Mary Lyon

The farm in Buckland had rocky soil and seven children, and Aaron Lyon died when Mary was five, leaving his widow to work it. Mary learned to spin, weave, dye, and keep house. At 17 she took a summer school in Shelburne Falls for 75 cents a week and board in her pupils' homes, moving every few days. Everything she earned went back into her own education, along with coverlets and blankets she wove and traded for room and board. She studied at Byfield Seminary under Joseph Emerson and at Amherst Academy, where she took chemistry and natural science from Edward Hitchcock. Emma Willard and Catharine Beecher had already built schools for women. Lyon wanted one that would outlive its founder.

In 1834 she left her teaching post at Ipswich and spent three years asking for money. She went door to door and to church groups and sewing circles across Massachusetts, carrying a green velvet bag, and took what farm women could give — gifts that ran from six cents to 1,000 dollars, plus quilts, bedding, and stoves. The point was the endowment. Seminaries owned by a proprietor or living on tuition closed when the money or the founder ran out. Mount Holyoke Female Seminary opened on November 8, 1837, with 80 students, and it was funded to last.

The entrance examinations were oral and hard — English grammar, arithmetic, United States history, geography — and no easier than what men's colleges asked. The course ran three years. Lyon taught chemistry herself, required seven courses in science and mathematics, and had students run their own laboratory experiments and collect specimens in the field, which almost no female seminary did. Every student did chores: cooking, washing floors, cleaning knives. That work held fees to about 60 dollars a year, roughly a third of what Ipswich charged, and put the school inside a farmer's reach. The cost fell on Lyon's reputation. A woman asking strangers for money in public was thought immodest, and she deflected it by arranging that the business should, in name, devolve on benevolent gentlemen.

She ran the seminary for 12 years. In March 1849 she nursed a student through erysipelas, caught it, and died on the fifth, at 52. She is buried on the campus, inside an iron fence, and commencement is still held beside the grave. The seminary took a collegiate charter in 1888 and dropped the word seminary in 1893. What she actually built was a template: Vassar and Wellesley were patterned on it, and Mount Holyoke stands as the oldest of the Seven Sisters. Emily Dickinson spent the 1847 to 1848 year there and was assigned to clean knives. In 1905 Lyon entered the Hall of Fame for Great Americans.

Mary Lyon's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Wheaton Female Seminary other
  Advised its founding, wrote its first curriculum, and supplied its first principal 1835
• Mount Holyoke Female Seminary other
  Founded on a permanent endowment she raised herself, and led for 12 years 1837
• General View of the Principles and Design of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary other
  The founding circular, published by direction of the trustees rather than over her own name 1837
• The Mount Holyoke curriculum other
  Seven required courses in science and mathematics, with students performing their own laboratory work 1837
• The domestic work system other
  Chores done by every student, which held fees to about 60 dollars a year 1837

• February 28, 1797 aged 0 Born on a hill farm in Buckland, Massachusetts
• 1802 aged ~5 Her father dies, leaving her mother seven children and a 100-acre farm Mary was five. At 13, when her mother remarried, she stayed behind to keep house for her brother.
• 1814 aged ~17 Takes her first teaching job at 17, for 75 cents a week A man teaching the winter term earned 10 to 12 dollars a month.
• 1818 aged ~21 Studies at Amherst Academy and takes chemistry and natural science from Edward Hitchcock Chemistry became her own subject, and she taught it at Mount Holyoke.
• 1834 aged ~37 Leaves Ipswich Female Seminary to raise money full time Three years of soliciting, in a national depression, in sums as small as six cents.
• November 8, 1837 aged 40 Mount Holyoke Female Seminary opens with 80 students Each arrived with a Bible, an atlas, a dictionary, and two spoons.
• 1847 aged ~50 Emily Dickinson enrolls for a year and is assigned to clean knives
• March 5, 1849 aged 52 Dies of erysipelas at 52, caught from a student she was nursing
• 1888 aged ~91 The seminary receives a collegiate charter from Massachusetts It dropped the word seminary from its name in 1893.

• Emma Willard 1787–1870
  Women's education reformer who founded the Troy Female Seminary, a model for women's higher education. built on the work of
• Catharine Beecher 1800–1878
  Pioneer in women's education who founded schools and advocated for female teachers across America. rival
• Emily Dickinson 1830–1886
  Reclusive poet whose innovative use of form and slant rhyme made her one of America's greatest literary voices. taught
• Elizabeth Blackwell 1821–1910
  First woman to receive a medical degree in the United States and a pioneer of women’s medical education. opened the way for
• Charles W. Eliot 1834–1926
  Rebuilt Harvard into the first modern American research university and gave undergraduates the elective system. anticipated