Mrs. Julia Ann (Hieronymous) Tevis, author of a delightful
autobiography, was born near Winchester, Kentucky, December 5, 1799.
When but seven years old her parents removed to Virginia, settling at
Winchester, and at the female academy of the town her education was
begun. In 1813 Miss Hieronymous's family removed to Georgetown, D. C.,
where her education was continued under private teachers--"a
considerable portion of my time was devoted to music, drawing, and
French, with various kinds of embroidery." Two years later she was
placed in the finishing school of an English woman in Washington where
French and music continued to be her major subjects. Miss Hieronymous
completed her training at the school of Mrs. Stone in Washington when
nineteen years of age, and returned to her home to read and study. She
spent many hours at the Capital meeting and hearing most of the famous
men of her time. At the age of twenty years she became a school-ma'am at
Wytheville, Virginia, and the following sixty years of her life were
devoted to teaching. She later taught at Abingdon, Virginia, where she
united with the Methodist church, and where she was married on March 9,
1824, to Rev. John Tevis (1792-1861), a Kentucky Methodist preacher.
Mrs. Tevis desired to continue teaching, and upon her removal to her
husband's home at Shelbyville, Kentucky, she opened Science Hill
Academy. This famous old institution for the instruction of young
women--founded March 25, 1825, and the second Protestant female academy
established in the Mississippi Valley--has continued without
interruption until the present time. The remaining years of the
founder's life were filled with the school, her girls, her children, her
cares and perplexities. In 1875 the semi-centennial of the founding of
Science Hill was celebrated in a fitting manner. Some time later Mrs.
Tevis closed the manuscripts of her autobiography, entitled _Sixty Years
in a School-Room_ (Cincinnati, 1878), a large work of nearly five
hundred pages, in which the details of her splendid service are ably set
forth. Mrs. Tevis died at Shelbyville, Kentucky, April 21, 1880. Her
pupils erected a fitting monument to her memory.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. The chief authority for the facts of Mrs. Tevis's life
is, of course, her autobiography; Annual Catalogues of Science Hill.