Sarah Burger (1836 - ?) applied to attend the University of Michigan in June of 1858, but was rejected by the Regents of the University. This experience led Miss Burger to be a pioneer in the women's enfranchisement movement. She graduated from the Michigan Normal School in Ypsilanti, and married Ozora Pierson Stearns in February of 1863. They moved to Minnesota where she was active in temperance and suffrage movements.
More information
- History of Woman Suffrage: 1876-1885 By Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, via Google Books
- The National cyclopaedia of American biography, 1900, via Google Books
- A Wedge in the Door, Poplawski, American Educational History Journal, 1999
- The first co-ed, James Tobin for Michigan Today, May 2008
Several years earlier, in 1858, several young women, led by Sarah Burger of Ann Arbor, had made a concerted effort to enroll at Michigan. Opposition was vitriolic. The men of the faculty echoed the common reasons for saying no: Women were intellectually incapable of advanced study, therefore would hurt the University's standing and prestige; they lacked the physical stamina, too; and in any case it was foolish to educate women whose chief mission would be motherhood and housekeeping.
