1868 - 1941

Frances Vose Emerson

Frances Vose Emerson 1872 taught literature, rhetoric and history from 1881 to 1886 and was a trustee from 1922 to 1941, when she was voted trustee emerita.

She was born in Hudson, OH, in 1855, to Martha Eliza Waldo Vose, who had served as Wheaton Seminary’s principal from 1840 to 1842 and the Reverend Alfred Emerson, a grandson of the Reverend Joseph Emerson, the famous mentor of Mary Lyon and advocate for women’s education.

Both Frances and her sister, Annie, graduated from and taught at Wheaton.

Emerson Dining Hall was named for the Emerson family in 1908.