Lyon, Mary (1797-1849)

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Mary Lyon (1797-1849)

Founder of mount holyoke female seminary

Teaching as Necessity. Mary Lyon was born on the family hill farm in Buckland, Massachusetts. When Mary was still a child, her father died, leaving the family of seven children in the difficult financial situation of trying to make the best of one hundred rocky acres, a small flock of sheep, and several dairy cows. Mary learned at home the skills of spinning, weaving, candlemaking and housework, but from the age of four she tagged along with her older siblings to a nearby school, where the teachers could hardly keep pace with her intense curiosity about the world. She continued to attend the local district schools and began teaching at seventeen, earning the customary salary of seventy-five cents a week plus room and board. At nineteen Mary spent all her savings to pay for one term at the Sanderson Academy in Ashland, Massachusetts. At times she slept only four hours a night so that she could get in sixteen hours of studying and recitation. Such dedication impressed her teachers and fellow students alike, and when she ran out of money to attend a second term, the school’s trustees voted to extend her free tuition. Through the next twenty years of financial struggles, in which she taught school and “boarded round” (she had no home of her own until she was nearly forty), her enthusiasm and friendliness continued to gain her many benefactors.

Spirituality of Learning. At the core of Lyon’s beliefs was a conviction that the purpose of education was spiritual. Knowledge should lead to action, she argued, and women trained as schoolteachers should carry out a sacred mission to America’s children. Her Puritan background at times created an inner tension as she delved into the world of “human science” and secular books, but as she explained to her students, one should “study and teach nothing that cannot be made to help in the great work of converting the world to Christ.” Convinced that women were endowed with a special capacity to spread God’s word, Lyon took care to ensure that her teaching fostered Christian values and character among her students. In the end she was able to combine her passion for learning, her faith in God, and her desire to see that young women received an education worthy of their calling. During the winter of 1834 Lyon wrote to a close friend about her decision to establish and operate a new kind of seminary: “My heart has so yearned over the adult female youth in the common walks of life, that it has sometimes seemed as though a fire were shut up in my bones.” From then on the fire within would burn brightly on the surface as she dedicated her life to the cause of women’s higher education.

Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. In 1800 women could not enter any college in the United States. Through her own experience Lyon knew that women could meet the same rigorous academic standards as their male counterparts, and in 1834 she set about raising funds to establish a quality women’s college. She solicited money throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut, aided by longtime supporters such as the Reverend Edward Hitchcock. Selecting a site in South Hadley, Massachusetts, Lyon opened the doors of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary on 8 November 1837, with one hundred students. To keep costs low so that those not born into wealthy families might attend, students and teachers performed all of the domestic chores at the institution. However, Lyon refused to include instruction in domestic activities. Instead she established high academic standards. Closely modeled on that of men’s colleges, her curriculum emphasized advanced studies in both the sciences and the humanities. The school offered women an opportunity to study subjects once unavailable to them but at the same time stressed the intellectual cultivation required to become good wives, mothers, teachers, and missionaries. “O how immensely important is this work of preparing the daughters of the land to be good mothers!,” Lyon wrote. She served as principal of the seminary from 1837 until her death in 1849. During her twelve-year tenure as principal the school quickly grew in enrollment and reputation. The institution eventually was incorporated into a college in 1888.

Trailblazer. Mary Lyon’s Holyoke seminary marked the beginning of higher education for women. Its remarkable success inspired the Vassars, Smiths, and Wellesleys founded in later years. By applying standards equal to those of traditional colleges Lyon helped undermine the long-standing assumption that women were intellectually inferior to men. Despite its many limitations Holyoke seminary marked a great improvement over the colonial finishing schools once considered to offer the only proper education for young ladies.