Fayetteville Rotary

Mary S. Hoffschwelle is Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University. Born in Billings, Mont., Mary grew up in Pittsburgh, Penn., and attended Chatham College there. She earned her MA degree from the College of William and Mary, and spent the first part of her career working in the museum field at Colonial Williamsburg, the Montana Historical Society, and Oaklands Historic House Museum in Murfreesboro. Mary began research on Rosenwald schools while working on her doctoral dissertation at Vanderbilt University, which led to her first book, Rebuilding the Rural Southern Community: Reformers, Schools, and Homes in Tennessee, 1900-1930. Her second book, The Rosenwald Schools of the American South, tells the history of the Rosenwald school building program. She is the principal author of Preserving Rosenwald Schools for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a founding member of the Trust’s Rosenwald Schools Initiative. Mary is currently researching Jeanes teaches in Alabama and recently published an article about Jeanes teacher, A. Wells Henderson, in the Journal of Southern History.