BA in History

The name "Swarthmore" has its roots in early Quaker history. In England, Swarthmoor Hall near the town of Ulverston, Cumbria, (previously in Lancashire), was the home of Thomas and Margaret Fell in 1652 when George Fox, (1624–1691), fresh from his epiphany atop Pendle Hill in 1651, came to visit. The visitation turned into a long association, as Fox persuaded the couple of his views. Swarthmore was used for the first meetings of what became known as the Religious Society of Friends (later colloquially labeled "The Quakers").
The college was founded in 1864 by Deborah Fisher Wharton, along with her industrialist son, Joseph Wharton, together with a committee of members of the Hicksite Yearly Meetings of Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore. It is the only college founded by the Hicksite branch of the Society of Friends: previous Quaker institutions, like nearby Haverford College, were Orthodox in their founding history. Swarthmore held its first classes in 1869 and Edward Parrish (1822–1872) was the first president. Lucretia Mott (1793–1880) and Martha Ellicott Tyson (1795–1873) were among those Friends who insisted that the new college of Swarthmore be coeducational. Edward Hicks Magill, the second president, served for 17 years.[19] His daughter, Helen Magill, (1853–1944), was in the first class to graduate in 1873; in 1877, she was the first woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D.