Susan Wright Sampson was born in Wilmington, North Carolina to
James Drawhorn Sampson and Fannie Kellog Sampson. The exact year of her birth is not known but it is believed to be 1865.
She was the fourteenth child of fifteen brothers and sisters and was reared in an Episcopal household.
As a child, Susan Dudley had very little formal education. She was coached by her older brothers and sisters
in the home and then attended private school in Wilmington. She attended Oberlin College but her studies were
terminated because of the death of her brother Benjamin’s wife with whom she was living. Susie Dudley returned to
Wilmington and applied for and received a teacher’s certificate in 1880.
She began teaching in Wilmington, North Carolina and was a teacher at Peabody School
when her future husband, James B. Dudley, became principal there. On February 23, 1882,
she and Professor Dudley married. Several years after they married, the Dudleys were blessed with two daughters,
Vivian and Inez, who was born two years later. Both daughters finished A and M Preparatory School and attended
school in Worcester, Massachusetts. Inez died at a very young age.
In 1896, Professor Dudley left Peabody to become president of A and M. College in Greensboro,
North Carolina. At first the Dudley’s lived in North Dormitory on the college campus and for a number of
years with President Dudley’s mother on Dudley Street. In 1910, the family moved to a twenty room mansion
(Magnolia House) on the corner of Dudley and Lindsay Streets where they lived until Dr. Dudley died in 1925.
Mrs. Dudley was an accomplished and versatile woman. For a number of years after coming to the college,
Mrs. Dudley taught English literature and ancient history in the College Preparatory School. She was a director of plays,
a debate coach and an excellent hostess. Her stamp on A&T includes the writing of the words to the A&T Alma Mater and the
design of the arch structure, once a part of the main entrance to the campus. Susie Dudley died in 1933 of double pneumonia.
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