History of Buckland, (Franklin County) Massachusetts United States of America

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Mary Lyon, educator, was born at Buckland, Mass., Feb. 28, 1797; daughter of Aaron and Jemima (Shepard) Lyon; granddaughter of Isaac and Jemima (Smith) Shepard, and a descendant of Lieut. Samuel Smith who came from England in the Elizabeth, 1634. She taught a district school in 1814 and in the winters of 1817 and 1818; was a student at Sanderson academy, Ashfield, 1817-21; at Joseph Emerson's school, Byfield, 1821-22, and in 1823 attended Professor Eaton's lectures on chemistry at Amherst. She was assistant-principal in the Ashfield academy, 1822-23, and assisted Miss Grant in an academy for girls at Derry, N.H., 1824-27, also teaching in the winters in Ashfield and a school of her own in Buckland. She taught in Miss Grant's school at Ipswich, Mass., 1828-34. In 1834 she laid before a delegation of gentlemen from Ipswich plans for the endowment of a seminary for young women. This committee appointed the Rev. Roswell Hawks to solicit funds. Miss Lyon's views were pronounced impracticable and visionary by leading educators, but notwithstanding public ridicule she accompanied Mr. Hawks from town to town and within two months had collected from the women of Ipswich and vicinity the sum of $1000. He obtained additional aid, and on Feb. 11, 1836, Governor Everett, signed the charter incorporating Mount Holyoke seminary at South Hadley, Mass. On Oct. 3, 1836, the cornerstone was laid, and on Nov. 8, 1837, the seminary was opened. The feature of Miss Lyon's plan most ridiculed was that every student should give an hour a day to domestic labor, thus providing for all the household work of the institution without infringing on school duties. This plan not only reduced the outlay, but created a home atmosphere and developed a spirit of self-help. Miss Lyon continued as principal of this seminary until her death. Nearly two hundred pupils were refused admittance the first year and four hundred the second for want of room, and in the fourth year, although the capacity of the building has been doubled, the applicants greatly exceeded the increased accommodations. She published pamphlets on Tendencies of the Principles Embraced and the System adopted in the Mount Holyoke Seminary (1840), and the Missionary Offering (1843). Edward Hitchcock wrote: "Power of Christian Benevolence Illustrated in the Life and Labors of Mary Lyon" (1851), and Fidelia Fiske, "Recollections of Mary Lyon" (1866). A sentence from one of her last talks with the school forms the epitaph over the grave, "There is nothing in the universe that I fear but that I shall not know all my duty or shall fail to do it." In the selection of names for a place in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, New York university, made in October, 1900, Mary Lyon was one of the fifteen names in "Class C, Educators," and received twenty-one votes, Horace Mann receiving sixty-seven and alone securing a place. She died in South Hadley, Mass., March 5, 1849.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of Buckland, (Franklin County) Massachusetts

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