Woman of the Century/Aurelia Roach

ROACH, Misa Aurelia, educator, born in Atlanta, Ga., 10th March, 1865. Her father, Dr. E. J. Roach, was a physician, a native of Maryland, who removed to Georgia several years before the Civil War. His ancestors were among the earliest settlers of Somerset county, Md., and the original land-grants are still in the family. During the war Dr. Roach was surgeon of the 18th Georgia Regiment. After the war he returned to Atlanta, where he achieved distinction in his profession and served the public in several offices. Her mother was a daughter of A. Weldon Mitchell, one of the early settlers of Atlanta, and at one time one of its wealthiest citizens. Her great-great-grandfather on the maternal side served as lieutenant in a Georgia regiment in the Revolutionary War. Miss Roach was graduated with distinction from the girls' high school of Atlanta in June, 1882. The two years succeeding her graduation she spent in the study of French and German, with which languages she was already familiar, having studied them since early childhood. In 1884 she was appointed a teacher in one of the public schools. Beginning with the lowest grade, she was promoted until she had reached the fifth grade, when she left the school to AURELIA ROACH. travel in Europe. She made a northern tour, visiting Norway, Sweden, Russia and Denmark. During her sojourn in Europe in 1889 she acted as a special correspondent for the Atlanta "Constitution." In her absence she was elected to a position in the girls' high school, which she held until 1891, when she again went abroad. On her return to Atlanta she became principal of the Crew street school, one of the largest in the city. She has won distinction by her narrative and descriptive powers, and she has shown a capacity for a higher range of original and philosophic thought.