International Women's Day - Waterford Women

Taking part in this year’s International Women’s Day, the Waterford Historical Museum and Cultural Center is highlighting a couple of women who made it onto the “Wall of Characters” during its celebration of the town's bicentennial.

Emma Willard  

Emma was a leading advocate for women’s education, with a wide-reaching influence that can still be found today. She began conducting a school for girls in 1814 in Vermont, devising a new method of teaching and introducing new studies.  She wrote A Plan for Improving Female Education to share her ideas on education, proposing a women’s seminary be publicly funded like men’s schools were funded. Waterford businessmen developed a plan for a women’s school and sent a copy of the letter to Gov. DeWitt Clinton, who extended the invitation to Mrs. Willard to come to New York State. On March 19, 1819, an Act by the State of New York incorporating the Waterford Female Seminary or Academy led to Emma Willard opening her first school in Waterford, NY. According to historian Col. Sydney Hammersley, the original location believed to first house her school was the Demarest building on Broad Street (The Morgan House), and then at 77 Second Street where it introduced the study of higher mathematics to women. The first graduate of this first Willard school was a Miss Cramer, later known as Mrs. Curtis. Due to the funds she had been promised not fully materializing, Emma Willard moved out of Waterford in 1821 to set up a school in Troy, NY. There were attempts to keep an established female seminary in this Waterford location after Emma Willard left. This system of establishing an “Academy” had become very popular, and Waterford’s Academy was among others that New York State recognized  as being the gateway to learned professions for those who couldn’t afford a collegiate education. She left the Troy Female Seminary in the hand of her son and daughter-in-law, remarrying in 1838 for nine months, and spent her later years traveling across America and Europe promoting women’s education. She died April 15, 1870 and is interred in Oakwood Cemetery in Troy, NY. Her Troy school was renamed in 1895 to honor her as the Emma Willard School. She was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great American in 1905.

Maria Rynders

Maria – and her brother Captain Isaiah Rynders- was a notable figure in Waterford. While his political battle and tactics weren’t well-received by Waterfordians, Maria was a character who gained quite a reputation. For those who made it to the museum’s exhibit, you learned that she made it into Ripley’s Believe It Or Not for her actions that were strange enough to merit such a distinction. What actions were these? No, not sword-swallowing or tight-rope walking over the Cohoes Falls. Maria did the bizarre in choosing to wear slacks, marry  repeatedly (okay, frequently), and vote long before women’s suffrage. She also was the resident firewoman, attending the fires with the men and working “on the brakes” (the hand-pumped fire engine) during Waterford’s 1841 fire. She smoked a clay pipe and apparently had some great aiming skill while chewing tobacco.