Ward–Belmont College was a women's college located in Nashville, Tennessee. It formed from the merger of the Ward Seminary for Young Ladies and Belmont College for Young Women in 1913. The college was located on the grounds of the Belmont Mansion, the antebellum estate of Adelicia Hayes Franklin Acklen Cheatham. It was the first junior college in the South to receive full accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. The college was sold for financial reasons in 1951. Its grounds were used to create Belmont College.
Tennessee historical marker describing Ward-Belmont College
Adelicia Hayes Franklin Acklen Cheatham was an American planter and slave trader. She became the wealthiest woman in Tennessee and a plantation owner in her own right after the 1846 death of her first husband, Isaac Franklin. As a successful slave trader, he had used his wealth to purchase numerous plantations, lands, and slaves in Tennessee and Louisiana.
Portrait by William Brown Cooper
The Belmont Mansion.