Founder of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary

Teaching as Necessity

. Mary Lyon was born on the family hill farm in Buckland, Massachusetts. When Mary was still a child, her father died, leaving the family of seven children in the difficult financial situation of trying to make the best of one hundred rocky acres, a small flock of sheep, and several dairy cows. Mary learned at home the skills of spinning, weaving, candlemaking and housework, but from the age of four she tagged along with her older siblings to a nearby school, where the teachers could hardly keep pace with her intense curiosity about the world. She continued to attend the local district schools and began teaching at seventeen, earning the customary salary of seventy-five cents a week plus room and board. At nineteen Mary spent all her savings to pay for one term at the Sanderson...