Emma Hart Willard (1787-1870)
If educational historians were asked to name nineteenth century women's educators worthy of in-depth study, Emma Hart Willard’s name would surely be mentioned. Willard first gained public recognition with the publication of Plan for Improving Female Education (1819), a closely reasoned argument exposing the inferior quality of most women' s schools and urging legislators to appropriate public funds for the support of rigorous women's institutions. Willard's Troy Female Seminary (founded in Troy, New York, in 1821) was widely regarded as one of the finest women's schools in the United States. Its academic program and the two hundred women's institutions said to be modeled after it did much to shatter the popular myth that women were too feeble to master challenging academic subjects. Willard educated and placed hundreds of young women in teaching positions, pioneered in social studies teaching methods, held numerous teacher institutes, and promoted the common school cause. Her textbooks and charts, estimated to have sold more than one million copies during her lifetime, disseminated her ideas widely in the United States and Europe.
For a time, Willard had a great deal of acclaim. As early as 1837, the popular phrenologist George Combe called her the most influential woman of her era. After her death in 1870, her contributions to American society were commemorated with plaques and statues. In 1893, the popular writer Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote that Willard "had laid the foundation upon which every woman's college may be said to rest." In 1905 she was elected to the Hall of Fame at New York University, and her home in Middlebury, Vermont, was designated a National Historic Landmark. A World War II liberty ship was named after her; and in 1959 Nelson Rockefeller, governor of New York, declared October 28th “Emma Willard Day.” It might seem that a woman of Willard's stature would generate considerable scholarly interest, not only because of her influence, but also because the letters flowing to and from her seminary reveal much about the aspirations and day-to-day activities of a large number of women. Yet scholarship on Willard and the women she educated is rare. In fact, only two full-scale biographies of Emma Willard have ever been published, the more recent in 1929.
Scholars, you are invited to study the life, instutitons and educational philosophy of Emma Hart Willard. Her extensive papers and those of many of her students are published in The Papers of Emma Hart Willard.
© Lucy Townsend 2009.