Harper became the first female teacher at Union Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, teaching sewing to students.
Around 1850, Frances Ellen Watkins (not yet married to Fenton Harper) became the first female teacher at Union Seminary, a school affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church located near Columbus, Ohio. There she taught domestic science, specifically sewing, to young Black students, breaking new ground as a woman in an educational institution's faculty.
This appointment came at a time when opportunities for African American women in professional or educational roles were exceedingly rare, particularly in institutions historically dominated by male instructors and clergy. Her position at Union Seminary — later absorbed into Wilberforce University — marked an important step in her career trajectory from student and poet to public educator and reformer.
Teaching at Union Seminary placed Harper within reformist and abolitionist networks in Ohio, a hotbed of antislavery activity due to its proximity to slaveholding Kentucky and Virginia across the Ohio River. Her time there deepened her commitment to the abolitionist cause and helped set the stage for her transition into full-time antislavery lecturing beginning in 1854.
While the exact day of her appointment is not documented in surviving records, historians consistently date this milestone to 1850, marking Harper as a pioneering woman educator in the pre-Civil War Black educational network.