Mount Holyoke in Persia
The Life and Work of Fidelia Fiske
—Written and illustrated by Hope Larson. Colored by Kelly Fitzpatrick.
This article appeared in the summer 2016 issue of the Alumnae Quarterly.
July 15, 2016
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I came across your post while looking up the Fidelia Fiske story because I want to read it with my gifted and talented students. Thank you for connecting the story to your memory of passing the gravestone. That’s an example of the type of connections I want my students to make. There’s a story behind every gravestone. We have a few old stones in our tiny town. Now I’m thinking students might make their own graphic novel for one of those stones. Thanks for sharing your connections!
I just read the cartoon story of Fidelia Fiske. The drawing of her gravestone reminded me : she is buried across the street from our former home on Shelburne Center Road! I passed that gravestone every day! Given that Mary Lyon was Buckland’s favorite daughter, it is likely that her family and Fiske’s family were acquainted long before Fiske attended Mount Holyoke. I am not sure of the date of construction of the huge barn that still stands on Zerah Fiske Road, but it is exciting for me to think of it as being connected to this fascinating person, whose work would be more than relevant in the present day!
When one of my daughters was in sixth grade, we spent a day at the Mount Holyoke Archives researching Mary Lyon for what became a stellar report! That report was the impetus for a lifetime love of research and writing. Unfortunately, her teachers were reluctant to believe that she (a dyslexic!) had written it! It was, to me, an interesting irony that Buckland-Shelburne Regional School would be unwilling to embrace the hard work of a student who was fascinated by the radical Christianity of Mary Lyon. Feminism and faith are far from mutually exclusive. The historical context puts these women in the “Firebrand” category. I am proud to have raised my children in their neighborhood!