Elizabeth Virgil

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Elizabeth Ann Virgil (April 24, 1903 – June 20, 1991) was an American educator and the first African American to graduate from the University of New Hampshire, earning a BS in home economics in 1926. Born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, she moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as a child. Her mother, Alberta Curry Virgil, was the daughter of an emancipated slave from Virginia, and her father, Wilcox Virgil, came from the West Indies. After high school, she joined UNH, helped start the Treble Clefs singing group, and studied music and education.

Because she faced racial barriers in New Hampshire, she taught at Black schools in the southern United States for more than a decade, including the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute in Petersburg, Maryland’s Bowie Normal School, and Johnston County Training School in Smithfield, North Carolina.

In the late 1930s she returned to New Hampshire to care for her ill mother and worked various jobs. In 1951 she joined UNH as a clerk in the soil conservation department and stayed there until her retirement in 1973.

Virgil remained active in her community, sang in choirs, and served on the UNH president’s council. She established the Alberta Curry Virgil Scholarship at UNH in memory of her mother. A portrait of her was commissioned in 1991 and hangs in the Dimond Library. In 2018, Portsmouth High School honored her with a permanent faculty appointment and a mural. Her papers are kept in the Elizabeth Ann Virgil Collection at UNH Special Collections & Archives.