The community encouraged the education of women and women's participation in Quaker meetings. Stowe's mother was educated at a Quaker seminary in the United States. She home-schooled Stowe and her five sisters, instilling in the United States. Hannah Howard also taught them skills in herbal healing. After teaching at local schools for seven years, her public struggle to achieve equality for women began in 1852, when she applied for admission to Victoria College, Cobourg, Ontario. Refused on the grounds that she was female, she applied to the Normal School for Upper Canada, which Egerton Ryerson had recently founded in Toronto. She entered in November 1853 and was graduated with first-class honours in 1854. Hired as principal of a Brantford, Ontario public school, she was the first woman to be a principal of a public school in Upper Canada. She taught there until her marriage in 1856 (see Marriage bar).