Histories of education in the United States have often focused upon the role of nineteenth-century urbanization and industrialization in accelerating educational innovation. In keeping with this trend, historians of the kindergarten have attributed the success of this institution to several factors. The kindergarten, based on the pedagogy of the German educator Friedrich Froebel, was first introduced in the United States from Germany in 1860 and by 1914 was entrenched in most American urban public school systems. By then, over nine hundred cities operated nearly 6,500 kindergarten classes with an enrollment of 312,000 children. In accounting for this movement's rapid success, some historians have emphasized the role of kindergartens in assimilating the immigrants that poured into American cities after the Civil War. Others have argued persuasively that the kindergarten's emphasis on “the Child, the Home, Family, and Motherhood,” as well as faith in the perfectibility of children, meshed nicely with nineteenth-century evangelical concerns over the conflict between private and public spheres, and therefore found an enthusiastic following among female reformers, philanthropists, and educators.

When Lucy Goodale, Mount Holyoke Seminary Class of 1841, wrote home to her parents, she called the seminary her “castle of science.” She could not have known how apt that phrase would become in the next hundred years; she knew only that the chemistry course she was taking, part of a seven-science sequence, was full of “miracles.” Nonetheless, Lucy Goodale's “castle” would become a citadel for women in science; a college that would produce more women who went on for doctorates in the physical sciences from 1910 to 1969, more women who obtained doctorates in chemistry from 1920 to 1980, and more women listed in the 1938 American Men of Science than any other undergraduate institution. Additionally, during the years 1927—41, it would be twice as productive in publishing chemical research as any other liberal arts college (coeducational or single-sex) in the country. Besides exploring how Mount Holyoke Seminary, later Mount Holyoke College, achieved this remarkable record, this paper also examines M. Elizabeth Tidball's hypothesis, that the higher the ratio of women of accomplishment present in a college environment, the more likely the college is to produce women graduates who proceed to postcollege accomplishment themselves, particularly in nontraditional fields like the sciences. Additionally, we demonstrate the attempts at what is today referred to as “networking” that began early in Mount Holyoke's history and continued into the present century. Differences between the generations of women scientists at the college will also be explored.

Contemporaries saw the educational legislation of Tsar Alexander I (1801–25) as a sign that the new emperor intended to raise the cultural and material well-being of his countrymen. The establishment in 1802 of a ministry of public education and the division of the country into six great educational districts to administer a network of schools—elementary, intermediate, secondary, and university—extended the initial reforms of Catherine II (1762–96). Her grandson Alexander employed some of her advisers and looked to other reformers, who shared the two monarchs' interest in the intellectual fashions of the Enlightenment. Russian educators, who reflected the ideals of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and their followers, saw public education as a means whereby advanced European thought would contribute to native virtues and lead to national progress. If the creation of schools did not match the publicity for public education, there was at least no doubt that the government encouraged the formation of an educated population. However, that mood changed after the Napoleonic wars when, in fear of revolution, educational authorities saw the school system primarily as a means for inculcating obedience and Christian pietism. Obscurantism decimated the staffs of universities and darkened schools on every level.

This article seeks to give a brief response to the question, how do historians know when they know something? The question involves ideas about certitude and truth, and most historians today would make very modest claims about certitude or truth in our statements about the past. Many would echo Charles Beard, who said sixty years ago, “We hold a damn dim candle over a damn dark abyss.” Today the historical profession is fragmented, ideologically diverse, and somewhat relativistic, a situation that is applauded by some and bemoaned by others.