Daisy Emily Butler Lyman (1871-1964), West Palm Beach’s first teacher and the wife of one of Lantana’s founding sons, was born on March 25, 1871, in Cairo, Illinois.
Two years after her high school graduation, Daisy moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she spent a year teaching housekeeping, sewing, and cooking at a government-sponsored mission school for young Native American girls separated from their families in the break-up of Geronimo’s tribe. She then returned home to attain a First Grade Teaching Certificate at the North Indiana Normal College in Valparaiso, Illinois.
Newly certified, Daisy received word from a friend who had recently moved to Jupiter that West Palm Beach was in need of a teacher for its first school. Moving to south Florida in the summer of 1894, Daisy was hired. In her first year, Daisy taught 13 pupils, ranging in ages from eight to fourteen years. But her stay in West Palm Beach, at the original schoolhouse set up in the old Congregational Church on the corner of Datura and Olive Streets, would be short-lived. At the time, West Palm Beach was little more than a community of transient construction workers living in tents along Clematis Street. Its unsettledness and few signs for growth worried Daisy and she applied for a teaching position at the Lantana school.
Daisy began teaching at the one-room schoolhouse in Lantana the following year. While living at the Bassett Hotel and boarding with Lillian Lyman, the daughter of Lantana’s founding family, Daisy became acquainted with George Ralph Lyman, Lillian’s brother and co-founder of the well-known general store and Indian trading post, M. B. Lyman & Co. The couple married on June 3, 1896.
Daisy took a sabbatical from the classroom for several years, returning when her two sons, Clarence (1898-1962) and Ralph (1900-1979) had reached the ages of five and three, respectively. Daisy moved the family to Gainesville during the boys’ adolescence so that they could be close to the University of Florida. While there, she taught in local Gainesville schools.
Once her boys had been admitted to the university, Daisy moved back to Palm Beach County. She spent the next 22 years teaching general science to seventh and eighth grade students. Her academic curiosity never waned. In the years before her retirement, she spent the summer months attending educational programs at various universities throughout the United States. In 1940, at the age of 69, she became the oldest woman to take summer classes at the University of Florida.
The following summer, the faculty of Palm Beach Junior High School (Daisy’s last school) honored her with a retirement reception at the Norton Gallery and School of Art. Daisy received nearly 500 guests and was commended by the keynote speaker and former student, Judge C. E. Chillingworth, for her selfless and untiring dedication to public education. Formally retired, Daisy continued to substitute teach throughout Palm Beach County schools. Her later years also found her an active member in civic organizations and at the First Presbyterian Church. In September 1964, two weeks after suffering a stroke that robbed her of her speech, Daisy died at home at the age of 93. She was buried beside George at Woodlawn Cemetery in West Palm Beach.