Mary Lyon - Through Her Letters Through Her Letters

Mary Through Her Letters As edited by MARION LANSING BOOKS, INC. BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS COPYRIGHT 1937 BY MARION F. LANSING Sponsored by the Alumnae Association of Mount HolyoJ e College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE COLONIAL PRESS INC., CLINTON, MASS. 2 31 MARY LYON A portrait from early portraits, by Louisa Jewell For those who in years past dreamed a dream, and toiled for its fulfilment who laid lasting foundations, and built well upon them who gave unstintingly of strength and love and labor till their years were ended who live on in the grateful memory of the following generations. PREFACE A person who builds for future generations gains thereby a kinship with those who live in the later days when the vision has been realized. Mary Lyon built always for the future. She saw herself as standing on the threshold of a new age in education, as laboring in the portico or clearing the ground for that temple which was destined to continue from generation to generation. The structure of which she caught glimpses was the womans college of to-day. To her own thought it was not simply Mount Holyoke Seminary which she was founding. That institution for the higher education of girls, with its public en dowment and permanent foundation, was to be an example that could be used again and again. Five years before its opening day she wrote to her friend Professor Hitchcock of Amherst College suggesting the need for one or two seminaries in every State, where older young ladies from different parts of the country might come together, together receive instruction, form and mature their plans, and exert over each others views and feel ings an extensive andpowerful influence. The time has passed when institutions and historians list dates in the field of higher education for girls as if in a Marathon race for priority. Mary Lyons own correspondence shows her to be one of a growing company of thoughtful men and women who were awake to the educational needs of girls and to the service which educated women could render to the community and the nation. Joseph Emerson, Mrs. Emma Wiilard, and Miss Catharine Beecher voiced these ideas in print Miss Grant and Miss Lyon worked together and singly towards these ends. But it was Mary Lyon who succeeded in establishing in 1837 a seminary built on a foundation so broad that it could last one hundred years and serve for the colleges of to-day, a foundation of permanent endow ment, of trustee administration, of a curriculum following as viii PREFACE closely as was possible the accepted collegiate course of study ot the time, of community life, and of training in responsibility to society. Her letters, placed against their contemporary background, show how she accomplished this feat. The story has been told by others, and will be told again. Here we let her tell it for her self, and gain in so doing a new self-portrait of this scholarly, far-sighted woman, with her contagious enthusiasm and unusual executive ability. It is a picture with many a modern touch, but it is set in the framework of another age, when travel was by stagecoach and written communication was slowed clown to the speed at which a horse could cover distances, though in the later years railroads and steamboats came to be taken for granted. Hut ideas flashed rapidly between kindred minds, and the human touches are many and entertaining.For a gracious opening of the archives of Mount Holyokc College for this purpose, we are indebted to President Mary E. Woolley for friendly interest in the undertaking to her successor, President Roswell Gray Ham for consultation and assistance to Miss Flora B. Ludington, librarian, and Mr. Robert Christ, as well as to Miss Bertha E. Blakely and Miss Mary Allen Edge, archivist, during the initial stages of the work...