Graduated in Swarthmore College's First Class

In 1873, Helen Magill graduated from Swarthmore College as part of its very first graduating class — a landmark cohort of only six students, five of whom were women. This was a remarkable ratio for the era, reflecting Swarthmore's founding Quaker commitment to educating men and women together on equal terms, a philosophy relatively rare among American institutions of higher learning at the time.

Her father, Edward Hicks Magill, was deeply involved with the college (later serving as its president), and Helen's participation in this founding class placed her at the very origin of one of the first coeducational colleges in the United States to offer women a curriculum equivalent to that given to men.

Graduating in this pioneering class was significant not merely as a personal achievement but as a demonstration that women could complete the same rigorous liberal arts curriculum as their male peers. It provided Helen with the academic grounding — particularly in classical languages — that she would carry into her groundbreaking graduate studies.

Although the exact calendar date of the 1873 commencement is not precisely documented in available sources, the graduation is universally dated to the year 1873 in institutional and biographical records, marking an essential milestone in Helen Magill's path toward becoming the first woman in the U.S. to earn a doctorate.