Stone, Lucinda Hinsdale (1814–1900)

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Stone, Lucinda Hinsdale (1814–1900)

American educator and champion of women's clubs. Born on September 30, 1814, in Hinesburg, Vermont; died on March 14, 1900, in Kalamazoo, Michigan; daughter of Aaron Hinsdale (a woolen mill owner) and Lucinda (Mitchell) Hinsdale; educated at a district school, Hinesburg Academy, and at female seminaries in Vermont; married James Andrus Blinn Stone (a Baptist minister), on June 10, 1840 (died 1888); children: Clement Walker, Horatio Hackett, and James Helm.

Lucinda Hinsdale Stone was born in 1814 in Hinesburg, Vermont, near Burlington. Her father died before her third birthday and she was raised by her mother, who strongly believed in women's education. Stone attended a district school before moving on to Hinesburg Academy. She then worked as a teacher while furthering her education at female seminaries in Middlebury and Burlington, Vermont. For three years, Stone also tutored the children of a plantation owner in Natchez, Mississippi. Witnessing slavery, she better comprehended its injustice, and the anti-slavery beliefs that would figure prominently in her educational philosophies were intensified.

She married the former principal of the Hinesburg Academy, James Andrus Blinn Stone, a Baptist minister, in 1840. The couple lived in Gloucester and Newton, Massachusetts, before settling in the frontier town of Kalamazoo, Michigan, where James Stone worked at a Baptist church and at Kalamazoo College. As principal of the college's "Female Department," Lucinda Stone believed education was an unending process and invited members of her staff to meetings in her home on weekends. To stimulate independent thinking, she secured speakers on such topics as abolitionism and women's rights, as well as such celebrities as Ralph Waldo Emerson. These gatherings became so popular that Stone expanded them to include other women in the community as the Kalamazoo Ladies' Library Association in 1852.

Although Kalamazoo College prospered under the Stones' direction, economic depression and conservative Baptist opposition to their liberal teaching methods resulted in a sharp decline in enrollment around 1857. The school's financial problems prompted James Stone to resign in 1863, and Lucinda Stone followed soon thereafter. She initiated a successful girls' school in their home, drawing students away from Kalamazoo College. As a result, the trustees offered to reinstate both Stones to their jobs; their refusal appears to have prompted unfounded charges of immorality against James by their church, which dropped them both from membership.

In 1866, after a fire destroyed their home, Stone inaugurated educational tours in which she would accompany girls to Europe and the Near East to study art and history. She conducted eight tours between 1867 and 1888; each lasted 12 to 18 months. She also organized women's travel clubs throughout Michigan, as well as the Michigan Women's Press Association. She became known as the "mother of clubs" and her weekly column, "Club Talks," was featured in many Michigan newspapers.

Stone was instrumental in convincing the University of Michigan to admit women beginning in 1870, and in 1896 to hire women faculty members. She received an honorary Ph.D. degree from the university in 1890. After Stone's husband died in 1888, she joined the Unitarian Church and remained active in it until her death on March 14, 1900, age 85.