Abigail Rogers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Abigail Rogers (1818–1869) was an American advocate for women's rights and women's education. Her work helped women eventually gain access to colleges such as Michigan State University and the University of Michigan. She personally helped educate over one thousand women.[1][2][3] She founded the Michigan Women's College, and was posthumously inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 2007. Rogers spent her whole life advocating for the admittance of women into Michigan universities.[4]
Abigail Rogers grew up with her sisters Delia and Eliza. Eliza Rogers was the first female teacher to hold a position at the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, New York. She was hired in 1832. She eventually rose to the role of preceptress, which allowed her to work as a combined teacher and housemother to female students. Delia and Abigail were two of her pupils, and ended up succeeding her at GWS.[5][6]
Career
Delia and Abigail Rogers left New York for Michigan around 1847. There, Abigail worked as the preceptress of the coeducational Albion Wesleyan Seminary. In the early 1850s, Rogers lived in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she briefly taught high school.[7]
In 1852, she was hired as the first preceptress and teacher of botany and belles lettres at the Michigan State Normal School - now Eastern Michigan University. The Michigan State Normal School was created in response to an act passed in 1849, allowing the admission of both sexes into normal schools.[8] When it opened, it was the only normal school west of Pittsburgh. Rogers was the only woman on a five-person staff. The school's purpose was to train secondary school teachers, and it did not provide an opportunity for higher education.[9]
That same year, Rogers was elected as a founding member of the Michigan State Teachers Association, to increase her role in public advocacy work. Within the association, she gave reports and speeches at the organization's semiannual conferences and helped edit the Michigan Journal of Education and Teacher’s Magazine.[10]