Miner, Myrtilla

(born March 4, 1815, near Brookfield, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 17, 1864, Washington, D.C.) American educator whose school for African Americans, established against considerable opposition, grew to a successful and long-lived teachers institution.

Miner was educated at the Clover Street Seminary in Rochester, New York (1840-44), and taught at various schools, including the Newton Female Institute (1846-47) in Whitesville, Mississippi, where she was refused permission to conduct classes for African American girls. The experience made Miner receptive to the suggestion that she open a school for African Americans; encouragement from the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and a contribution from a Quaker philanthropist allowed her to establish such a school.

In 1851 Miner opened the Colored Girls School in Washington, D.C. Within two months the enrollment grew from 6 to 40, and, despite hostility from a portion of the community, the school prospered. Contributions from Quakers continued to arrive, and Harriet Beecher Stowe gave $1,000 of her Uncle Tom's Cabin royalties. The school was forced to move three times in its first two years, but in 1854 it settled on a 3-acre (1.2-hectare) lot with house and barn on the edge of the city. In 1856 the school came under the care of a board of trustees, among whom were Beecher and Johns Hopkins. Although the school offered primary schooling and classes in domestic skills, its emphasis from the outset was on training teachers. Miner stressed hygiene and nature study in addition to rigorous academic training. By 1858 six former students were teaching in schools of their own. By that time Miner's connection with the school had been lessened by her failing health, and from 1857 Emily Howland was in charge. In 1860 the school had to be closed, and the next year Miner went to California in an attempt to regain her health. A carriage accident in 1864 ended that hope, and Miner died shortly after her return to Washington, D.C.

Granted a congressional charter as the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth in 1863, Miner's school reopened after the Civil War. From 1871 to 1876 it was associated with Howard University, and in 1879, as Miner Normal School, it became part of the District of Columbia public school system. In 1929 it became Miner Teachers College, and in 1955 it merged with Wilson Teachers College to form the District of Columbia Teachers College.