Emma Hart Willard was an American female education activist who dedicated her life to education.
40 Facts About Emma Willard
2.
Emma Willard worked in several schools and founded the first school for women's higher education, the Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York.
3.
Emma Willard was the sixteenth of seventeen children from her father, Samuel Hart, and his second wife Lydia Hinsdale Hart.
4.
Emma Willard's father was a farmer who encouraged his children to read and think for themselves.
5.
At a young age, Emma Willard's father recognized her passion for learning.
6.
At that time women were only provided basic education, but Emma Willard was included in family discussions such as politics, philosophy, world politics and mathematics that were primarily male subjects.
7.
At age 15, Emma Willard was enrolled in her first school in 1802 in her hometown of Berlin.
8.
Emma Willard progressed so quickly that just two years later at the age of 17 she was teaching there.
9.
Emma Willard eventually took charge of the academy for a term in 1806.
10.
In 1807, Emma Willard left Berlin and briefly worked in Westfield, Massachusetts, before accepting a job offer at a female academy in Middlebury, Vermont.
11.
Emma Willard held the position of principal at the academy from 1807 to 1809.
12.
Emma Willard was unimpressed by the material taught there and opened a boarding school for women, the Middlebury Female Seminary in 1814, in her own home.
13.
Emma Willard was inspired by the subjects her nephew, John Willard, was learning at Middlebury College and strove to improve the curriculum that was taught at girls' schools.
14.
Emma Willard believed that women could master topics like mathematics and philosophy rather than just subjects taught at finishing schools.
15.
Emma Willard's success inspired her to share her ideas on education and to write A Plan for Improving Female Education in 1819, a pamphlet that she presented to the members of the New York Legislature.
16.
Emma Willard's plan included a proposal for a women's seminary to be publicly funded just as men's schools were.
17.
Emma Willard did not receive a response from the legislators, several of whom believed women's education to be contrary to God's will.
18.
Emma Willard finally received support from New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, who invited her to open a school there.
19.
Originally Emma Willard opened an institution in Waterford, New York but she did not receive the promised financial support and therefore moved her school to Troy, New York, where she received more support and funding.
20.
Emma Willard led the school to success, and in 1831, the school had enrolled over 300 students.
21.
Emma Willard believed that women's education was a much more important matter.
22.
When Emma Willard addressed the New York State Legislature in 1819, the year before, for example, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter in which he suggested women should not read novels "as a mass of trash" with few exceptions.
23.
Emma Willard was a physician and 28 years her senior.
24.
John Emma Willard brought four children to the marriage from his previous marriages.
25.
Emma Willard's nephew, named John Willard, lived with them while attending Middlebury College, which gave Emma Willard much inspiration in forming her educational views.
26.
Emma and John Willard had one son together, named John Willard Hart, who received the management of the Troy Female Seminary when Willard left it in 1838.
27.
Emma Willard wrote several textbooks throughout her lifetime, including books on history and geography.
28.
Emma Willard's map-drawing geographic pedagogy became popular in the United States and influential in American missionary schools in South Asia during the nineteenth century.
29.
Emma Willard published a book of poetry, The Fulfilment of a Promise with her most popular poem entitled "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," which she reportedly wrote while on an ocean voyage in 1839.
30.
Emma Willard cowrote The Woodbridge and Emma Willard Geographies and Atlases, with American geographer William Channing Woodbridge; Also with Woodbridge she co-authored A System of Universal Geography on the Principles of Comparison and Classification.
31.
Emma Willard's geographies are discussed by Calhoun and her histories by Baym.
32.
Emma Willard headed the Troy Female Seminary until she remarried in 1838, and left the school in the hands of her son and daughter-in-law.
33.
Emma Willard married Dr Christopher Yates and moved to Boston with him.
34.
Emma Willard gave up his career, and after nine months of marriage they separated and a Decree nisi was granted in 1843.
35.
Emma Willard spent her later years traveling across America and throughout Europe to promote women's education.
36.
Emma Willard's efforts helped to establish a school for women in Athens, Greece.
37.
Emma Willard died on April 15,1870, in Troy, New York and was interred at Oakwood Cemetery.
38.
An Emma Willard Memorial was erected in Middlebury in 1941.
39.
In 1905, Emma Willard was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in the Bronx, New York.
40.
In 2013, Emma Willard was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.