Mary Mortimer
At the age of sixteen, Mortimer began teaching, and in 1841, became principal of the female department of the Rockport Collegiate Institute in Brockport, New York.
In 1857, she took management of a private school in Elmira, New York, and in 1859, went to the female seminary at Baraboo, Wisconsin, resigning in 1863 on account of ill-health.
Her parents, William Mortimer (1778-1829) and Mary (Pierce) (1783-1829), his wife, with a name reaching back to the time of the Plantagenets, were simple folk.
At times, she spoke of the great problems of life and destiny to her brothers and sisters, some of whom shared the same skeptical tendencies, but more often, she pondered these things silently and was deeply unhappy.
But in February 1839, Mortimer went before the session of the Presbyterian Church of Geneva, presented in writing an account of her religious experience and views of doctrinal truth, and a few weeks after, was admitted to its communion.
At the time when Mortimer entered the seminary, Ricord was temporarily absent, and the school was under the charge of Clarissa Thurston, associate principal.
The winter of her second year at Brockport (1842-3) found Mortimer at the home of her sister in Phelps, New York, for a time too ill to remain in teaching.
A mysterious lameness had settled in her right hand and foot, and which became her chief disability, involving intense suffering, and finally severing her connection with Brockport.
[3] In 1844, because of her invalid state, the inevitable decision was made to leave the Brockport school and to remove to the home of her sister, Mrs. Bannister, near Phelps, New York, for the winter of 1844–45.
At this time, December 1845, she received an invitation to return to the charge of the ladies' department of the school in Brockport, and also one to enter Le Roy Female Seminary as an instructor.
In early September 1848, Mortimer went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to visit her friend and former associate at Le Roy Female Seminary, Lucy Ann Seymour Parsons.
[3] She spent the winter of 1848 in Ottawa, Illinois teaching a class of a few young women, and preparing to open her school, an academy, in the spring of 1849.
There, Beecher persuaded Mortimer to join the faculty of a private female seminary in Milwaukee founded in 1848, and conducted by Parsons.
Most of this period was spent in Auburndale, Massachusetts, where, either in the seminary there, or in the home of Miss Huntington, Mortimer constantly had classes of young women under her instruction in advanced studies, without the care and labor attendant upon a permanent settlement for herself.
[3] Nine years had passed since Mortimer's retirement from active participation in the instruction and management of Milwaukee College, though she had made frequent visits to the school, and had sometimes accepted invitations to address the alumni and the pupils, or to attend and take part in its examinations.
On June 13, 1866, the Board of Trustees ordered the execution of a lease with Mortimer, and the appearance of the Catalogue of 1866–7, with her name at the head of the faculty of instruction.
[3] In January, 1871, Mortimer decided to realize the dream of her life by taking an extended vacation, including a return to England, and to see for herself the European civilization whose history and philosophy she had studied and taught.
I wish to settle down in about four countries, England, France, Germany, and Italy, and live long enough to absorb something of the spirit of the people, and to look out upon life through their eyes.
[2] "Willow Glen", an estate in the northern suburb of Milwaukee, with cottage, trees, shrubbery, and river at its garden's foot, attracted Mortimer's attention and she purchased it in 1873.
