Angie Warren Perkins Commission for Women's Notable UT Woman 1995

BIOGRAPHY

Angie Villette Warren, a native of Danielsonville, Connecticut, was one of the first four women to be admitted to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Warren received both B.A. (1876) and M.A. (1879) degrees and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa at Wesleyan.

Warren served on the faculty of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and was the women’s principal at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1883 she married Charles Perkins, who later joined the University of Tennessee faculty. Angie Warren Perkins was appointed “honorary dean” of UT’s new Woman’s Department in 1898. The title was later changed to “acting dean.” Perkins served, without pay, until mid-1900 when the first paid dean of women was appointed.

Perkins was active in a number of civic organizations, locally and on the state and national levels. She was president of Ossoli Circle (1896-18976, 1911-1912) and the Knoxville YWCA (1907-1909). In 1915 when Perkins was elected to the Knoxville Board of Education, she became the first woman in Knoxville, and possibly the first in the South, to hold such a position. She presided over the Board in 1918 and 1919. She was president of the Southern Association of College Women (1909-1910, 1911-1912, 1919-1921) and the Tennessee Federation of Women’s Clubs (1900-1904). Perkins was on the board of directors of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (1904-1908) and served as its corresponding secretary the last two years.

Perkins’s tragic death in January 1921 resulted from a traffic accident in which the family automobile collided with a streetcar on Clinch Avenue.

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