Mary Lyon
American Teacher
1797 – 1849 A.D.

Mary Lyon, an American teacher. Under great difficulties she acquired by persevering effort such an education as she judged necessary to qualify her a teacher, and for several years was engaged in teaching in different schools.

In 1837 at South Handley, Mass., she opened the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, upon a plan which she had been maturing for many years. The peculiar feature of which was the combination of domestic labor with the highest moral and intellectual culture. She presided over this institution with great success until her death; and many of her pupils have since established schools upon similar plans.

Mary Lyon may be called the first great pioneer of female education in the United States,and the work she did paved the way for the later efforts of Catherine Beecher and Emma Willard.

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Reference: Famous Women; An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women By Joseph Adelman. Copyright, 1926 by Ellis M. Lonow Company.