Celestia Susannah Parrish was born on September 12, 1853 in Swansonville, Pittsylvania County, Virginia, United States. She was the daughter of William Perkins Parrish, a country gentleman owning a large estate in both land and slaves, and his second wife, Lucinda Jane (Walker) Parrish.
Celestia Susannah Parrish began at the age of five years to attend a private school on her father's plantation. In 1862 her father died and in 1863 her mother also. There were no schools in Pittsylvania County during the Civil War, but the aunts with whom the three children lived had a library in which Celestia read every book, and she memorized much from Byron and Shakespeare. In the autumn of 1865, when a private school was opened at Callands, she enrolled and walked every day two and a half miles back and forth over a rough mountain road. There she memorized textbooks on botany, biology, and chemistry, along with the limited curriculum of the "three r's. " When in 1867 her uncle and guardian, William B. Walker, died, it was discovered that there was left only a very small legacy. In 1885 Celestia Susannah Parrish entered the State Female Normal School at Farmville, Virginia, was graduated in 1886. She received the Ph. B. degree from Cornell University in 1896.
Celestia Susannah Parrish became a teacher in a private school and later in the public school at Swansonville with a salary of $40 a month. Teaching and studying wherever the possibility opened, she not only supported herself, her brother, and her sister, but, when her half-brother died leaving five dependent children, assumed part of the expense of their maintenance. In 1885 she entered the State Female Normal School at Farmville, Virginia, was graduated in 1886, and was appointed to teach mathematics. In 1891- 1892 she took special work in mathematics and astronomy at the University of Michigan. On the autumn of 1893, she went to the newly established Randolph-Macon Woman's College to teach mathematics, psychology, and pedagogy. There is abundant testimony to her rare gifts as a teacher and to her unusual and striking personality. She was able to obtain meager equipment for the course in psychology, to improve apparatus, devise experiments, and establish laboratory work as an essential part of the required course in psychology. During these years she attended several summer sessions, took correspondence work, and, after a few months of residence, received the Ph. B. degree from Cornell University in 1896.
On January 1895, Celestia Susannah Parrish had published in the American Journal of Psychology an article "The Cutaneous Estimation of Open and Filled Space, " the result of some of her work in the laboratory at Cornell. A little later she studied with John Dewey at the University of Chicago. In 1902 she became professor of pedagogic psychology at the State Normal School in Athens, Georgia. There she obtained, through funds furnished by George Foster Peabody, the establishment of what was probably the first practice school for normal students in the South. In 1903 she was one of the organizers and became the first president of the Southern Association of College Women. She began the agitation for a more practical expression of industrial and agricultural training in connection with the common-schools. She was interested in the pre-school child long before the importance of that aspect of education was generally recognized. She touched the educational life of the state of Georgia through her teaching and lecturing, but she also touched the educational life of the entire South through her presidency of the Southern Association of College Women.
Celestia Susannah began the agitation for a more practical expression of industrial and agricultural training in connection with the common-schools. She was interested in the pre-school child long before the importance of that aspect of education was generally recognized. She touched the educational life of the state of Georgia through her teaching and lecturing, but she also touched the educational life of the entire South through her presidency of the Southern Association of College Women. The last position she held was that of supervisor of rural schools of Georgia. From county to county she went on her visits to schools, giving help and inspiration. Her greatest work in her last years was the establishing of schools for adult illiterates. When Celestia Susannah Parrish died at Clayton, Georgia, the Georgia legislature adjourned for her funeral, and on her monument at Clayton are these words: "Georgia's Greatest Woman. "
Celestia Susannah Parrish was famous for establishing the first psychology laboratory in the Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. She was one of the founders and the first president of the Southern Association of College Women. She was among the rare women who taught university level classes at a time when women were not yet allowed to be formally admitted as students at many American universities.
