Emma Willard and Female Education

Born on February 23, 1787, in Berlin, Connecticut, Emma Hart Willard is remembered for her trailblazing efforts on behalf of women’s education.The sixteenth of seventeen children, she attended local schools and then began teaching near her home in 1804. In 1807, Emma Hart went to Middlebury, Vermont, to run a female academy. Two years later she married town physician, John Willard, a widower with four young children. She retired from teaching and in 1814 opened a girls’ school in her home to help with family finances. Five years later, Willard wrote an address to the public, specifically to the members of the New York Legislature, proposing A Plan for Improving Female Education. She published the plan and sent copies to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams with the intension of winning public support for girls’ schools. Willard advocated equal education for young women through the academy level.

In September of 1819, with the encouragement of Governor DeWitt Clinton, Emma Willard moved to New York and opened a school in Waterford, but after two years she moved to Troy and opened the Troy Female Seminary, shown in a print from a drawing by Thirza Lee, instructor of drawing and painting and former student of the school. Thousands of young women passed through the Troy school during her lifetime. Willard became financially successful, both from the profits of her school and from the best-selling textbooks that she authored.

Willard left daily management of the school to her son and daughter-in-law in 1838, the year she remarried. She spent the last thirty years of her life traveling and writing, although the seminary and Troy remained her home base. Willard died in 1870 and the school was renamed in her honor in 1895.

Erie Canal

The concept for a canal linking the Hudson River to the interior of the North American continent originated in the late eighteenth century. The opening of land in the trans-Appalachian west following the American Revolution created two needs: first, the need to survey and map western lands, and second, the need to build transportation infrastructure to bring western products to East Coast markets.

In 1825, after eight years of construction, the Erie Canal opened to great public acclaim. It was an engineering marvel that spanned New York State for 363 miles, stretching from the Hudson River at Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo.

To commemorate the opening celebration in 1825, a special medal and box were created, illustrated here. The medal, struck in either gold, silver, or white metal, displayed the official seal of the Erie Canal, which included the ancient Greek and Roman gods Pan and Neptune who represented the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean respectively. The small circular wooden boxes designed to house the medals were made by New York City cabinetmaker Duncan Phyfe. According to a label pasted inside the boxes, the wood used in their construction was cut in the Great Lakes region and shipped to New York City in the first boat to traverse the canal, the Seneca Chief. Symbolically and materially, the two great waters of Lake Erie and the Atlantic Ocean were united.

At several times during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Erie Canal was enlarged to accommodate larger vessels. The Erie Barge Canal, the last expansion and the last effort to make the canal profitable, opened in 1915. Unfortunately, it could not compete with expanding railroads and the highway systems that began to be built in the 1930s. Today, the Erie Canal serves mainly pleasure boaters and tourists.