Salem Academy (Salem Female Academy)

In Ruth's Christmas Surprise, Ruth leaves home for the first time in 1894 to attend Salem Female Academy, a boarding school in Piedmont North Carolina. Founded by the Moravians in 1772, it holds the distinction of being the oldest educational institution for girls and women in the United States. Today, the school lives on as Salem Academy and Salem College, sharing a historic 47-acre campus in the heart of Old Salem in Winston-Salem. Visitors can stroll the surrounding Old Salem historic district, where many of the 18th- and 19th-century Moravian buildings Ruth would have recognized still stand.