Frances Shimer
[1] Shimer was remembered as an extremely acute student: "the mere consciousness of something unknown was sufficient incentive to arouse ambition to acquire.
[3] At the age of six, she spent all of her saved allowance to buy a copy of Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind from an itinerant bookseller.
Because she was much younger than the other children, she was allowed to spend her time freely around the farm, and developed a reputation as a skilled animal trainer.
Influenced by her mother's early death, Shimer wished to become a physician, but was unable to find any medical school that would admit women.
[6] Shimer and Gregory continued to teach at schools in New York, but were unable to find steady positions due to the oversupply of teachers in the East.
After some correspondence, Shimer and Cinderella Gregory left New York together for Mount Carroll in 1853, traveling by the Great Lakes to Illinois and by wagon the rest of the way.
The subsequent expansion of the seminary to a 25-acre campus with four connected buildings and numerous outbuildings was attributed largely to Shimer's industry and careful management of finances.
Adelia Joy was brought on to replace Gregory administratively, but the school remained Shimer's sole property until she relinquished control in 1896.
As with the previous farm operations closer to Mount Carroll, a significant portion of the orchard's harvest was shipped to the Seminary to provide food for students.
His death occurred five days after he had drawn up a new will leaving his wife with his entire fortune of approximately $200,000, and his surviving sister and mother with nothing.
In 1896, Frances Shimer arranged to transfer control of the Mount Carroll Seminary to a Board of Trustees under an affiliation with the University of Chicago.
