Anna Melvin Hague graduates with the Class of 1905 as one of Washington College’s first women graduates.
On approximately June 1, 1905, Anna Melvin Hague completed her studies as a member of the Washington College Class of 1905, and is documented as one of the first women graduates of Washington College.[7] While the college had moved toward coeducation in the 1890s, a fully documented cohort of women completing the full degree program only emerged in the early twentieth century. Hague’s graduation therefore represents more than an individual academic milestone; it marks women’s successful navigation of the institution’s entire curriculum at a time when many colleges still limited women to special or non‑degree status.
Her achievement is historically significant because it confirms that women not only enrolled, but persisted through to graduation in Washington College’s demanding liberal‑arts program. This challenged contemporaneous assumptions that women were unsuited to rigorous collegiate study or would abandon education for domestic roles before finishing. Hague’s presence in the Class of 1905 helped pave the way for subsequent women graduates, strengthening the case for coeducation as a durable and academically serious enterprise at a small Maryland college.[7] Although details of her later life are scarce in accessible sources, her status as one of the earliest documented women graduates situates her as a key figure in the slow but steady normalization of women’s degree‑level achievement in American higher education.