The Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary—today Spelman College—had…

The Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary—today Spelman College—had been established on April 11, 1881, in the basement of Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, by two teachers from the Oread Institute of Worcester, Massachusetts: Harriet E. Giles and Sophia B. Packard.

The school was originally named Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary and was sponsored by the American Baptist Women's Home Mission Society.

Giles and Packard had begun the school with eleven African-American women and one hundred dollars given to them by a church congregation in Medford, Massachusetts.

In 1882, the two women had returned to Massachusetts to bid for more money and were introduced to wealthy Northern Baptist businessman John D. Rockefeller at a church conference in Ohio.

In 1883, the school had relocated to a nine acre (thirty-six thousand square meters) site in Atlanta relatively close to the church in which they had begun, which originally had only five buildings left from a Union Civil War encampment, to support classroom and residence hall needs.

The school had been able to survive on generous donations by the black community in Atlanta, the efforts of volunteer teachers, and gifts of supplies.

Rockefeller had visited the school in April 1884, and had been so impressed that he had settled the debt on the property.

The name of the school had been changed to the Spelman Seminary in honor of Laura Spelman, an Oread student and the wife of John D. Rockefeller, who helped to fund the school, and her parents, who have been longtime activists in the anti-slavery movement.

Rockefeller's gift precipitates interest from other benefactors.

Rockefeller also donates the funds for what is currently the oldest building on campus, Rockefeller Hall; in 1887 Packard Hall is also established.