Among the first women to graduate with a business diploma, as well as a bachelor’s in English, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Sanger Johnson (1873-1962) experienced Bridgewater College’s earliest days and left an autograph album filled with memories.
Johnson’s father, Samuel F. Sanger, was a Bridgewater pharmacist, an influential Church of the Brethren leader and an original College trustee. A believer in education, he was an advocate for moving D.C. Flory’s College from its earliest home in nearby Spring Creek, Va., to Bridgewater. As a teenager, Johnson and her younger half-brother Willie were students in the Primary Department, an elementary through high school program that the College operated from 1886-1913.
Johnson enrolled in the Virginia Normal School, as BC was then known, around 1888. Her first classes were held in the school’s main building that stood where the west side of Flory Hall is now. Johnson would soon see rapid changes on campus. In July 1889, the school amended its charter, changing its name to Bridgewater College. Later that year, fire destroyed the College’s main building. Johnson’s classes met in the rented quarters of an old furniture factory, located on what is now East College Street, until a new main building—now known as Memorial Hall—was completed in 1890.
No student newspapers or yearbooks record those earliest BC days, though catalogs and alumni memories give glimpses of it. The Philomathean Literary Society was a popular student organization for socialization and learning. Other extracurricular fun included boating, walks by the river and baseball games. The College was in the process of developing a library, a museum and a collection of geology specimens, while daily worship and weekly chapel were mandatory for all. Students dined in a building called the White House, which also served as a women’s residence hall.
In addition to four-year degrees, BC also offered shorter programs in the early years. Among the programs was a Business College which offered classes in bookkeeping, penmanship, business math, business law, shorthand and typing. Graduates from this program earned a business diploma after one or two terms of instruction.
Johnson graduated from BC on May 27, 1891, with both a bachelor of English and a business course diploma. She and Lelia Miller Neff (1871-1955), a fellow Bridgewater resident and trustee’s daughter, were the first two women to graduate from the Business College.
Like many students of her time, Johnson kept an autograph album signed by her classmates and teachers, now preserved in the Robert R. Newlen ’75 & John C. Bradford Special Collections at BC.
A “G.B,” most likely the Business College’s principal G. B. Hershberger, wrote, “Be sure to remember the session of 1890–1891 at ‘B.C.’ Especially would I remind you to remember the Business Course and all connected with it… Write up a good Thesis and get up a good Graduating address and often think of me.”
Johnson’s classmate John S. Flory, who would become a professor and the second President of Bridgewater, was another notable signer.
A two-page inscription from Neff is enthusiastic and poignant. On March 7, 1891, she signed the autograph album, referencing inside jokes among their friend group and fun times at Round Hill and the North River. She laughs about being commuters, writing, “Don’t forget how we lost our Rep. By being Day Student. ha! ha!” Then she continues remembering happy times writing, “Think of…the nice times we had in Business (Com. Law Ex,) and (Banking)…. While thinking of the joy-ful times spent at school…Remember kindly the one who spent them with you. Devotedly Your Sister Lelia.”
Johnson married William H. Johnson in Indiana in 1903, moved to California by 1910 and had several children. She passed away in 1962 in Modesto, Calif.
Johnson’s younger half-brother Willie Sanger (1885-1975) graduated from BC in 1909 and became a noted physician and educator. He taught at BC in the early 20th century and served as the first Academic Dean of the College from 1919-1921. He later served as secretary of the Virginia State Board of Education and as President of the Medical College of Virginia. In his autobiography, As I Remember, Sanger remembers his sister as “remarkable” and noted that she “never lost her desire for personal development.”
Lizzie Sanger Johnson’s pretty brown and silver autograph book is among several autograph albums preserved and shared by the Newlen-Bradford Special Collections. They chronicle the early equality of education for male and female students as BC founder D. C. Flory envisioned.
– Stephanie S. Gardner
Special Collections Librarian
03/28/2025
