Many Troy Female Seminary graduates from the first half of the nineteenth century married West Point graduates, and Emma Willard visited the Point several times, among other things to compare notes on mathematics instruction with professors there.  Two T.F.S. students in the 1830s had ties to other branches of the military.  Agnes Powell ‘32 married Ambrose Spencer, son of John Canfield Spencer, Secretary of War and Treasury under John Tyler.  Agnes’ brother-in-law, the nineteen-year-old Philip Spencer, was hanged for mutiny.  His tragic case led the government to establish a naval academy at Annapolis to train young sailors more appropriately.  Later in the decade, Martha Reed ‘38 married Alexander Mitchell of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Their grandson, Billy Mitchell, a WWI ace, is regarded as the father of the United States Air Force Academy.  (The dining hall at the academy is named for him as is the airport in Milwaukee.)  Just another strain of U.S. history touched by the lives of women who studied under Emma Willard.