Mary Lyon Founded a School to Train Women for Christian Service
Eager to learn, Mary Lyon became a notable teacher and founded America’s first female college.
ON AN IMPOVERISHED FARM in Massachusetts near Buckland, Mary Lyon was born on this day, 28 February 1797. Her parents’ lives centered around a living Savior, and this is the faith they taught and demonstrated to their children. Mary was the sixth of eight children (a brother died before she was born). She did not bask long in the faithful witness of her father, for when she was just six he also died.
Every hand was needed on the farm, and Mary learned spinning, weaving, sewing, and farming while very young. She was inquisitive, and as she grew older she seized any opportunity that came her way to learn what she could, especially about the sciences and mathematics. As a teenager, she taught younger children. At twenty, she earned 75¢ a week and saved it toward higher education. Between work and study she managed only four hours of sleep a night.
Apart from her parents, one of the greatest influences on her life was her teacher, Rev. Joseph Emerson. He was passionately committed to Christ and pressed his zeal upon the young women he taught. He educated Lyon in the real sense of the word, opening her mind to learn and teach. Unlike many clergymen of the day, he treated women as intellectually equal, discussing matters with them “as if they had brains.” Emerson encouraged Lyon to open a school of higher learning for women.
Mary, who had always been one to make herself useful, believed that she could make a girls’ school affordable if each pupil shared in the domestic work. She believed the purpose of such a school would be to infuse pupils with a missionary spirit. With contributions from Christian backers, she got the opportunity to put her plans into action, opening Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1836—the nation’s first college for women. It was named for a nearby mountain peak and took as its motto Psalm 144:12, “That our daughters may be as cornerstones, polished after the similitude of a palace.”
The school did well. Lyon served as its principle for twelve years and set rigorous standards of study and conduct. Among those who went out from it prepared for lives of service was one of her biographers, Fidelia Fisk, who became a well-known missionary to the Middle East.
—Dan Graves
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For more about the long tradition of Christian education, see Hallowed Halls
