ëPARA üPAR@ ` ┘TEXT ` ╦Mills, Susan Lincoln Tolman
1825╨1912
missionary and educator
Born on November 18, 1825, in Enosburg, Vermont, Susan Tolman grew up there and from about the age of ten in Ware, Massachusetts. She graduated from Mount Holyoke Seminary (now College) in 1845 and remained there as a teacher until her marriage in September 1848 to Cyrus T. Mills, a Presbyterian missionary with whom she sailed immediately afterward to Ceylon. For six years she assisted her husband in his work as principal of Batticotta College, taught classes in domestic skills to local girls, and helped supervise several day schools. In 1854, both in very poor health, they left Ceylon to return to Massachusetts. In 1860, fully recovered, they traveled to the Hawaiian Islands, where Cyrus Mills became president of Oahu College for children of missionaries and Susan Mills became a teacher in the school. She introduced calisthenics for girls and brought her Mount Holyoke experience to bear in emphasizing the sciences. Cyrus Mills╒s ill health forced them to leave Hawaii in 1864 and settle in California.
In 1865 they bought the Ladies Seminary in Benicia and set about remaking it into a girls╒ school of high standing. Again Mount Holyoke provided impetus, this time in the form of several teachers whom they persuaded to come to California. In 1871 they moved the school to a more attractive and accessible site on a 60-acre tract a few miles from Oakland. Mills Seminary, as the school was renamed, soon featured the imposing Seminary Hall (later Mills Hall) as its principal building. The school was incorporated in 1877. Susan Mills served as lady principal of the seminary until her husband╒s death in April 1884, when she added the duties of board member and acting president. From 1885, when the school became Mills College, to 1890 she continued as lady principal under two presidents. In 1890 she was elected president of Mills College, the first women╒s college on the Pacific Coast, and during her 19 years in that post she worked constantly to raise standards and secure recognition for the school. Beginning in 1906 the seminary classes were progressively eliminated. She retired in 1909 and died in Oakland, California, on December 12, 1912.
