Mary Mitchell Birchall, born Mary Wheelwright Mitchell (1840-1898), was the first woman in New England to earn a bachelor's degree when she graduated from Bates College in 1869.

[1] She later served as a professor at Vassar College and founded a girls' school in Boston.

She graduated from Bates College in 1869 while working in a local textile mill to support herself, and she reportedly turned down a scholarship.

[3] After graduation, Mitchell taught high school in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Miss Anna Brackett's School in New York, before becoming a professor at Vassar College in 1876-77.

[4] In 1891 she founded a girls' school in West Chester Park in Boston, which she ran until 1897.