“Establish on that sacred spot a female seminary”

St. Mary’s Female Seminary (today, St. Mary’s College of Maryland) was founded in 1840 as a monument to Maryland’s first capital of St. Mary’s City. Although the early years of the seminary were marked with financial struggles and administrative challenges, the institution survived, transforming from a small women’s secondary school into a four-year, co-ed college. As part of plans to improve existing infrastructure on the property, St. Mary’s College of Maryland recruited archaeologists from Historic St. Mary’s City to conduct excavations on the areas scheduled to be impacted. A mere four excavation units yielded more than 20,000 artifacts dating to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This chapter reviews the history of the school and analyzes the artifacts recovered from the 1997 excavations, in concert with the institution’s documentary record, to explore life at the seminary at the turn of the century. This discussion balances evidence of student life, including artifacts related to personal adornment, hygiene, and recreation, against measures taken by the institution to keep costs down while improving aging infrastructure.