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Elizabeth Powell Bond }}
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 * caption         = Elizabeth Powell Bond
 * name            = Elizabeth Powell Bond
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 * birth_date      = (1841-1926)
 * birth_place     = (NY State)
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 * region          = Northeast
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 * main_interests  = Education
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Elizabeth Powell Bond (1841-1926) emerged from William Lloyd Garrison’s inner circle of abolitionists to become a leader in staking out new domains for women in the late 19th century. She placed great emphasis on balancing her role as a pioneer with her “traditional” strengths as a caregiver. This combination resulted in a career in education of lasting import.

Young Abolitionist
Elizabeth Powell Bond was born into a devout Quaker family in Dutchess County, NY in 1841. At age four they moved to her mother's family homestead in Ghent, south of Albany, NY. She was particularly close to her older brother, Aaron Powell, who became a lecturer for William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society at the very young age of twenty-two. Through this connection, Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Susan B. Anthony came to stay at the Powell’s Farm. At age fifteen she visited her brother in Boston for the first time where the Garrisons took her in like a daughter and she formed close friendships with their children. Elizabeth and William, Junior were briefly engaged before mutually deciding to part ways. In spite of this they corresponded for years afterward. The highlight of this early part of her life came on January 1, 1863- Emancipation day. The day started in a “colored church” in Boston, followed by a special Jubilee concert by Philharmonic Orchestra. She then attended the unveiling of a bust of John Brown at which Garrison, Phillips, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Samuel Longfellow were present. She termed it “a holy day”.

Early Career
Elizabeth completed teacher training at the state Normal school at age seventeen and taught in the local District School for a short time. In 1803 she moved to Boston to study Calisthenics – a newly developed system of exercise. She was soon in demand as an instructor of the “New Gymnastics” in Cambridge and Concord, where she formed a friendship with Louisa May Alcott. In 1866 she was recruited to teach Physical Education at the newly-formed Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She felt charged there with proving that higher education was not harmful to women’s health and did not render them unfit for marriage. She countered: “when the heart and the hand of a young woman are happily occupied she will not turn to marriage as and escape from ennui or from drudgery .” Unfortunately, her own health suffered and she left Vassar in 1870.

The Florence Years
Following her recovery, Miss Powell was invited by the Florence Congregational Society, located in Florence, Massachusetts, to serve as resident speaker and superintendent of their Sunday School. This organization evolved out of The Northampton Association, a utopian community dedicated to full equality among races, sexes, classes and faiths. The Society was entirely non-denominational “asking only unity of purpose to seek and accept the right and true, and an honest aim and effort to make these the rule of life”. Powell officiated there from 1871-72 speaking on topics such as “Social Purity”, managing a full schedule of civic activities and performing pastoral work in the community. She was a de facto minister almost a century before this career path opened for women. Education remained her primary focus and she spoke in support of a free, four-year Kindergarten located in Florence that was among the first in the nation. Powell went on to establish her own small private school in town based on the notion of teaching to whole child. In 1874 she co-founded and co-edited The Northampton Journal, termed “the handsomest newspaper ever in Northampton or Hampshire County”.

Family Life
In 1872 Powell married Henry H. Bond, an ambitious young lawyer who shared her moral outlook. She said of him: “He did not preach against profanity, but in his presence, the profane word was not spoken.” They had two sons, one of whom survived into adulthood. His promising career, that included helping found the Florence Savings Bank, was cut short by tuberculosis. He died in 1881.

Dean Bond
Powell lectured on “Woman’s Opportunities” at the Congregational Society and often chafed at limitations placed on her gender. Just before Smith College was chartered in 1871, she was put forward to be its first president. The college’s board subsequently decided a man should head the all-female school. At the same time she placed a high premium on women’s roles as caregivers: “She has had school-life, she has had society, she has had literature, she has had wifehood – now she is a mother, pledged by the sacredness and the infinite import of this new calling.” In 1886, her son enrolled at Swarthmore College and she followed him to Philadelphia to serve as Matron at the co-educational school. This was one of the first institutions where students of both sexes shared classes and meals. Mrs. Bond set and maintained the moral standards that necessarily accompanied this bold experiment. By all accounts her twenty-year tenure had a lasting positive impact on the college. She was named its first female dean and a rose garden is named for her in light of her life-long passion for horticulture.