Blount Library Blog

Treasures from the Averett Archives: "The Annals of the Little Six"

As the academic year comes to a close, we end our year of archival posts with a graduation 125 years ago.

For the June 1899 graduation exercises of what was then named Roanoke Female College, Mamie Lyon Thames (pictured second from the left) delivered a valedictory address entitled "The Annals of the Little Six."

The address is highly personal, and would seem awkward and self-centered in a modern graduation ceremony.  But, for a school with only five graduates (three of whom had known each other since childhood), the address indicates quite clearly that the R.F.C. of the late 1800s was close-knit.

Delivered in a romanticized and poetic style, it recounts in brief the lives of the "famous group of maidens known to contemporaneous times as the 'Little Six.'" The six included (left to right): Kathryn Acree, Mamie Thames, Fannie Covington, Ethel Lipscomb, Mary Waddill, and Allie James (daughter of R.F.C. President Charles Fenton James).  All six completed their primary school education at Roanoke Female College.  Three of the six - Thames, Covington, and James - also completed their college work at R.F.C., earning the status of "full graduate" on June 5th, 1899.

Over eight pages, the essay rhapsodizes on the girls socializing ("[o]ften they found themselves gathered around the same hearthstone...or piled three deep in the same bed"), attending college (they "faced the mysteries of Latin and the intricacies of modern English grammar"), and enjoying their hometown of Danville (shopping "in the social marts of the charming village").  The essay also remarks briefly on the early death of one of their number (Mary Waddill, who passed away in October 1898, at the age of 16), the departure of Acree and Lipscomb to other colleges, and the addition of two new members who joined their graduating class (Nora Dodson, and Nannie Dunaway); "[w]e are now six minus three plus two equal five."  Closing with a heartfelt goodbye to the teachers, students, and school, the essay ties up the entire R.F.C. community into something akin to a second family for all involved.

Printed as a small booklet, bound in a lovely purple folder, with gold thread and embossed cover, an original copy was donated to the Averett Archives by Carolyn Perkinson.

The entire address may be read here.