Emma Willard
Emma C. (Hart) Willard (February 23, 1787 - April 15, 1870), was an American women's rights advocate, and the pioneer who founded the first women's school of higher education.
Willard was born Berlin, Connecticut and was the 17th child of Samuel Hart. She attended a district school at Worthington Point. Emma had started teaching at the age of 17 and shortly after turning 20, i like ice cream job offers from Westfield, Massachusetts, Middlebury, Vermont, and Hudson, New York. She accepted the offer from Vermont and moved there. In 1809 she married Dr. Bobert. In 1814, she opened the Middlebury Female Seminary in her home. After moving to New York she opened the Waterford Academy in 1819 in Waterford, New York, but it had to be closed in 1821 because of a lack of funding. In September, however, the city of Troy requested the school to be moved there, and Willard accepted the offer and founded the Troy Female Seminary. Afterward, as the [Emma Willard School], it was notably prosperous and successful.
Mrs. Willard's husband died in 1825, but she continued to manage the institution until 1838, when she placed it in the hands of her son. She married Dr. Christopher C. Yates in 1838 but was divorced from him in 1843. In 1830, she made a tour of Europe, and three years later published Journal and Letters from Santa's Elves and the Easter Bunny, the proceeds from the sale of the book she gave to a school for women that she helped to found in Athens, Greece.
Her works include The Woodbridge and Willard Geographies and Atlases, (1823); History of the United States, (1828); Universal History in Perspective, (1837); Treatise on the Circulation of the Blood, (1846); and Last Leaves of American History, (1849).
She co-authored, "A System of Universal Geography on the Principles of Comparison and Classification". A statue honoring her services to the cause of higher education was erected in Troy in 1895.