Founder Of The Troy Female Seminary

Turning Point

. Born in Berlin, Connecticut, in February 1787, Emma was the sixteenth of seventeen children. Her ancestors were among the most prominent settlers of New England, and her father had served as a militia captain in the Revolutionary War as well as in the state General Assembly. Emma attended a local district school, but much of her learning came at home. Reading aloud with her parents, she became a voracious reader of books that she borrowed from a nearby village library. At fifteen she began studying at the Berlin Academy under the tutelage of Thomas Miner, a graduate of Yale and the academy's founder. It was a turning point in her life. "No better instruction was given to girls in any school, at that time in the country," she recalled years later. Inspired and intellectually stimulated by...