Queer Places:
Mount Holyoke College (Seven Sisters), 50 College St, South Hadley, MA 01075
Ipswich Female Seminary, 3 High St, Ipswich, MA 01938
Wheaton College, 26 E Main St, Norton, MA 02766
Mary
Mason Lyon (February 28, 1797 – March 5, 1849) was an American pioneer in women's
education. She established the
Wheaton Female Seminary in
Norton, Massachusetts, (now
Wheaton College) in 1834. She then established
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now
Mount Holyoke College) in
South Hadley, Massachusetts in 1837 and served as its first president
(or "principal") for 12 years. Lyon's vision fused intellectual challenge
and moral purpose. She valued socioeconomic diversity and endeavored to make
the seminary affordable for students of modest means.
The daughter of a farming family in
Buckland, Massachusetts, Lyon had a hardscrabble childhood. Her father
died when she was five, and the entire family pitched in to help run the
farm. Lyon was thirteen when her mother remarried and moved away; she stayed
behind in Buckland in order to keep the house for her brother Aaron, who
took over the farm.[1]
She attended various district schools intermittently and, in 1814, began
teaching in them as well. Lyon's modest beginnings fostered her lifelong
commitment to extending educational opportunities to girls from middling and
poor backgrounds.
Lyon was eventually able to attend two secondary schools, Sanderson
Academy in
Ashfield and Byfield Seminary in eastern Massachusetts.[1]
At Byfield, she was befriended by the headmaster, Rev. Joseph Emerson, and
his assistant,
Zilpah Polly Grant. She also soaked up Byfield's ethos of rigorous
academic education infused with Christian commitment. Lyon then taught at
several academies, including Sanderson, a small school of her own in
Buckland, Adams Female Academy (run by Grant), and the
Ipswich Female Seminary (also run by Grant). Lyon's attendance at the
then novel, popular, lectures in laboratory botany by
Amos
Eaton influenced her involvement in the
female seminary movement.[2][3][4]
In 1834,
Laban Wheaton and his daughter-in-law, Eliza Baylies Chapin Wheaton,
called upon Mary Lyon for assistance in establishing the Wheaton Female
Seminary (now
Wheaton College) in
Norton, Massachusetts.[5]
Miss Lyon created the first curriculum with the goal that it be equal in
quality to those of men's colleges. She also provided the first principal,
Eunice Caldwell. Wheaton Female Seminary opened on 22 April 1835, with 50
students and three teachers. Mary Lyon and Eunice Caldwell left Wheaton,
along with eight Wheaton students, to open Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.[6]
During these early years, Lyon gradually developed her vision for Mount
Holyoke Female Seminary, which would resemble Grant's schools in many
respects but, Lyon hoped, draw its students from a wider socioeconomic
range. The college was unique in that it was founded by people of modest
means and served their daughters, rather than the children of the rich. She
was especially influenced by Reverend Joseph Emerson, whose Discourse on
Female Education (1822) advocated that women should be trained to be
teachers rather than "to please the other sex."
Mount Holyoke opened in 1837: the seminary was ready for "the reception
of scholars on November 8, 1837."[7]
Lyon strove to maintain high academic standards: she set rigorous entrance
exams and admitted "young ladies of an adult age, and mature character."[7]
In keeping with her social vision, she limited the tuition to $60/year,
about one-third the tuition that Grant charged at Ipswich Female Seminary,
which was central to her mission of "appeal[ing] to the intelligence of all
classes."[7]
In order to keep costs low, Lyon required students to perform domestic
tasks—an early version of work/study. These tasks included preparing meals
and washing floors and windows.
Emily Dickinson, who attended the Seminary in 1847, was tasked with
cleaning knives.[8]
But this would not last. As of 2019, Mount Holyoke now estimates the cost of
attending the college to be $71,828 per year.[9]
Lyon, an early believer in the importance of daily exercise for women,
required her students to "walk one mile (1.6 km) after breakfast. During New
England's cold and snowy winters, she reduced the requirement to 45 minutes.
Calisthenics—a form of exercise—was taught by teachers in unheated
hallways until a storage area was cleared for a gymnasium.
Though Lyon's policies were sometimes controversial, the seminary quickly
attracted its target student body of 200. Lyon anticipated a change in the
role of women and equipped her pupils with an education that was
comprehensive, rigorous, and innovative, with particular emphasis on the
sciences. She required:
- seven courses in the sciences and mathematics for graduation, a
requirement unheard of at other female seminaries. She introduced women
to "a new and unusual way" to learn science—laboratory experiments which
they performed themselves. She organized field trips on which students
collected rocks, plants, and specimens for lab work, and inspected
geological formations and recently discovered dinosaur tracks.[10]
Conforti (1993) examines the central importance of religion to Lyon. She
was raised a Baptist but converted to a Congregationalist under the
influence of her teacher Reverend Joseph Emerson. Lyon preached revivals at
Mount Holyoke, spoke elsewhere, and, though not a minister, was a member of
the fellowship of New England's New Divinity clergy. She played a major role
in the revival of the thought of
Jonathan Edwards, whose works were read more frequently then than in his
day. She was attracted by his ideas of self-restraint, self-denial, and
disinterested benevolence.
Lyon died of
erysipelas (possibly contracted from an ill student in her care)[1]
on March 5, 1849. Lyon was buried on the Mount Holyoke College campus, in
front of Porter Hall and behind the Amphitheatre.[11]
Her burial site is marked with a granite marker surrounded by an iron fence.[11]
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