childless. It seemed to have made them more sympathetic to the needs of other people’s children. The Woodwards talked with Hughes, the cobbler, so convincingly that when Hughes died, in 1824, it was found that he had left his all —his little farm — “for the education of the poor destitute children whose parents or guardians were unable to pay for their schooling.” This absolutely settled the Woodwards in their intention, so, in 1826 they gave seven acres of land, of which the present Woodward High School, Woodward and Sycamore Streets, is central point, for establishment of a grammar school. The movement to start public schools was already well under way and the Woodwards felt that there would be need for an inter- mediate type of school which public funds could not provide. Then it was decided that public schools should extend through the inter- mediate grade, so the Woodward gift—to which they added more—was applied to a high school erected and opened in 1831. The Hughes gift was applied to this same purpose for a time. Finally through the efforts, largely, of Guilford and Lewis, it was made possible to include high schools in the public education system of Cincinnati and in 1851, both Woodward and Hughes were organized as part of the public schools. A statue of William Woodward stands on the grounds of Woodward High School but none of Abigail. She is there, however. For in 1860 alumni of the historic school had remains of the founder and his wife removed from the cemetery in which they had been interred and buried in a stone vault, above which they erected a suitable monument.
