Cowles, Eunice C. (Eunice Caldwell), 1811-1903

Eunice Caldwell was born on February 4, 1811, in Ipswich, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Captain John Caldwell and Eunice Stanwood Caldwell. Her father, a sailor, drowned in the Kennebec River in 1835. She attended Ipswich Female Seminary from 1828 to 1829, where she met and began a lasting friendship with Mary Lyon, a teacher and an assistant to Zilpah P. Grant, the school's principal, from 1828 to 1839. She graduated from Ipswich in 1829 and was a teacher there from 1830-1835. She served as the first principal of Wheaton Female Seminary (later Wheaton College) in Norton, Massachusetts in 1836. She left her position at Wheaton for Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, where she was Associate Principal from 1837-1838. She married the Reverend John Phelps Cowles in 1838 and followed him to Oberlin College, where he was professor of Hebrew. In 1844 they returned to reopen Ipswich Female Seminary which they ran until it closed in 1876. The Cowles's had three daughters. Cowles died at the age of ninety-two on September 10, 1903 in Ipswich, Massachusetts.

From the guide to the Cowles papers MS 0718., ca. 1821-1903., (Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections)

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