Christabel Donatienne Ruby

Emma Willard Christabel Donatienne Ruby

Publisher Marketing: Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Emma 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. Emma Willard was born in Berlin, Connecticut, the sixteenth of her father's seventeen children and the ninth of her mother's ten children, of Samuel Hart and his second wife, Lydia Hinsdale Hart. She attended a district school at Worthington Point. Emma started teaching at the age of 17 and shortly after turning 20, received 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. John Willard then age 50. Willard brought 4 children from earlier marriages to their marriage. Her husband's nephew, another John Willard, lived with them while attending nearby Middlebury College. When Emma Willard addressed the New York State Legislature in 1819 on the subject of education for women, she was contradicting the statement made just the year before by Thomas Jefferson (in a letter) in which he suggested women should not read novels "as a mass of trash" with few exceptions.