A Natural Right to Knowledge

Myrtilla Miner LIBRARY OF CONGRESS A“ Natural Right to ”

Teacher Myrtilla Miner from Madison County, New York was a feminist and abolitionist who went South to teach. What she saw caused a revolution in her—and in education.

BY DENISE ROE

yrtilla Miner or some elementary schooling, traversed time, and blacks were not educated distance, and taboos at all, Miner opened the first in the antebellum school in the country dedicated Mera for a cause: education for to the training of black female black girls and women. As a teachers. white feminist and abolitionist, her beliefs about women An Early Passion for and African Americans were Education joined with her conviction Myrtilla was born in 1815 in that education could be used North Brookfield, Madison as a tool to uplift oppressed County, New York to early groups. At a time when settlers Seth and Eleanor Miner. women were not typically Theirs was a large farming educated beyond domesticity family, dependent on their

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hops harvest. Seth Miner was conditions and determined to involved in the establishment improve them, she was none- and support of the First Day theless refused permission to Baptist Church in Brookfield. teach African American girls. He also swore the Oath of Her subsequent attempts to Allegiance and Abjuration, improve their situation proved which renounced allegiance fruitless, and this affected her to the English common- health; after two years in wealth, in order to serve as a Mississippi, she returned home lieutenant in the local militia. seriously ill, but the experience As a young girl, Myrtilla ignited an idea in her to open dreamed of studying beyond a school in the North that the education available to would train young African her. She corresponded with American girls to become William H. Seward when he teachers, and this resolve was New York’s governor strengthened her. She believed (and later its U.S. senator) to that every human being had request that the government “both a natural right to provide support to females knowledge and the potentiality for advanced education so for achieving it.” they could then train youth for the “necessities our A Dangerous—and beloved country requires.” Necessary—Idea Despite her frail health, Miner’s radical idea for a Myrtilla later taught locally school for black girls—which and worked in the hop fields she wanted to open in the to earn money for her own nation’s capital—as well as her education until a headmaster own courage, perseverance, accepted her as a student on and fortitude, attracted support credit at the Young Ladies and encouragement from the Domestic Seminary in Clinton, Quakers, including Reverend Oneida County. She arranged Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet to pay her tuition upon Beecher Stowe, Johns Hopkins, receiving employment. and others. It was a monu-

MADISON COUNTY CLERK'S OFFICE CLERK'S COUNTY MADISON Miner did pay her tuition; mental undertaking for the she taught at the Clover Street time; even Frederick Douglass Seminary in Rochester and at tried to dissuade her from the public schools in Providence, project, fearing for her safety, Rhode Island from 1844 to since slavery was still accept- 1846. In Providence she was able and legal in Washington, influenced by Henry Barnard, D.C., a stronghold of pro- known as the “scholar of the slavery sentiment. It was also Myrtilla Miner’s parents, Seth and Eleanor Miner, were industrious, educational awakening of the a crime to teach a slave to deeply religious early settlers of Madison County. The Madison antebellum period”; because read in the South. However, County Clerk’s office holds early family deeds and Oaths of Allegiance of his inspiration, in 1847 she there were more than 8,000 and Office, dated 1807 and 1809, for Seth Miner. began teaching at the Newton free African Americans in Female Institute at Whitesville, Washington whose education Mississippi. Horrified by the was not prohibited by law. South’s oppressive slave With $100 contributed by

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the Quakers, on December 3, city; Harriet Beecher Stowe of Colored Youth was associ- THE ARCHIVES 1851 Miner arrived in donated $1,000 toward the ated with Howard University, CONNECTION Washington and opened a school with income she received and in 1879 as Miner Normal small school in an apartment. from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Miner School it became part of the opies of Myrtilla Miner’s She had six pupils; within two also established a board of District of Columbia’s public letters to Governor (and months, their number totaled trustees (including Henry Ward school system. In 1929 it C Senator) William Seward are forty. She wrote in a letter to Beecher and Johns Hopkins) became Miner Teachers in the University of Rochester her friend Hannah in 1852, “I and saw six graduates of the College, and in 1955 it merged Library. Richard Williams, have never before felt myself Colored Girls School, as she with Wilson Teachers College Town of Kirkland historian, exactly in my own ‘niche,’ had named it, go on to teach to form the District of Columbia supplied access to the fully satisfied with the work I in schools of their own. Teachers College (DCTC). archives of the Young had to do; because I never However, these efforts Again consolidated in 1975 Ladies Domestic Seminary before realized all the benefits took a further toll on Miner’s under the University of the in Clinton, where Miner resulting to the world from health, and in 1857 Emily District of Columbia, it pres- was a student. Through a my labors that I hope are Howland, an active abolitionist, ently offers seventy-five grant from the New York embodied here…After seeking philanthropist, and teacher undergraduate and graduate State Archives, the Madison out and stimulating to earnest from Sherwood (Cayuga academic degree programs. County Clerk’s office exertion forty bright pupils County), New York, assumed Myrtilla Miner is buried in discovered, catalogued, for six months, you should responsibility for the Colored Oak Hill Cemetery in cleaned, and preserved see me try to get aid to build Girls School. In 1861, Miner Georgetown, where she rests additional archival documents a schoolhouse for them; you traveled to California in an with some of the nation’s related to Miner’s life and should see all the letters I attempt to regain her health, most distinguished leaders. career, as well as to the write for that purpose, and as well as raise some West The impact of her pioneering lives and history of other then see all the people I am Coast funds to expand the efforts persists not only through Madison County residents; obliged to call upon; …and school. However, the Colored the school’s enduring success these can be found at see the many times I walk a Girls School closed during the but through the thousands of www.MadisonCounty mile to accomplish this, Civil War, but about seven teachers who graduated from NYHistory.com. Other besides teaching five days in weeks after the issuance of the earlier institutions and the resources on Miner include the week and doing most of the Emancipation Proclamation youth who learned from those Myrtilla Miner, A Memoir my sewing. I am already very in 1863, Senator Henry Wilson teachers. Mary Treacy, former (1885) by Ellen M. O’Connor, thin and pale, and have a of Massachusetts introduced librarian at the District of and Three Who Dared walk of one mile to school a bill for the incorporation of Columbia Teachers College, (1984) by Philip S. Foner each day, besides all else”— the newly renamed Institution describes Miner as a woman and Josephine F. Pacheco, since it was difficult to find for the Education of Colored who “recognized the possibil- which references the Myrtilla living quarters for one who Youth. A congressional charter ities, established standards, Miner Papers in the ran a school such as hers. was granted, thereby legaliz- and found the means to Manuscript Division of the Of course, resentment was ing the institution. Tragically, reach high goals…who lived Library of Congress. strong against Northern aboli- Miner suffered critical injuries by the principles that inspire tionists meddling with local in a carriage accident in 150 years later; all this shows institutions. Miner fended off California in 1864. She what one energetic woman… numerous physical attacks on returned to Washington, D.C., can accomplish in the face of the school, including stonings but on December 17 she died the most disheartening obsta- and arson, by learning to shoot at the home of Mrs. Nancy cles.” Today, students of all a revolver out in the open so M. Johnson, president of the colors can indeed be inspired that everyone would know school’s board of trustees. by this visionary nineteenth- she meant business. By 1858, century educator from rural she had raised enough funding Enduring Legacy upstate New York who fought to move the school to a three- From 1871 to 1876, the for education as the best tool acre lot on the edge of the Institution for the Education for a productive life for all. n