Mary Thompson Hill Willard

Mary Thompson Hill Willard (January 3, 1805 – August 7, 1892) was an American teacher and social reformer. Her daughter, Frances Willard, was the founder and president of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.) as well as president of the National W.C.T.U. Early life and education Mary Thompson Hill was born on a farm in North Danville, Vermont, January 3, 1805. Her father was John Hill, of Lee, New Hampshire, and her mother, Polly Thompson Hill, was a daughter of Nathaniel Thompson, of Durham and Holderness, New Hampshire. Both the Hills and the Thompsons were families of note, and their descendants include many well-known names in New Hampshire history. John Hill removed to Danville in the pioneer period of that region, and on his farm of , a few miles west of the Connecticut River, he and his wife made a home. Their oldest son, James Hill, had high ambitions. Mary, strongly resembling her brother James, was the second daughter in the family, each one of whom possessed abilities of a high order. Her early education was obtained in the country district school and in the log school house of a new area, but the schools were taught usually by students or graduates of Dartmouth College and Middlebury College, who often boarded in Mary's home, and whose attainments and character made deep impressions for good upon the susceptible child. At the age of 12, her father sold his Vermont farm and removed to the new region of the Genesee valley in western New York. In the new settlement, west of Rochester, New York, now known as the town of Ogden, New York, Willarad grew to young womanhood. She was a good student and a wide reader, and at the age of 15, taught her first school. Career Teaching proved to be an attractive occupation, and she continued for eleven years in Monroe County, New York, near Rochester. Fine needlework and fine spinning, the fashionable domestic accomplishments in those days, gave her pleasure. She possessed in an unusual degree an admiration for the beautiful, especially in language. She had the poetic faculty, was a sweet singer, gifted conversationalist, attractive in appearance, and dignified in manner.