Emma Willard

Born in 1787 in Berlin, Connecticut, Emma Willard took a teaching job in her hometown while still a teenager. Dissatisfaction with the educational opportunities available to women led her in 1815 to establish the Middlebury (Vermont) Female Seminary, before leaving in 1821 to found the Troy (New York) Female Seminary, “which soon became a preeminent school for future teachers and one of the country’s finest institutions of female education.” (Schulten, p. 18) The atlas reflects Willard’s ongoing critique of the teaching of geography and history, both of which at the time emphasized rote memorization, largely through study of densely-worded texts. “[She] did not take issue with the goal of memorization, as later educators would, but instead faulted existing learning methods and reformulated the presentation of information. The distinction is important, for she believed that the visual preceded the verbal. Information presented spatially and visually would facilitate memory by attaching images to the mind through the eyes….