Mary Mason Lyon was an American pioneer in women's education.
24 Facts About Mary Lyon
2.
Mary Lyon established the Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, in 1834.
3.
Mary Lyon then established Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1837 and served as its first president for 12 years.
4.
Mary Lyon valued socioeconomic diversity and endeavored to make the seminary affordable for students of modest means.
5.
The daughter of a farming family in Buckland, Massachusetts, Lyon had a hardscrabble childhood.
6.
Mary Lyon's father died when she was five, and the entire family pitched in to help run the farm.
7.
Mary 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.
8.
Mary Lyon attended various district schools intermittently and, in 1814 at 17, began teaching in them as well, first invited to teach summer school.
9.
Mary Lyon was eventually able to attend two secondary schools, Sanderson Academy in Ashfield and Byfield Seminary in eastern Massachusetts.
10.
Mary Lyon soaked up Byfield's ethos of rigorous academic education infused with Christian commitment.
11.
Mary Lyon then taught at several academies, including Sanderson, a small school of her own in Buckland, Adams Female Academy, and the Ipswich Female Seminary.
12.
Mary Lyon left teaching and collected donated funds in a characteristic green purse to raise money for the seminary's creation.
13.
Mary Lyon created the first curriculum with the goal that it be equal in quality to those of men's colleges.
14.
Mary 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.
15.
Mary Lyon organized field trips on which students collected rocks, plants, and specimens for lab work, and inspected geological formations and recently discovered dinosaur tracks.
16.
Mary Lyon was raised a Baptist but converted to a Congregationalist under the influence of her teacher Reverend Joseph Emerson.
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Mary 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.
18.
Mary Lyon played a major role in the revival of the thought of Jonathan Edwards, whose works were read more frequently then than in his day.
19.
Mary Lyon was attracted by his ideas of self-restraint, self-denial, and disinterested benevolence.
20.
Mary Lyon was buried on the Mount Holyoke College campus, in front of Porter Hall and behind the Amphitheatre.
21.
Mary Lyon was adaptable and adventuresome, self-sufficient, and devoted to service.
22.
Dormitories named after Mary Lyon can be found at Miami University, Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, Swarthmore College, and University of Massachusetts Amherst.
23.
Vassar College, Wellesley College and the former Western College for Women were patterned after Mount Holyoke and Mary Lyon's work led to Ann Dudin Brown founding Westfield College in London.
24.
In 1905, Mary Lyon was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York.