of any college or university in the United States; he also became the first African American elected to public office, joining the Vermont House of Representatives in 1836. At its second commencement in 1804, Middlebury granted Lemuel Haynes an honorary master's degree, the first advanced degree ever bestowed upon an African American.
In 1883, the trustees voted to accept women as students in the college, making Middlebury one of the first formerly all-male liberal arts colleges in New England to become a coeducational institution. The first female graduate—May Belle Chellis—received her degree in 1886. As valedictorian of the class of 1899, Mary Annette Anderson became the first African-American woman elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
=== 20th century ===
The college's centennial in 1900 began a century of physical expansion beyond the three buildings of Old Stone Row. York and Sawyer designed the Egbert Starr Library (1900), a Beaux-Arts edifice later expanded and renamed the Axinn Center, and Warner Hall (1901). …
