Ada Lydia Howard (December 19, 1829 - March 3, 1907) was the first president of

Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficia ...

. She received a postgraduate education under private teachers and went on to teach at Western College, Ohio from 1861-62. She was also the principal of the Female Seminary at Knox College, Illinois from 1866-69. In 1870, she became headmistress of Ivy Hall Seminary, a private school in Bridgeton, N.J. that had been founded in 1861. In 1875 she was chosen by founder Henry Fowle Durant to become the first president of

, Mass. This promotion made Howard the first woman president of a college in the world. Here she worked in full harmony with Mr. and Mrs. Durant and her labors in furthering the plans of the founders were unremitting up to the time of the death of Mr. Durant in 1881. In that year, her failure in health demanded immediate and complete rest and the trustees gave her leave of absence, but finding herself unable to resume her duties, she resigned in 1882. In appreciation of her work at Wellesley, the alumnae, in 1890, placed in the art gallery a life-size portrait of their first president, and a scholarship was established in her honor, known as the Ada L. Howard scholarship. Her subsequent life was passed in rest and travel, as her continued ill-health called for frequent change of climate. She was obliged to restrict her literary work to occasional articles for leading magazines. She received from

Mount Holyoke college Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United State ...

the honorary degree of Litt.D. in 1900. She died on Sunday, March 3, 1907.

Early life and education

Ada Lydia Howard was born in Temple, New Hampshire, on December 19, 1829. She was the daughter of Lydia Adaline Cowden and William Hawkins Howard. Her father was a teacher, scholar, and scientific agriculturalist. Three of her great-grandfathers were officers during the Revolutionary War. She was the granddaughter of Col. William and Mary (Hawkins) Howard; great-granddaughter of Samuel and Elizabeth (Barrett) Howard, and of Thomas Cowden, Esq., the most prominent founder of Fitchburg, Mass. Her ancestry was English and Scotch. She was taught by her father and at