Margaret Mordecai Jones Cruikshank

Margaret Mordecai Cruikshank (née Jones; October 13, 1878 – December 26, 1955) was an American schoolteacher and college president. She served as the president of the Columbia Institute in Tennessee from 1922 to 1932 and as the president of St. Mary's Junior College in North Carolina from 1932 until her death in 1955. She was the first woman to serve as head of St. Mary's and is the only alumna to have served as president. Cruikshank had degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia University, and Duke University.

Biography Cruikshank was born Margaret Mordecai Jones on October 13, 1878, in Hillsborough, North Carolina to Halcott Pride Jones and Olive Echols Jones. She attended the Nash-Kollock School for Young Ladies, a boarding school in Hillsorough, before transferring to St. Mary's School, an Episcopal boarding school in Raleigh, from which she graduated in 1896. While serving as president, she helped establish the school's Student Government Association and approved their constitution in 1938. A scholarship named in her honor was established at St. Mary's in 1958.