Jane Andrews

Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Jane Andrews was an American author and educator whose work grew directly out of teaching. She studied at the State Normal School in West Newton, graduated as valedictorian in 1853, and was encouraged by Horace Mann to enroll at Antioch College, where she became its first registered student.

Long periods of ill health interrupted her plans, but she later opened a small primary school in her home in 1860. Her teaching was considered advanced for the time, emphasizing observation, experimentation, and active participation, and among her pupils were future writer Ethel Parton, suffragist Alice Stone Blackwell, and chemist J. Lewis Howe.

From those lessons came the books that made her widely known. Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball That Floats in the Air became especially popular, and she followed it with other works for young readers including Each and All, Ten Boys Who Lived on the Road From Long Ago to Now, and books on health, nature, and geography. Her writing stayed in school use for decades after her death in 1887.