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Note: Emily Wyckoff Berry was the oldest of five children. A great deal of responsibility fell on her shoulders. She won a scholarship to Cornell University, being the only one in her family to go to college. (Very few women attended college in those days.) It was a wonderful experience for her and she talked about her friends in the class of 1895 and kept in touch with them all her life. She joined Delta Gamma sorority. It was at Cornell the she met her future husband, Arthur C. Howland. After he graduated in 1893, they corresponded regularly, and he kept many of her letters written from 1893 through 1900. It is unfortunate that we do not have his to her. From the letters, we can follow what she was doing and guess what he had written to her. By 1894 they were no longer addressing each other as Mr. Howland and Miss Berry. By 1897, Emily had a teaching job in Corning, New York where she taught Algebra, Geometry, Greek and Roman History and French. She loved the teaching but thoroughly disliked the rough railroad town. It must have been a lonesome time for both of them. I remember the story being told of her early teaching experience. One day her heard a terrible fight going one outside her classroom. She went out with every intention of intervening if she could, but discovered that it was the school principal administering a little discipline to one of the older students in the stairwell. She returned to her class and closed the door.
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