Many of the students at the Troy Female Seminary became socially or politically active later in life.  While Emma Willard did not openly advocate activism, she clearly sent a message that her students were privileged and needed to use their education for the betterment of others. 

Two interesting women who shared a cause almost crossed paths in Troy.  Mary L. Bonney, who attended from 1834 to 1836, and Cornelia Wright, who attended from 1836 to 1839, passionately advocated for Native Americans.  Bonney, the founder with another TFS alumna of the Chestnut St. Female Seminary (later Ogontz School for Young Ladies and alma mater of Amelia Earhart), also founded the Woman’s National Indian Association, which was credited with influencing major national policy in the late nineteenth century, including the Dawes Act.  (Interestingly, another T.F.S. graduate taught at Chestnut St. in the 1850s–that was Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage!)

Cornelia Wright was also an educator.  She taught in the South after leaving Troy and married the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota and helped him run Shattuck Academy, an Episcopal school for boys in Faribault, Minnesota, and encouraged the development of St. Mary’s, the girls’ counterpart, where she was the major administrator.  Living in Minnesota in the post Civil War period, she came in contact with many Native Americans and became a champion of their rights.  A group of Dakotas in the immediate Faribault area were so grateful to her that they called her “St. Cornelia.”