Mary Lyon

For other people named Mary Lyon, see Mary Lyon (disambiguation).

Mary Lyon
Portrait of Mary Lyon
1st President of Mount Holyoke College (Founder and Principal)
Term	1837 – 1849
Predecessor	none
Successor	Mary C. Whitman
Born	February 28, 1797
Died	March 5, 1849(1849-03-05) (aged 52)

Mary Mason Lyon (28 February 1797 - 5 March 1849), surname pronounced /ˈlaɪ.ən/, was a pioneer in women's education. She established the Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, (now Wheaton College). Within two years, she raised $15,000 to build the Mount Holyoke School. She also 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 for Mount Holyoke fused intellectual challenge and moral purpose. She valued socioeconomic diversity and endeavored to make the seminary affordable for students of modest means.

Childhood

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. She attended various district schools intermittently and, in 1814, began teaching in them as well. Lyon's modest beginnings fostered her life-long 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. 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).

Mount Holyoke

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 (brother of Ralph Waldo 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. Lyon strove to maintain high academic standards: she set rigorous entrance exams and admitted no students under the age of 16. 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. 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.

In order to keep costs low, Lyon required students to perform domestic tasks—an early version of work/study. She also paid her teachers relatively poorly. Though her 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.^[1]

Religion

Conforti (1993) examines the central importance of religion to Lyon. She was raised a Baptist but converted to Congregationalism 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.

Death and memory

Lyon died of erysipelas (possibly contracted from an ill student in her care) on March 5, 1849. The Mary Lyon dormitories at Swarthmore College, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Plymouth State University are named in her memory.

Vassar College, Wellesley College and the former Western College for Women were patterned after Mount Holyoke.^[2]

In 1905, Lyon was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in the Bronx, New York.

She has been honored by the United States Postal Service with a 2¢ Great Americans series postage stamp.

Notes

1. ^ "Daily Mary Lyon's Influence on Science Education for Women". mtholyoke.edu. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/marylyon/science.html. Retrieved 2006-09-01. 
2. ^ Jennifer L. Crispen. "Seven Sisters and a Country Cousin". sbc.edu. http://www.dean.sbc.edu/crispen.html. 

Further reading

• Conforti, Joseph A. "Mary Lyon, the Founding of Mount Holyoke College, and the Cultural Revival of Jonathan Edwards," Religion and American Culture, Winter 1993, Vol. 3 Issue 1, pp 69–89
• Green, Elizabeth Alden. Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke: Opening the Gates (1979), the standard biography
• Handler, Bonnie S. and Carole B. Shmurak. "Mary Lyon and the Tradition of Chemistry Teaching at Mount Holyoke Seminary, 1837-1887," Vitae Scholasticae, 1990, Vol. 9 Issue 1/2, pp 53–73
• Horowitz, Helen. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s (1984)
• Porterfield, Amanda. Mary Lyon and the Mount Holyoke Missionaries (1997)
• Sklar, Kathryn Kish. "The Founding of Mount Holyoke College," in Carol Ruth Berkin and Mary Beth Norton, eds. Women of America: A History (1979) pp 177–201
• Turpin, Andrea L. "The Ideological Origins of the Women's College: Religion, Class, and Curriculum in the Educational Visions of Catharine Beecher and Mary Lyon," History of Education Quarterly, May 2010, Vol. 50 Issue 2, pp 133–158

Films

• "Mary Lyon: Precious Time," directed by Jean M. Mudge; San Anselmo, Calif.: Viewfinder Films, [n.d.] ISSN: 00182680

External links

• Biography at Mount Holyoke
• A Biography from the Mount Holyoke Website
• Another Biography
• Eliza Wheaton Strong
• Biography at ANB (subscription required)

Academic offices
Preceded by New Position	President of Mount Holyoke College (Founder and Principal) 1837-1849	Succeeded by Mary C. Whitman

Persondata
Name	Lyon, Mary
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	28 February 1797
Place of birth
Date of death	5 March 1849
Place of death