Category: Educators

Educators
Civil War Women, Educators

Rebecca Pennell

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Pioneer for Women’s Equal Rights Rebecca Pennell in early years Early Years When Rebecca Pennell, born in 1821, was four years old, her father died and her mother moved back to her childhood home in Franklin, Massachusetts. Rebecca’s mother was the sister of the prominent educational reformer Horace Mann and had a strong relationship with him. Mann took a particular interest in the education of his nieces and nephew after their father’s death, and provided them with financial support. Rebecca remembered Mann as a loving figure during her childhood years, someone she and her siblings admired. Women’s Education in the 19th Century The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a time of great change in terms of the evolving…

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Activists, Civil War Women, Educators

Mary Stafford Anthony

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Educator and Suffragist Mary Stafford Anthony was the youngest sister of the famous social reformer and feminist Susan B. Anthony. Often overshadowed by her older sibling, Mary was a suffragist and educator who served as the first female school principal in western New York. She played an active role in several social reform organizations, including the New York Women’s Suffrage Association. Image: Mary Stafford Anthony At about 25 years of age Early Years Mary Stafford Anthony was born April 2, 1827 to Daniel and Lucy Read Anthony in Battenville, New York. Her parents had different religious beliefs; he was a liberal Quaker abolitionist. Although Lucy was a Baptist in her younger years, the Anthony children were raised as Quakers. Anthony…

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Abolitionists, Civil War Women, Educators, Philanthropists

Emily Howland

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Pioneer in Education for African Americans and Children Emily Howland and the Civil War Abolitionist, educator, philanthropist and suffragist from the village of Sherwood in Cayuga County, New York, Emily Howland was an avid supporter of education for women and African American children. She founded and financially supported fifty schools for emancipated blacks and taught in several of them. She donated the land and financial backing to build a school for black children in her hometown, which later became Emily Howland School. Early Years Emily Howland was born in 1827 on a farm near Sherwood, New York to Quakers and wealthy landowners Slocum and Hannah Howland. Slocum Howland was an anti-slavery advocate, banker, entrepreneur, and a leader in his community….

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Activists, Civil War Women, Educators, Famous Firsts, Women Doctors

Mary Putnam Jacobi

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Pioneer for Women in the Medical Professions Mary Putnam Jacobi was a prominent physician, author, scientist, activist, educator, and perhaps most importantly, a staunch advocate of women’s right to seek medical education and training. Men in medicine claimed that a medical education would make women physically ill, and that women physicians endangered their profession. Jacobi worked to prove them wrong and argued that it was social restrictions that threatened female health. Image: Mary Corinna Putnam as a medical student, 1860s Jacobi was the most significant woman physician of her era and an outspoken advocate for women’s rights, rising to national prominence in the 1870s. She was a harsh critic of the exclusion of women from the professions, and a social…

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Civil War Women, Educators

Lucretia Crocker

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Pioneer Educator and Innovative Administrator As the first woman appointed to the Board of Supervisors of the Boston Public School System (1876), Lucretia Crocker pioneered the method of teaching mathematics and the natural sciences during her decade-long tenure. Earlier, she was among the first women elected to the Boston School Committee, and a strong advocate for higher education for women. Early Years Lucretia Crocker was born December 31, 1829 in Barnstable, Massachusetts on Cape Cod to Henry and Lydia Ferris Crocker. She was educated in the Boston Public Schools, and attended the State Normal School in West Newton, Massachusetts. Established by Horace Mann, it was the first state-supported school dedicated to training teachers in America. She graduated in 1850, but…

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Civil War Women, Educators, Famous Firsts, Women Doctors

Mary Harris Thompson

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Pioneer Doctor and Educator of Women in the Medical Professions Dr. Mary Harris Thompson (1829–1895) was one of the first women to practice medicine in Chicago, and by some accounts the first female surgeon in the US. She was founder, head physician and surgeon of the Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, founder of the Women’s Medical College, the first medical school for women in the Midwest, and Chicago’s first nursing school. Early Years Mary Harris Thompson was born April 15, 1829 in Fort Ann, New York. She began her studies at a nearby school, then transferred to Fort Edward Institute in Fort Edward, New York, and then to West Poultney Academy in Vermont. While at West Poultney, she was…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women, Educators

Harriet Foote Hawley

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Civil War Nurse and Occasional Journalist Harriet Ward Foote, the oldest child of George Augustus Foote, was born June 25, 1831 in Guilford, Connecticut, on a New England farm – one of those rocky hillsides of which the natives say a man must own two hundred acres at least, or he will starve to death. Harriet was a first cousin of the famous Beecher family, her father being the brother of Roxana Foote Beecher, Lyman Beecher’s first wife. Joseph Russell Hawley He was born October 31, 1826 in Stewartsville, Richmond County, North Carolina. In 1842 his family moved to Cazenovia, New York, where Joseph attended the Oneida Conference Seminary, and then graduated from Hamilton College in 1847. Hawley taught for…

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Abolitionists, African Americans, Civil War Women, Educators

Port Royal Experiment

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The U.S. Government and the Sea Island Slaves Backstory In August 1861, at Fortress Monroe in Virginia, Union General Benjamin Butler declared that the slaves who escaped and came into his lines for protection were contraband of war, a term commonly used thereafter to describe this new status of slaves, which meant that the Army would not return escaped slaves to their masters. This would set the stage for a much larger undertaking at Port Royal a few months later. Image: The Sea Islands during the Civil War The Military On November 7, 1861, just seven months after the Civil War began, the largest fleet ever assembled by the U. S. Navy, under the command of Commodore Samuel Du Pont,…

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Authors, Civil War Women, Educators

Catherine Beecher and The Civil War

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Writer and Advocate for Women’s Education Catherine Esther Beecher was a nineteenth century champion of education for women at a time when even wealthy women received minimal education. She educated herself through independent study, and established schools devoted to training women as teachers. Beecher believed that having women teach their own families was the basis for a well-ordered society. Childhood and Early Years Catherine (also spelled Catharine) Esther Beecher was born September 6, 1800 at East Hampton, Long Island, New York to the prominent Beecher family; more than any other family, they influenced American culture and politics during the late nineteenth century. Catherine was the eldest of 13 children (8 of whom survived infancy) born to Roxana (Foote) Beecher and…

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Civil War Women, Educators, Famous Firsts

Mary Jane Patterson

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First African American Woman to Graduate from College Mary Jane Patterson was the first African American woman to earn a bachelor’s degree (Oberlin College, 1862). She became a successful teacher and was later appointed as the first black principal at America’s first public high school for blacks (Preparatory High School for Colored Youth, Washington, DC, 1871). Patterson spent her career creating new educational opportunities for African Americans after the Civil War. Early Years Mary Jane Patterson was born on September 12, 1840, in Raleigh, North Carolina, the daughter of Henry Irving Patterson and Emmeline Taylor Patterson. Mary was probably the oldest of at least seven siblings. Her father, a boyhood friend of future U.S. President Andrew Johnson, was a bricklayer…

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