Emma Willard

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Portrait of Emma Willard

Emma Willard (maiden name: Emma Hart ) (born February 23, 1787 in Berlin , Connecticut ; † April 15, 1870 in Troy , New York ) was an American educator and pioneer in the field of higher education for women and coeducation in the USA.

Life

Emma Willard's home in Middlebury

The daughter of the businessman and politician Samuel Hart received her education at schools in Berlin and Hartford and then took up a job as a teacher in 1803 at the age of sixteen . After working as principal at various schools, she took over the management of an educational institution in Middlebury , where she married the doctor and banker and then US Marshal of Vermont , Dr. John Willard.

In 1814, with the support of her husband, she opened a boarding school for girls in Middlebury, where she introduced subjects in geometry and philosophy , which were not taught in girls at the time. In addition, she also made numerous changes to the teaching methods customary at the time. There her decision to found a seminary for the higher education of girls grew and she wrote this in 1818 in a treatise on the education of women ( Treatise on the Education of Women ), which she addressed in 1819 as a cover letter to the House of Representatives from Vermont and which The Emma Willard Memorial in Troy is named The Magna Charta for Higher Education of Women in America .

In 1819 she opened a school in Waterford , which was recognized and supported by the government of the state of New York . In 1821 she moved to Troy, where an adequate building was made available to her in order to found the Troy Female Seminary , today's Emma Willard School . After the death of her husband in 1825, she successfully ran the schools she had founded on her own.

In 1830 she made a trip to Europe and then published Journal and Letters from France and Great Britain (1833), the proceeds of which she donated to a school founded on her initiative in Greece , where local women were trained as teachers. On this project she worked with her younger sister Almira Lincoln Phelps , Sarah Josepha Hale and Lydia Sigourney , among others .

After handing over the management of the educational institutions she founded to her son John Hart Willard and his wife in 1838, she married the doctor Dr. Christopher Yates, from whom she divorced in 1843 and resumed her previous name.

In the years before her death she lived in Troy, where she worked on the revision of numerous school books and public relations for higher education. In 1846 she made an extensive trip through the western and southern states of the United States to give speeches at teachers' meetings. In 1854 she was one of the participants in a worldwide educational forum in London .

Emma Willard, recognized as a pioneer in higher education for women in the United States, has taught around 5,000 school children herself in her career. By enforcing the same subjects for girls, it ultimately also laid the foundations for community education for girls and boys in the United States.

Publications

In addition to her own teaching activities, she has written numerous, widely used textbooks on subjects such as history , geography , biology , and astronomy , which have also been translated into several European and Asian languages . Her main publications include:

  • The Woodbridge and Willard Geographies and Atlases, comprising a universal geography and atlas, a school geography and atlas, an ancient geography and atlas, geography for beginners, and atlas (1823)
  • History of the United States, or Republic of America (New York, 1828)
  • Universal History in Perspective (1837)
  • Treatise on the Circulation of the Blood (1846)
  • Respiration and its Effects, particularly as respects Asiatic Cholera (1849)
  • Last Leaves of American History (1849)
  • Astronomy (1853)
  • Morals for the Young (1857)

In addition to numerous articles and essays , she also wrote poems such as “Reeked in the Cradle of the Deep”, which appeared in an anthology in 1830 .

Honors

Emma Willard was honored, among other things, by posthumous induction into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York City .

Her home in Middlebury, now used as the administration building for Middlebury College , is one of Vermont's National Historic Landmarks under the name Emma Willard House .

literature

personal data
SURNAME Willard, Emma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hart, Emma (maiden name); Yates, Emma
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American educator
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1787
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin , Connecticut
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1870
Place of death Troy , New York