ANNA P. SILL

Sacramento County

Biographies

ANNA P. SILL

ANNA P. SILL.--No one who knew the life and work of the late Anna P. Sill, the founder and first principal of the Rockford Female Seminary, at Rockford, Ill., can doubt for a moment that when the monumental history of the struggle after and the attainment of higher education for women in America shall finally be written, her inspiring ideals and the magnificent fruits of her toil and sacrifices will be given conspicuous and most honorable place—as well they should be, considering the part they have played in the making of such noble and famous women as Jane Addams and others.

Anna Peck Sill was born in Burlington, Otsego County, N. Y., on August 9, 1816, and inherited both the intellectual and moral qualities of a long line of Puritan ancestors. Her family was descended from John Sill, of England, who emigrated with his wife Joanna to this country in 1637, and settled in Cambridge, Mass., just about the time when Harvard College was founded; and about 1789, her grandparents removed from Lyme, Conn., to Otsego County, settling in a wilderness now the site of Burlington. Deacon Andrew Sill, her grandfather was a pillar in the Congregational Church for thirty-one years, and shouldered a musket in the War of the Revolution. He lived to be over ninety years of age. His son, Abel Sill, the father of our subject, was a farmer; he died of typhoid when Anna was but seven years old. Her maternal grandfather, the Hon. Jedediah Peck, became a man of great influence in his day, as both a New York legislator and a judge. His eldest daughter, Anna’s mother, was a woman of great energy of character, a good scholar in her day, especially in mathematics, and a woman of piety, industry and taste; and the fact that she trained her children in the homely virtues of honesty, economy, industry and strict moral and physical integrity, had momentous results in the life of the woman now under review.

Anna Sill’s early life was a free and happy one, and she grew up in a house which stood on a high elevation surrounded with hills and valleys, with the Catskill Mountains in the blue distance to the east, a deep valley to the south, and to the west a deep ravine with sheer rocky walls overhung with trees and bushes, and spanned with a rustic bridge, below which ran a clear stream of rippling water. She was sent to school when not more than four years old; and the daily walk through summer’s heat and winter’s cold to the old red schoolhouse, one mile away, stamped indelible impressions on her mind. She was well trained in spelling, geography, grammar and arithmetic, but she was also carefully trained in all household duties, including spinning, weaving and setting cards for carding wool and tow. She also found time to braid bonnets made from June grass, and for embroidery.

With the advent of the age of reflection, came a craving for better school advantages, and her soul also cried out for its God. In the year 1831, when powerful revivals swept New England and New York, her religious life and experience began to grow, and in 1836 she left Burlington, when about twenty years of age, and for seven months taught school at Barre, near Albion. In November, 1837, she entered Miss Phipp’s Union Seminary, one of the first institutions for girls and young women in the state. And there she remained for more than five years, also teaching, after a while.

In 1843, she underwent a mental conflict regarding the choice of a life-work that would be of benefit to others, and for a while struggled with the problem of going abroad as a missionary; and in the autumn she made her way alone and almost unbefriended to Warsaw, where, after many discouragements, she opened a seminary for young ladies on October 2 of that year; and before the close of the year, the school numbered 140 pupils. In 1846, she took charge of the female department of the Cary Collegiate Institute at Oakfield, in Genevese County; and when a convention of Congregationalists and Presbyterians, wishing to establish collegiate education of the highest New England type in what was then the Northwest, opened a seminary in northern Illinois, afterwards removed to Rockford, Miss Sill went thither, to Rockford, in 1849, to open a school for young ladies as preparatory to the seminary. On July 11, she was able to write: “Today commenced school, and laid the foundation of Rockford Female Seminary. Opened with fifty-three scholars. O Lord, fit me for my work, and glorify Thyself thereby.” In her opening address, Miss Sill said to the young ladies, drawn up in a row on the lawn: “This is like the sunshine of this beautiful day, dropping light into our hearts.” The immediate, large success of the school, was soon recognized as the germinating of the Rockford Seminary, and the citizens of Rockford quickly responded by subscribing over $5,000 for buildings, while the ladies of the town gave another $1,000 to beautify the grounds.

In 1851, the first class, fifteen in number, entered upon their courses. The next year, the corner-stone of the first edifice was laid, the officiating clergyman, Rev. Aratus Kent, cleverly taking for his text: “That our daughters may be as corner-stones polished after the similitude of a palace.” Miss Sill had from the first a clear and practical idea of the end in view and the work that needed to be accomplished, and early set before her mind Mount Holyoke Seminary as the model after which this new Western seminary was to be built. She realized the great power and influence for good lying latent in the young women of the West, and she threw herself with such energy into the task before her that by December, 1853, her health began to give way, and she was forced to go East. Her visit to Boston and other centers of wealth and influence, however, resulted in her bringing back $5,000 with which to advance the good work already halted in part for lack of funds; and the subsequent history of the institution for some years is the record of continued struggle for means wherewith to continue its expanding program—a struggle that might have terminated in failure but for the character, example and courage of the founder. She got some fun out of the experience, however, and in 1865 wrote to a friend about her “Mission to the East”: “Just fancy me in the ‘Hub of the Universe,’ the center of all right motion, the sun of civilization, enlightenment and refinement, one of the ‘Western beggars’.” Notwithstanding its vicissitudes, Rockford Seminary continued not only to grow, and to build up the lives of American young women, but it became an important factor in promoting and sustaining foreign missionary work. One of the greatest obstacles it had to encounter, however, was not the lack of funds, but the widespread prejudice to the higher education of women—a prejudice Anna P. Sill did much in her life to dissipate forever.

Space will not permit mention of the many interesting details in the further development of this remarkable institution, the life-work of this remarkable woman. In 1884, after thirty-five years of unremitting labor, Miss Sill resigned her position as Principal, and retired to the quieter, but not less honored, position of Principal Emerita; and in 1889 she suffered severe shock and set-back through the death, from pneumonia, of her last surviving brother, and his wife and two children. While on a visit to her niece, the wife of Almon Chapman (whose life-story is given elsewhere in this work), at Ridgeland, near Chicago, she was taken ill; and just as she was convalescing, a very favorite child of her niece, a little boy of four, was taken away by death. By the advice of her physician, she returned to Rockford, and on Founder’s Day, June 11, she was confined to her room; and from that time, she spoke little during her illness of eight days. She received the intimation of her approaching end calmly and silently, and sought no opportunity to speak any “last words”; and she died peacefully on June 18, 1889, only a week before the annual commencement exercises of the institution she loved so well. At her funeral, attended by a concourse of mourning admirers, a vacant chair, with a wreath of flowers upon its back, stood upon the platform; and below, resting upon the casket, were two large sago palms, emblematic of victory.

Transcribed by Barbara Gaffney.

Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With Biographical Sketches, Pages 551-552. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.