Ellen M. Mitchell (1838–1920) was an American philosopher, educator and education reformer. She was one of the first women to be appointed lecturer in a university, in addition to writing philosophy, literature and literary criticism.
Biography
Ellen M. Smith was born in the Village of Geddes, New York to Harriet H. Rowland and Edwin R. Smith, the eldest of their four children. In 1851, when Ellen was a teenager, the escaped slave William "Jerry" Henry was released from jail in the adjacent City of Syracuse by a band of citizens, cementing central New York's reputation as a hotbed of abolition. She graduated from the Cortland Academy, Homer, N.Y. in 1860, with a major in classics. Ellen, also, taught school in Syracuse, New York. During the Civil War her brother, Edwin R. Smith, Jr., served in New York's 149th Regiment. Edwin was killed in the Battle of Chancellorsville, May 3, 1863. He was initially reported severely wounded; the family tried to determine whether the Confederates had captured him and treated him in the Confederate field hospital at Ellwood Manor. However, Edwin was lost without a trace. Ellen adopted the pen name "Ella Ellwood" in identification with Edwin, writing with the name Ellwood during the war. Following Edwin's death, Ellen resigned her teaching position in Syracuse and moved to Cairo, Illinois, where she lived with her uncle, Ward L. Smith and his wife, Anna.
During the war, Ellen moved to St. Louis, Missouri. She wrote for the Missouri Republican newspaper of St. Louis, continuing to use the pen name Ella Ellwood until the war's end. She married St. Louis attorney and Union civil war veteran Joseph W. Mitchell in the Presbyterian Church of Alton, Illinois in September, 1867. Alton, Illinois had been, before the war, a primary source of advocacy for abolition of slavery, and was the location of the murder of the influential abolitionist advocate, the Presbyterian minister Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, and the destruction of his printing press by a pro-slavery mob from St. Louis. The marriage of Ellen and Joseph was, thus, their consecration to the union cause. While in St. Louis, she attended the Hegelian philosophy lectures which had been organized there by William T. Harris. She and Joseph also contributed to a literary and philosophical discussion group called "The Pen & Pencil Club," often hosting the meetings in their home.
Ellen and Joseph moved to Denver, Colorado in 1878, seeking effective treatment for Joseph's illness (possibly tuberculosis). However, Joseph died in February, 1879. Ellen remained in Denver, where she taught school and, then, lectured on philosophy and literature in the University of Denver. Also, she actively contributed to the Kant Club, and to the Fortnightly Club, of Denver.
Mitchell attended the first session, in July 1879, of the Concord Summer School of Philosophy, which was hosted in Concord, Massachusetts, by Bronson Alcott on his property. William T. Harris organized the school and its programs after leaving St. Louis, with the intention of unifying the Hegelian Idealism of the St. Louis Philosophical Society with the Transcendentalism of Concord. At that first 1879 session, Ellen became acquainted with many women from across the country who were leading the struggle for women's suffrage, as well as the efforts to improve educational and social policy standards. Among those she met while attending the 1879 Concord session was Julia Ward Howe who, later, became the president of the Association for the Advancement of Women. The Concord School played an important role in helping to build networks of policy reformers; more than one half of those who attended were women. Mrs. Mitchell participated in the annual Concord School of Philosophy every year, until its final session in 1888. She wrote, in 1880, a description of the lectures during the previous session, and she delivered a paper titled "Friendship in Aristotle's Ethics" during the Concord session of July, 1887.