Almira Lincoln Phelps (née Hart; July 15, 1793 – July 15, 1884) was an American scientist, educator, author, and editor. Her botany writings influenced more early American women to be botanists, including Eunice Newton Foote and her daughter, Augusta Newton Foote Arnold. Though she primarily wrote about nature, she also wrote novels, essays, and memoirs. The standard author abbreviation A.Phelps is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Phelps was a native of Connecticut. Her long and active life was devoted to the education of young women. She published several popular science textbooks in the fields of botany, chemistry, and geology. Some of her works worthy of special commemoration include, The Blue Ribbon Society; The School Girls Rebellion; Christian Households; Familiar Lectures on Botany; Our Country and its Relation to the Present, Past and Future; and The Fireside Friend. Her views on topics ranging from elocution to corsets are contained in Lectures to Young Ladies, Comprising Outlines and Applications of the Different Branches of Female Education for the User of Female Schools, and Private Libraries.
Almira Hart was born on July 15, 1793, in Berlin, Connecticut, the youngest of 17 children, growing up in an intellectual, independently thinking, and religious environment. She and her family lived on a farm. Her mother, Lydia, took interest in anatomy, examining the animals she cooked and thereby developing a rudimentary knowledge of human anatomy. This afforded her the ability to reset dislocated joints and perform other basic first aid for her family and community, in cases where a doctor was not immediately available.
Lydia also studied the properties of plants, and she later discussed these observations with her daughter, Almira, after her interest in botany had begun. Lydia Hart taught her children the value of the world around them, and they learned to work hard on the farm. Through these lessons, Lydia also taught her daughters what she believed to be their place in the world, as women.
The Hart home was an open place where members of the community would often gather to debate a vast array of subjects. Almira's father, Samuel Hart, himself loved to argue and debate, and there was often a dissenter or a preacher in their home who had stopped by to argue with him. The Hart children were encouraged to question things and to create their own opinions on various matters. Almira and her family often gathered around the fireplace, where her father and mother would share tales of their ancestors and family anecdotes. Almira's favorite tales concerned the Revolutionary war.
Through her close friendship with the elderly mother of a bookseller, Almira had access to a vast array of books from an early age. She loved to read, and at first seemed to enjoy reading anything she could get her hands on. One of Almira's most influential mentors was her older sister, Emma Hart Willard. Emma would become an influential reformer of women's education, and advised her sister early on to choose good books with which to educate herself, instead of merely reading for the pastime of it. When Almira was 17, she went to live with Emma and her husband, as her sister was in charge of the female academy at Middlebury.
While living with her sister, she was also mentored by John Willard and three of his fellow students, who also came to live in the Willard household. She studied mathematics and philosophy. Young men from Middlebury College often boarded with the Willards, or in homes nearby, while they were attending college. This allowed Almira and other women like her the chance to gain a secondhand college education, engaging in discussions with the boarders and thereby learning subjects which were at that time not taught, or taught only basically, at the female academies. It was in this secondhand way that Almira learned higher mathematics.
At the age of 16, Almira began her teaching career in district schools. She later continued her own education. In 1814, she opened her first boarding school for young women at her home in Berlin, and two years later, she became principal of a school in Sandy Hill, New York.
In 1817, Almira married Simeon Lincoln and left her career for six years to be a housewife and mother to her three children. After her husband's death in 1823, she resumed her career in education. She became a teacher and later, in 1829, vice-principal, at the well-known Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York, which was run by her sister Emma.
While teaching at Troy, her interest in science increased, and her botanical career began under the influence of Amos Eaton. As a teacher, Almira noticed the lack of scientific books that catered to beginning college students and was determined to remedy the issue. She sought to write a textbook that was easy to understand, thereby making it easier for young academics, particularly young women, to study the sciences. While Almira taught at the Troy Seminary, scientific study became a popular subject. She led her students in botanical field research in the vicinity of the seminary, and those who attended her lectures were excited about botany.
Under Eaton's influence, she also took up an interest in chemistry. When the Troy Seminary added a chemistry laboratory, Almira worked hard to ensure it was stocked with chemicals so she and her students could participate in scientific experiments. She was thus able to give lectures on chemistry which were illustrated through experiments, thereby enriching the quality of scientific education at the Troy Seminary.
Encouraged by Eaton and her sister's success and driven by her own financial needs, Lincoln began to write such textbooks in the late 1820s. Her first and most notable textbook Familiar Lectures on Botany was published in 1829, going through seventeen editions and selling over 275,000 copies by 1872.
Amos Eaton believed in women's capacity for higher education, and made it a priority to invite women from the Troy Seminary to his lectures at Renesselaer Polytechnic Institute whenever possible. Eaton believed that men and women should be educated together, and made an effort throughout his life to include women in scientific instruction. From Eaton, Almira learned much about several fields, including botany, chemistry, geology, and natural philosophy.
A second professional mentor of Almira's was botanist William Darlington. He influenced her presentation of botany in her textbooks, and encouraged her to add introductory material on the Natural System of Botanical Classification, rather than solely including the Linnean System in her book. Almira took this suggestion in subsequent editions of her textbook.
In 1830, with the absence of her sister, Phelps served as acting principal of the Troy Female Seminary and gave a series of lectures related to female education that she would later publish as her second book, Lectures to Young Ladies. During this time, Almira gained important managerial experience, and began to write down some of her own ideas for women's education. During her acting principalship, Almira expanded the property of the Troy Seminary to include room for the students to cultivate their own botanical specimens on the grounds.
West Chester Young Ladies Seminary
In 1831, Almira married John Phelps, a lawyer and politician from Vermont. Taking the name "Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps", she once again gave up her career to raise a second family. Still, she continued to write new textbooks on chemistry, natural philosophy, and education.
In 1838, Phelps was appointed principal of the literary department of the West Chester Young Ladies Seminary in West Chester, Pennsylvania run by a local medical doctor, Jesse W. Cook. Phelps' stepdaughter Eunice was appointed assistant principal; another stepdaughter, Ann, and daughter Emma Lincoln were appointed teachers. Phelps's textbooks were used in several of the classes.