Mary A. Blood
| Mary Ann Blood | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | July 10, 1851 Hollis, New Hampshire |
| Died | July 25, 1927 Chicago, Illinois |
| Education | Oratory |
| Alma mater | Monroe College of Oratory |
| Occupation | Professor and President of Columbia School of Oratory |
| Years active | 1887-1927 |
| Known for | Co-Founder of Columbia School of Oratory |
Mary Ann Blood (July 10, 1851 - July 25, 1927) was a teacher of Elocution and Expression in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She is known as the Co-Founder and First Co-President of Columbia College Chicago.
Blood was born on July 10, 1851 to Isaac Pierce and Sarah (née Fisk) Blood in Hollis, New Hampshire. She attended Framingham Normal School in Massachusetts (now Framingham State University), graduated in 1871, then took post-graduate advanced classes and completed her course of study in 1873. Normal schools trained its students to be teachers.
She moved to the Jamaica Plain area of Boston in 1873 to teach at the Eliot School, founded in 1676. During the 1870s and 1880s, the school began its “manual training” era where classes such as drawing, painting, sewing, and cooking were added to the curriculum. Its purpose was to “satisfy that instinctive desire of human beings to create.”
In 1880, she attended Monroe College of Oratory, now Emerson College, in Boston, studying under Charles Wesley Emerson, its founder, where she earned a degree in Oratory in 1882 and became a member of its faculty in 1883. During her tenure at Monroe, Mary taught Analysis, Practical Hygiene, Rendering, & Bible Reading and also administered the Normal Department. Additionally, she served as a member of the School’s Board of Trustees from 1887 until she left the school in 1890.
During her tenure at Monroe, Blood accepted an assignment to teach elocution and expression courses at the State Agricultural College in Ames, Iowa from 1887 to 1888. It was here she meet fellow teacher, Ida Morey Riley.
Mary Blood and Ida Riley left New England to establish Columbia School of Oratory (now Columbia College Chicago) in Chicago, Illinois in 1890 where the “Emerson System of Physical Culture” was taught. Anticipating a strong need for public speaking at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas, Blood and Riley were inspired to open their school in the exposition city, Chicago, and adopt the exposition's name.
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