Milwaukee College

Milwaukee College began as the Milwaukee Female Seminary founded by Lucy A. (nee, Seymour) Parsons, of Le Roy Female Institute. She was the wife of Rev. W. L. Parsons, pastor of Milwaukee's Free Congregational church. The school opened on September 14, 1848, in a house in downtown Milwaukee. Two years later, Catharine Beecher and her associate Mary Mortimer, who had worked with Lucy at Le Roy Female Institute, became connected with the Seminary. Beecher, a reformer and eldest sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, had designed "The Beecher Plan" for educating women through the college level for professions. She was invited to launch her plan in Milwaukee and came there first in April, 1850. "The Beecher Plan" focused on four professions most open to women: teaching, child care, nursing, and "conservation of the domestic state". The school was incorporated in March 1851, as the Milwaukee Normal Institute and High School, and moved to new quarters. In 1852, through the influence of Beecher, US$17,894 was received from her friends in the East and the American Woman's Educational Association; Milwaukeeans raised another $13,540; and a permanent home for the school was commissioned on the corner of Juneau Avenue and Milwaukee Street (near the site later to be occupied by the Milwaukee School of Engineering). The school opened there in the fall of 1852, though the building was not yet fin

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