Fiske's school was a
boarding establishment where she had the oversight of the culinary concerns and arrangements. She taught her pupils the same useful employments of the household in which she herself took not only a deep but a scientific interest. It was the first of its kind in
New Hampshire and the second school of its kind in the country,
Bradford Academy (Massachusetts) being the first. Miss Fiske's Seminary antedated
Robinson's Female Seminary at
Exeter, New Hampshire, which was founded in 1859, by 55 years, and Mary Lyon's
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary at
South Hadley, Massachusetts, by 36 years., school founderFiske taught the chemistry of making bread, demonstrated the astronomical and mathematical calculations of
Isaac Newton and
Pierre-Simon Laplace, and pointed out from the
wildflowers of the valley of the
Ashuelot River the principles to which
Carl Linnaeus devoted himself. She enforced with appropriate remarks the
syllogisms of
Levi Hedge and the mental and moral sentiments of
Isaac Watts on
The Improvement of the Mind, and gave remarks appropriate to the youngest girl to initiate her into the mysteries of language. In 1823, 84 pupils were enrolled. Fiske served as principal, while the teachers included Mary B. Ware and Eliza P. Withington. In 1836, Fiske was the principal; Abigail Barnes and Charlotte Foxcroft were associate teachers; Eliza P. Withington was teacher in music. In 1837, the instruction at the seminary was divided into four courses. First: spelling, reading, arithmetic, plain sewing, first books of geography and history. Second: reading English grammar, geography with use of maps and globes, arithmetic, writing, bookkeeping and composition, and what the law required to qualify a young women to instruct a district school. Third: the same, with political class, book rhetoric, natural philosophy and astronomy, geology, chemistry, botany, philosophy of natural history, algebra and geometry. Fourth: logic, moral and intellectual philosophy, natural theology and evidences of Christianity. The Latin and modern languages. ==Later years==