Woman of the Century/Lucy Wheelock

WHEELOCK, Miss Lucy, educator, lecturer and author, born in Cambridge, Vt., 1st February, 1857, in which town her father has been LUCY WHEELOCK. pastor for many years. She is of New England descent. Her education was begun under the care of her devoted mother, and was continued in Chauncy-Hall School, in Boston, where she became an excellent classical and German scholar and a writer of both prose and verse. Towards the close of her course in that school, she was drawn towards the education of very young children according to the kindergarten system, and took a thorough course of instruction to prepare herself for that work, receiving her diploma from the hand of Miss Elizabeth Peabody. She began to teach in the kindergarten that had been recently established in the Chauncy-Hall School, which position she has held for about ten years. Her work has made her a successful exponent and advocate of the system of Fröbel, which she is often called upon to expound before educational institutes and conventions. During the last four years she has taught a training class of candidates for the kindergarten service, coming from all parts of the Union and Canada, increasing in number from year to year. In addition to preparing numerous lectures, she has translated for "Barnard's Journal of Education" several important German works, and has contributed to other educational journals many practical articles. She has also translated and published several of Madame Johanna Spyri's popular stories for children, under the title of "Red Letter Tales." Her interest in young children early led her into Sunday-school work, and she soon became superintendent of a large primary class connected with the Berkeley Temple, in Boston. Her success in that work won her a reputation, and she is now a favorite speaker in Sunday-school institutes and gatherings, as well as those for general educational purposes in New England, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul and Montreal. She devotes a great part of her summer vacation to work of that sort. She also teaches a large class of adults in the Summer School of Methods in Martha's Vineyard, and gives a model lesson weekly, for eight months in the year, to a class of about two-hundred primary Sunday-school teachers. She publishes weekly in the "Congregationalist," "Hints to Primary Teachers," in the same line of work.