Hannah Lyman

Hannah Lyman
Born	Hannah Willard Lyman 1816 Northampton, Massachusetts, US
Died	February 21, 1871 Poughkeepsie, New York, US
Resting place	Mount Royal Cemetery, Montreal, Canada
Occupation	Lady Principal of Vassar College
Alma mater	Ipswich Female Seminary
Notable works	The Martyr of Sumatra: A Memoir of Henry Lyman
Relatives	Henry Lyman (brother)

Hannah Lyman (1816 – February 21, 1871) was an American educator. She was the first Lady Principal of Vassar College. Lyman took an active interest in missionary operations through her whole life, maintained a constant correspondence with several distinguished Christian missionaries in foreign lands, and did much by the power of her enthusiasm to kindle and foster the missionary spirit, not only among her pupils, but in the wide circle of social influence which she filled for many years.^[1]

In the city of Montreal, surrounded by her nearest relatives, she commenced a select class for young women which speedily grew into a seminary of a very superior order. For twenty-two years, though often oppressed with anxiety, by sorrow, by failing health and most of all, by the deep sense of her own insufficiency, she persevered in her work.^[2] Her reputation as a successful and inspiring teacher had been so widespread that she had received frequent invitations to take the superintendence of large public educational institutions, which she had uniformly declined. In 1865, however, she received an urgent request to become first lady principal of a newly organized woman's college on a very large scale -Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York- an institution founded on a munificent bequest, with aims and resources greater than perhaps any other such institution in the world.^[3]