The American educator and author Emma Hart Willard (1787-1870) was a leader in the early movement for women's education and the founder of the Troy Female Seminary.

Emma Hart was born in Berlin, Connecticut, on February 23, 1787. Her early education was in the district school and local academy. When she was 17 she began teaching in the village school while continuing her preparation at women's academies in Hartford.

Miss Hart accepted a position in the Westfield Academy at Middlebury, Vermont, in 1807 but interrupted her career to marry John Willard, a physician. With the help of a student at Middlebury College she mastered the college's curriculum but was not allowed to attend classes or win a degree. The experience heightened her awareness of the educational advantages which were denied to women. (Popular opinion and religious tradition held that intensive study would endanger women's health and morals and divert them from their...