Mary Emilie Holmes (April 10, 1850 – February 13, 1906) was a 19th-century American geologist and educator who became the first woman to be elected a fellow of the Geological Society of America.

[7]: 15  When Mary Emilie was three, the family moved to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where the Holmeses did mission work among local Native Americans and became abolitionists.

Mary Emilie showed an aptitude for language, and by listening in on her brother's lessons had picked up the rudiments of Greek, Latin, and French by the time she was eight years old.

[8] Mary Emilie's brother died unexpectedly of a ruptured blood vessel in April 1863 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, while serving as a soldier on the Union side during the Civil War.

[4] Mary D. Holmes became secretary of the Woman's Presbyterian Board of Missions of the Northwest and was active in working for the welfare of freedmen after the Civil War ended.

[8] In 1877, Mary Emilie Holmes returned to the seminary, teaching botany and chemistry there until 1885;[8] among her students in this period was the suffragist Jane Addams.

Although geology was her main area of research, she also gained respect as a botanist: as early as 1876, her name was third on a list of botanical authorities in a catalogue of Illinois plants.

[3][8] The Holmeses' vision was realized in 1892 under the auspices of the church's Board of Missions for Freedmen, which funded and oversaw the Mary Holmes Seminary through its early years in Jackson and later West Point, Mississippi.

Holmes put a great deal of effort into raising funds to rebuild the seminary after each of its fires, even serving briefly as its president after the second one.

Entitled Aida Rocksbege and the White Stone (1897), it is the story of a woman who discovers that she is of part African-American heritage and subsequently dedicates her life to establishing a school in the rural South for poor black children.

[8] Holmes died at home in Rockford on February 13, 1906,[19] at the age of 55, predeceasing her father by a few months and leaving behind "one of the finest private scientific collections in the west.