Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 07.djvu/92

 LYON

LYON

andjemima (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 P^rofessor Elaton'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 dele- gation 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 lead- ing educators, but notwithstanding public ridi- cule 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

KT. HOLYOKt COLUtCE

Hadley, Mass. On Oct. 8, 1836, the corner-stone was laid, and on Nov. 8, 1837, the seminary was opened. The feature of Miss Lyon's plan most ridiculed wjis 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 semi- nary 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 build- ing has been doubled, the applicants greatly ex- ceeded the increased accommodations. She pub- lished jMimplilets on Tendencies of the Princi- ples Embraced and the System adopted in the Mount Holyoke Seminary (1840). and the Mission- ary Offering (1843). Edward Hitchcock wrote: " Power of Christian Benevolence Illustrated in

the Life and Labors of Mary Lyon " (1851), and Fi- delia 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 receiv- ing sixt3'-seven and alone securing a place. She died in South Hadley, Mass., March 5,1849.

LVON» riatthew, representative, was born in county Wicklow, Ireland, July 14, 1750. He was sent to school in Dublin, and instructed in Eng- lish, Latin and Greek. His father engaged with the " White Boys " in a conspiracy against the British crown for which he was put to death while Matthew was at school. In 1763 the property of his father having been confiscated, Mat- thew entered a print- ing and bookbinding ofiice in Dublin, where he learned the trade. His mother married a second time and the cruelty of his stepfather is said to have induced him to immigrate

to New York in 1765, where he was landed as a redemptionist, forced to that extremity by the bad faith of the captain of the vessel. He was bound to Jabez Bacon of Woodbury, Conn., the wealthiest merchant in Connecticut, and he resided in that state until 1774. Here he contin- ued the studies so well begun in Dublin and be- fore reaching his majority had acquired a supe- rior education. He became a freeman in 1768 and was married in 1771 to Miss Hosford, a niece of Ethan Allen. With Thomas Chittenden and other pioneers he removed to Vermont, known then as the New Hampshire Grants, in 1774. and settled in Wallingford while Chittenden went to Williston. Immediately on reaching Vermont he called together the younger men of the neigh- borhood and they formed an armed association, hired an old man to teach them discipline, each took command of the company in turn and when the news of the battle at Lexington reached the settlement Lyon took part of the command and joined Ethan Allen in the capture of Fort Ticon- deroga with its immense military stores. He served as adjutant of Colonel Warner's regiment