Elizabeth Louisa Matilda “Lou” Wylie Boisen

Elizabeth Louisa Matilda “Lou” Wylie Boisen

1 October 1839

4 June 1930

Teacher (Mathematics and Modern Languages)

Elizabeth Louisa Matilda Wylie Boisen, who went by “Lou,” was born to Rebecca Dennis and Theophilus Wylie in Bloomington, Indiana, on 1 October 1839. She graduated with a B.S. degree from IU in 1871 and then taught mathematics and modern languages at the University of Missouri during the 1872-1873 school year. She met her husband, Hermann Balthasar Boisen (1846-1884), while he was a faculty member boarding at the Wylie home. They married on 16 July 1873 and had two children, both born at the Wylie House: Anton (b. 1876) and Marie (b. 1879). Hermann was a superb teacher but was a difficult man to live with, and his marriage with Louisa was troubled. After a number of academic appointments in different localities, he died suddenly in 1884 of heart failure while teaching in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. After his death, Louisa and her children lived at the Wylie House with Louisa’s parents. After Rebecca died in 1913, Louisa went to live with her daughter and son-in-law, Morton C. Bradley, in Arlington, Massachusetts. She died in Arlington on 4 June 1930, at the age of 91, and was buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington, Indiana.