First Bachelor of Arts Awarded—First Graduate

The only person known to have graduated from Blount College (October 18, 1806) is William E. Parker, who received the bachelor of arts degree. President Carrick recorded him as having been examined and approved in “Virgil, Rhetoric, Horace, Logic, Geography, Greek Testament, Lucien, Mathematics, Ethics, and Natural Philosophy.” The next graduate of whom there is an institutional record is Clement C. Clay, who graduated from East Tennessee College in 1807. Clay later became governor of Alabama. Parker was not the first student to graduate from a Tennessee college. Washington College, which had been chartered by the state of North Carolina as Martin Academy in 1793 and rechartered by the Assembly of the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio in 1795, granted the AB degree as early as 1796.

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  • Title First Bachelor of Arts Awarded—First Graduate
  • Author
  • Keywords First Bachelor of Arts Awarded—First Graduate
  • Website Name Volopedia
  • Publisher University of Tennessee Libraries
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  • Access Date January 23, 2026
  • Original Published Date
  • Date of Last Update October 7, 2018