Minerva Brace Norton

Minerva Brace Norton (1837-1894) was an American educator and writer, born Sarah Minerva Brace in Rochester, New York, and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin, where her family settled when she was nine. She studied under Mary Mortimer at Milwaukee College, graduated from Baraboo Seminary in 1861, taught at the Evanston College for Ladies, and served as principal of the ladies' department at Ripon College. In 1867 she married the Congregational minister Smith Norton; the couple made their home in Beloit, Wisconsin, and traveled in Europe between 1886 and 1888. She wrote for periodicals including the Independent and the Christian Union, was one of the editors of the biographical dictionary A Woman of the Century, and published a memoir of her old teacher Mary Mortimer.