Founders & Beginnings

In Missouri, the areas surrounding the Missouri River such as Liberty, offered women educational opportunities to better themselves. Changing views about female education reached Missouri and led to a demand for female education. Female institutions became popular as many parents wanted their daughters to receive an education. Citizens of Liberty considered themselves progressive with regard to female education, especially for the education of elite daughters. There was also a common belief that to be an intelligent wife and friend to a man, a woman must be educated. These institutions were private and often understaffed. The mission of each school varied from languages and business to science and domestic life preparation. There were no set standards for education or educators so quality varied.

Clay Seminary ensured young ladies would receive an education and a strict, moral environment. The catalogue stated, “It will be the aim to maintain the influence of the home circle, and no harsh means will ever be employed to secure obediences but reliance will be wholly upon moral appliances, I and where these fail a necessity will arrive for dissolving the connection of such pupil with the institution.” Students could not write or receive visitors who were not family members. Daily reading of the Bible was required of all students. Tuition varied on level of instruction and boarding was an option. Uniforms were required.

There were two school terms each year. Each term lasted five months with public examinations at the end of the terms. Hundreds of spectators attended these public examinations. The antebellum period is when girls gained the right to read compositions in public. Because women had few opportunities for using public speaking skills in the professional or public sphere after graduation, there was little threat to the social structure of communities which could explain the level of visibility female students at Clay Seminary experienced. Public examinations took place at the Second Baptist Church. Teachers, the principal, extended family, and the Liberty community were invited to hear students recite poems, give speeches, answer questions, and solve math problems aloud.

Other than public examinations, which included orations, debates, and musical performances, students at Clay Seminary were visible in the Liberty community contributing to the local newspaper, often the Liberty Weekly Tribune, by publishing speeches and rebuttals to critics. Some students earned money through literary exhibitions and served as teachers to younger students. Students also participated in various local aid societies.

The two literary societies at Clay Seminary were the Mary Lyon Literary Society and the Eunomian Society. As early as 1856, the Mary Lyon Literary Society debated in front of spectators the same issues that men were debating, though separately. The Eunomian Society was similar and debated issues such as whether men and women should have different modes of education, the merits of public examinations, whether a man of business or leisure enjoys life more, and whether genius or industry achieved more. In these debates, at least two young ladies argued for each side, the affirmative and the negative.

Carrie Nation, known for her ax-wielding participation in the Temperance movement, attended Clay Seminary in 1865. She was Carrie Moore as a student and she credited in her autobiography Clay Seminary instruction as laying a foundation for her future political participation and speaking. There are no accounts other than Nation’s of her public speaking at Clay Seminary, but she described her first public speaking at an exhibition of the Eunomian Society. She was called to argue her side of the question, felt unprepared, saw the crowded room, and wrote that she looked ridiculously blank. She wrote that all burst out in uncontrollable laughter and she went to her seat and put her face in her arms with her back to the audience. She said this humiliating event nerved her and required the moral force equal to that which she smashed a saloon.

Education allowed young women an opportunity to create strong friendship bonds and an awareness of politics. Female schools also provided women with opportunities for employment, yet for most marriage was the ultimate goal.

The Loves owned and operated Clay Seminary from 1855 throughout the Civil War until 1865 when Love sold the school and became an associate with the Clay County Savings Association. Love was President of the Clay County Savings Association when the first daylight armed bank robbery occurred, supposed to have been committed by the James boys, Frank and Jesse. Clay Seminary burned in 1877, but one building not destroyed by the fire still stands today on South Leonard street in Liberty, Missouri.