Anna C. Brackett

Anna Callender Brackett (May 21, 1836 – March 18, 1911) was an American philosopher, translator, feminist, and educator. She translated Karl Rosenkranz's Pedagogics as a System and wrote The Education of American Girls, a response to arguments against the coeducation of males and females.

Life

Born to Samuel and Caroline Brackett, she was the oldest of five children. Her father was a dry goods merchant on Milk Street in Boston, Massachusetts, and the family lived in Somerville. Brackett attended private and public schools in Boston and Somerville and Abbot Academy. In 1856 she graduated from the state teaching school in Framingham, Massachusetts, now known as Framingham State University. Brackett served as a teacher in East Brookfield, Massachusetts, and then as an assistant principal in the teaching school in Framingham. In 1861, she became vice principal in Charleston, South Carolina. At the start of the Civil War, she was forced to leave for New Orleans and then St. Louis where she met with the St. Louis Hegelians and later published the first English translation of several philosophical works. After briefly returning to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and teaching at the high school there, she then went back to St. Louis.

In 1863 she was appointed principal of the St. Louis Normal School (Harris-Stowe State College), the first female principal of secondary school in the United States. During her tenure, Brackett worked to ensure female students had access to higher education and liberal studies as preparation for professional teaching. She made two proposals to the Board of Education that were eventually adopted. The first proposal was an age requirement for entrance to the school. Second, there should be an entrance exam for admission to the St. Louis Normal School. In 1872, Brackett resigned as principal after there were changes in the curriculum that went against her beliefs. She moved to New York City with her domestic partner, Ida M. Eliot, the daughter of Congressman Thomas D. Eliot. The pair adopted their first daughter, Hope, in 1873 and their second daughter, Bertha, in 1875. In New York, Brackett started the Brackett School for Girls, located at 9 West 39th Street, and she hired female teachers such as Mary Mitchell Birchall, the first woman to receive a bachelor's degree from a New England college. Among Brackett's pupils was Ruth Sawyer, in whose Newbery Award-winning semi-autobiographical children's novel, Roller Skates.