Mary Lyon

Mary Lyon ( born February 28, 1797 in Buckland, Massachusetts, † March 5, 1849 in South Hadley, Massachusetts) was an American educator and women's rights activist. She was the founder and first president of the Women's University Mount Holyoke College.

Life

Mary Lyon was the daughter of Aaron Lyon, a farmer, and his wife Jemima Shepard. She was only five years old when her father died in an accident. Later she lived with relatives in Buckland and went there to school. From 1814 onward, Lyon gave lessons in rural schools in order to finance their education. You got 75 cents a week, their male counterparts, however, 2 to 3 U.S. dollars. Between 1817 and 1821 she attended the " Sanderson Academy" in Ashfield, the " Amherst Academy" and the " Joseph Emerson 's Seminary " in Byfield, where they are with the teacher Zilpah Grant ( 1794-1874 ) and the writer Catherine Esther Beecher (1806 -1878 ) befriended. Their study subjects were mathematics, computer science, Latin and history. She taught for three years at the " Sanderson Academy " before they Buckland opened his own school in 1824. In the following four years she worked every summer along with Zilpah Grant initially on " Adams Female Seminary " in New Hampshire and later in the " Ipswich Female Seminary ," where they constantly from 1828 worked. In the years she traveled from Boston to Detroit to raise money for a girls college to collect. On November 8, 1837 Mary Lyon opened in South Hadley the first college for women. It was said in 1888, " Mount Holyoke Seminary and College " and from 1895 "Mount Holyoke College " and served as a model for the higher education of women in the United States. The success of the Mount Holyoke opened the doors of higher education for women.