Seraph Warren Holmes Portrait as it now hangs in the Warrenville Museum, once on display in Warrenville’s Holmes School, named in her honor

Seraph Warren, remembered as Warrenville’s first teacher, was born to her parents Peter and Anna Warren in New York State in 1813. As a young woman in those days, she was grateful that her parents allowed her to get an education. She was given a good elementary education and trained as a teacher in New York. Her passion for education grew as she taught students on the east coast and when her aunt, uncle and cousins headed west (the Daniel and Nancy Warren family including Colonel Warren and his seven sisters), her family followed them to a settlement along the DuPage River.

Their family made a new home in the young community of Warrenville which was named after her cousin Julius. As soon as Julius’s first boarding house for lodgers was built in 1835, he arranged for Seraph to take charge of the upstairs room as a schoolroom and she began teaching the children who were arriving to the growing town.

Seraph felt that all children, especially the children in the growing area of DuPage County, needed a good education to ensure that they learned how to make the community great. Seraph had a high standard of education and taught any child who wanted to learn.

Although she loved her life as an educator, on January 3, 1849, she married Albert Holmes and they began what they hoped would be a long and happy life filled with love. In those days, women were not allowed to work once they were married, so we know how much she must have loved Albert to leave her other love of teaching for him. Sadly, only five months after their wedding, Albert died tragically and suddenly of cholera while the couple was visiting Galena, Illinois. Seraph returned to Warrenville as a widow to continue her work as a teacher.

The Warrenville Seminary on Fourth Street, now a private home

On September 14, 1851, she helped open and then ran the Warrenville Seminary. The boarding school drew students from the local area, but also from as far away as Chicago and Rockford. Two of the graduates, General Frederick Starring and Dr. John Maynard Woodworth of Chicago, the first surgeon general of the United States, are just two examples of the results of the fine education the school provided students in Warrenville. The Seminary turned Fourth Street into the school’s campus. Seraph’s father’s house, north on Fourth Street, was the boardinghouse for the boy students, while the girls slept on the second floor of the school house, which still stands at 3S432 Fourth Street and is now a private home.

The Warren Estate, which once housed male students of the Seminary

After the seminary closed following the Civil War, Seraph and her mother moved to Rockford. There she opened “Mrs. Holmes School for Young Ladies,” to help train new teachers. Her Rockford school would later be incorporated into Rockford College, still known for its good teaching program. After her death in 1905, her body was brought back to be buried in Warrenville. Nine years later, our great community paid her the most ultimate honor when they named the new elementary school after Seraph. The Seraph Warren Holmes School welcomed Warrenville students until 1991 when it closed.

Women's History Month: Seraph Warren Holmes