Her ideal was to educate the entire woman, each student having her share of academics, domestic chores, and spiritual enrichment through Bible study, prayer, and worship. Serving as principal for the first 12 years, she selected her teachers from among her former pupils from Ipswich Seminary and Mount Holyoke itself. On November 8, 1837, Lyon welcomed the first class of eighty students. Initially rebuffed by the general assembly of Massachusetts, she ultimately won approval for chartering the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, at South Hadley, Massachusetts. She obtained support by traveling from town to town requesting financial contributions and donations of domestic furnishings. For a while, she taught at Ipswich Seminary but then turned her efforts toward establishing a new college for women, with an emphasis on missions. Inspired at age 19 by a sermon preached by her great-uncle Enos Smith, and later by her teacher Joseph Emerson at Byfield Female Seminary, she decided to commit her life to furthering the missionary cause through education. Lyon, Mary (1797-1849) Founder of Mount Holyoke Female Seminaryīorn in Buckland, Massachusetts, Lyon’s interest in missions was sparked with the founding of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1810.
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