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The Founding of Sweet Briar College

At age 29, with the Civil War looming, Indiana Fletcher became the sole heir to Sweet Briar, her father's plantation in Amherst County.

When the war ended in April 1865, it brought peace and the arrival of James Henry Williams, a New Yorker, to the front doors of Sweet Briar House. Years earlier when Indiana was a student, she had met James Henry, who was the brother of one of her classmates. By the end of the summer, the two were married.

Daisy WilliamsIndiana and James Henry had one child, Daisy, born in 1867. The couple's devotion to their daughter is evident in the pieces now held in the Sweet Briar museum collections. Through the collections, one also can see the grief that Indiana experienced at Daisy's untimely death. She died at age 16, likely from a disorder now known as antitrypsin deficiency. Her father died a few years later of the same disease.

When Indiana's sorrow eased, she began making plans to leave her entire estate — more than $1 million and 8,000 acres of land — to the creation of a school for young women in memory of her daughter. However, not everyone was happy with the use of her fortune.

Her brother's illegitimate children and others contested her will, calling her "unstable" and attributing her numerous personal possessions — many of them collected for the school — to "greed and mania." Nonetheless, one year after Miss Indie's death, she won with the founding of Sweet Briar College in 1901.

Mary Virginia Parker '11The first class of students entered in 1906. Since then, Sweet Briar College has developed a history of its own through its many traditions.