Biography

Emily Howland was the daughter of prominent suffragists and abolitionists, Slocum Howland and Hannah Tallcot. She dedicated her life to women's rights, the abolition of slavery, and education. A Quaker, she was educated in Sherwood, and later at a Society of Friends school in Philadelphia. Deeply committed to providing education for African-Americans, she taught in schools in the South and later in her home state of New York. Her home in Cayuga County, New York was a stop along the Underground Railroad. From 1857 to 1859, she taught in Washington, D.C. at the Normal School for Colored Girls (later known as Miner Normal School and then renamed for its founder, abolitionist Myrtilla Miner). She subsequently taught at Miner Teachers College which was part of the University of the District of Columbia. From 1863 to 1864, she taught newly freed slaves to read and write at a camp in Virginia. In 1867, she opened a school for African-Americans in Heathsville, Northumberland County, Virginia. She became head of New York's Sherwood Select School in 1882. Howland used her family's wealth to hire teachers and fund higher education for some of her students. In all, personally founded or financially contributed to about fifty schools. In 1904, she addressed Congress on the issue of women's suffrage. In 1926, she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters (Litt.D) by the University of the State of New York. In 1927, supervision of the private Sherwood Select School was assumed by the New York State Board of Regents and renamed Emily Howland High School. An elementary school in Aurora, Cayuga County, New York is also named for her. In 1991, the school she founded for African-Americans was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Her family's store in Sherwood, New York - which had been a meeting place for Abolitionists and a stop on the Underground Railroad - is now a museum: the Howland Stone Store Museum. The Hamlet of Sherwood, New York itself now on the National Register of Historic Places due in no small part to abolitionist, suffragist, and philanthropic endeavors of Emily Howland and her family. The subject of several biographies, her personal papers are held by Cornell University and Swarthmore College. 

Frances mentions visiting her school in Washington, D.C. in 18590107FMS_LMW1.