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 CHAPTER XXIII

Emma Hart Willard, Educational Pioneer

One of the first things felt to be a real necessity by the early settlers on the "rock-bound coast" was an institution of learning. The matter was agitated some six years after the colonists landed, and eventually resulted in the opening of a College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640, named for John Harvard who bequeathed seven hundred pounds towards its founding. Sons of the colony must be educated. Girls were just girls, they had no need of "book larnin'."

It took one hundred and seventy-four years more (at least five generations) to prepare the new country for another educational uplift. It came about in this way.

Emma Hart was born in Berlin, Connecticut, in 1787, February 23rd. She was of excellent parentage, and the beautiful home life of her childhood was manifested in her developing character.

"At the age of seventeen she opened a school in her native village, and with the beginning of that experience resolved to qualify herself for the vocation of a teacher. For three years she alternated teaching in her little school and studying as a pupil with Dr. Wells, who pronounced her a most remarkable scholar and a brilliant teacher, even at the age of her first experience. In 1807 she took charge of the female academy at Middlebury, Vermont.

"The early inhabitants of the town were noted for their enterprise and intelligence. Up to the close of the Revolutionary War the Champlain Valley had been for centuries the arena of savage warfare. But as soon as the cessation of hostilities would permit, the fertile lands were rapidly settled by a vigorous and high-minded class of young men and women, from the best families of Connecticut. There was in Middlebury an unusually large number of educated men, graduates of Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown. Their devotion to the cause of education is evinced by their establishment, before the beginning of the nineteenth century, three district institutions of learning—the grammar school, the female academy, and the college. The elder President Dwight of Yale, who made three visits to the town prior to 1810, has recorded his high appreciation of the character of the people and of their educational work."

Mrs. Willard, then Miss Emma Hart, has given emphatic testimony to the same effect, in a letter to her parents that first year. She says: "I find society in a high state of civilization, much more than any place I was ever 277