March 1837

Lydia Booth, the daughter of Matthew Vassar’s sister, Maria, and George Booth, moved her female seminary from Fredericksburg, Virginia, to Poughkeepsie. The school was for many years located in a building on Garden Street owned by Matthew Vassar and was known as Cottage Hill Seminary.

“The force of circumstances brought me occasionaly in buisness entercourse with my Niece, which will account for the early direction of my mind for the enlarged Education of Women and the subsequent drift of enquiries in my conversation & correspondence with gentlemen Educators in this Country and a few in Europe….”

Elizabeth Hazelton Haight, ed., Autobiography and Letters of Matthew Vassar