COLONIAL WOMAN AND EDUCATION
_I. Feminine Ignorance_
Unfortunately when we attempt to discover just how thorough woman's
mental training was in colonial days we are somewhat handicapped by the
lack of accurate data. Here and there through the early writings we have
only the merest hints as to what girls studied and as to the length of
their schooling. Of course, throughout the world in the seventeenth
century it was not customary to educate women in the sense that men in
the same rank were educated. Her place was in the home and as economic
pressure was not generally such as to force her to make her own living
in shop or factory or office, and as society would have scowled at the
very idea, she naturally prepared only for marriage and home-making.
Very few men of the era, even among philosophers and educational
leaders, ever seemed to think that a woman might be a better mother
through thorough mental training. And the women themselves, in the main,
apparently were not interested.
The result was that there long existed an astonishingly large amount of
illiteracy among them. Through an examination made for the U.S.
Department of Education, it has been found that among women signing
deeds or other legal documents in Massachusetts, from 1653 to 1656, as
high as fifty per cent could not write their name, and were obliged to
sign by means of a cross; while as late as 1697 fully thirty-eight per
cent were as illiterate. In New York fully sixty per cent of the Dutch
women were obliged to make their mark; while in Virginia, where deeds
signed by 3,066 women were examined, seventy-five per cent could not
sign their names. If the condition was so bad among those prosperous
enough to own property, what must it have been among the poor and
so-called lower classes?
We know, of course, that early in the seventeenth century schools
attended by both boys and girls were established in Massachusetts, and
before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth there was at least one public
school for both sexes in Virginia. But for the most part the girls of
early New England appear to have gone to the "dame's school," taught
by some spinster or poverty-stricken widow. We may again turn to
Sewall's _Diary_ for bits of evidence concerning the schooling in the
seventeenth century: "Tuesday, Oct. 16, 1688. Little Hanah going to
School in the morn, being enter'd a little within the Schoolhouse
Lane, is rid over by David Lopez, fell on her back, but I hope little
hurt, save that her Teeth bled a Little; was much frighted; but went
to School."[43] "Friday, Jan. 7th, 1686-7. This day Dame Walker is
taken so ill that she sends home my Daughters, not being able to teach
them."[44] "Wednesday, Jan. 19th, 1686-7. Mr. Stoughton and Dudley and
Capt. Eliot and Self, go to Muddy-River to Andrew Gardner's, where
'tis agreed that £12 only in or as Money, be levyed on the people by a
Rate towards maintaining a School to teach to write and read
English."[45] "Apr. 27, 1691.... This afternoon had Joseph to School
to Capt. Townsend's Mother's, his Cousin Jane accompanying him,
carried his Hornbook."[46]
And what did girls of Puritan days learn in the "dame schools"? Sewall
again may enlighten us in a notation in his _Diary_ for 1696: "Mary goes
to Mrs. Thair's to learn to Read and Knit." More than one hundred years
afterwards (1817), Abigail Adams, writing of her childhood, declared:
"My early education did not partake of the abundant opportunities which
the present days offer, and which even our common country schools now
afford. I never was sent to any school. I was always sick. Female
education, in the best families went no farther than writing and
arithmetic; in some few and rare instances, music and dancing."[47]
The Dutch women of New York, famous for their skill in housekeeping,
probably did not attend school, but received at home what little they
knew of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Mrs. Grant, speaking of
opportunities for female education in New Amsterdam in 1709, makes it
clear that the training of a girl's brain troubled no Hollander's head.
"It was at this time very difficult to procure the means of instruction
in those inland districts; female education, of consequence, was
conducted on a very limited scale; girls learned needlework (in which
they were indeed both skilful and ingenious) from their mothers and
aunts; they were taught too at that period to read, in Dutch, the Bible,
and a few Calvinist tracts of the devotional kind. But in the infancy
of the settlement few girls read English; when they did, they were
thought accomplished; they generally spoke it, however imperfectly, and
few were taught writing. This confined education precluded elegance;
yet, though there was no polish, there was no vulgarity."[48]
The words of the biographer of Catherine Schuyler might truthfully have
been applied to almost any girl in or near the quaint Dutch city:
"Meanwhile [about 1740] the girl [Catherine Schuyler] was perfecting
herself in the arts of housekeeping so dear to the Dutch matron. The
care of the dairy, the poultry, the spinning, the baking, the brewing,
the immaculate cleanliness of the Dutch, were not so much duties as
sacred household rites."[49] So much for womanly education in New
Amsterdam. A thorough training in domestic science, enough arithmetic
for keeping accurate accounts of expenses, and previous little
reading--these were considered ample to set the young woman on the right
path for her vocation as wife and mother.
This high respect for arithmetic was by no means limited to New York.
Ben Franklin, while in London, wrote thus to his daughter: "The more
attentively dutiful and tender you are towards your good mama, the more
you will recommend yourself to me.... Go constantly to church, whoever
preaches. For the rest, I would only recommend to you in my absence, to
acquire those useful accomplishments, arithmetic, and book-keeping. This
you might do with ease, if you would resolve not to see company on the
hours set apart for those studies."[50] In addition, however, Franklin
seems not to have been averse to a girl's receiving some of those social
accomplishments which might add to her graces; for in 1750 he wrote his
mother the following message about this same child: "Sally grows a fine
Girl, and is extreamly industrious with her Needle, and delights in her
Book. She is of a most affectionate Temper, and perfectly dutiful and
obliging to her Parents, and to all. Perhaps I flatter myself too much,
but I have hopes that she will prove an ingenious, sensible, notable,
and worthy Woman, like her Aunt Jenny. She goes now to the
Dancing-School..."[51]
_II. Woman's Education in the South_
It is to be expected that there was much more of this training in social
accomplishments in the South than in the North. Among the "first
families," in Virginia and the Carolinas the daughters regularly
received instruction, not only in household duties and the supervision
of the multitude of servants, but in music, dancing, drawing, etiquette
and such other branches as might help them to shine in the social life
that was so abundant. Thomas Jefferson has left us some hints as to the
education of aristocratic women in Virginia, in the following letter of
advice to his daughter:
"Dear Patsy:--With respect to the distribution of your time, the
following is what I should approve:
"From 8 to 10, practice music.
"From 10 to 1, dance one day and draw another.
"From 1 to 2, draw on the day you dance, and write a letter next
day.
"From 3 to 4, read French.
"From 4 to 5, exercise yourself in music.
"From 5 till bedtime, read English, write, etc.
"Informe me what books you read, what tunes you learn, and inclose
me your best copy of every lesson in drawing.... Take care that
you never spell a word wrong.... It produces great praise to a
lady to spell well...."[52]
It should be noted, of course, that this message was written in the
later years of the eighteenth century when the French influence in
America was far more prominent than during the seventeenth. Moreover,
Jefferson himself had then been in France some time, and undoubtedly was
permeated with French ideas and ideals. But the established custom
throughout the South, except in Louisiana, demanded that the daughters
of the leading families receive a much more varied form of schooling
than their sisters in most parts of the North were obtaining. While the
sons of wealthy planters were frequently sent to English universities,
the daughters were trained under private tutors, who themselves were
often university graduates, and not infrequently well versed in
languages and literatures. The advice of Philip Fithian to John Peck,
his successor as private instructor in the family of a wealthy
Virginian, may be enlightening as to the character and sincerity of
these colonial teachers of Southern girls:
"The last direction I shall venture to mention on this head, is that you
abstain totally from women. What I would have you understand from this,
is, that by a train of faultless conduct in the whole course of your
tutorship, you make every Lady within the Sphere of your acquaintance,
who is between twelve and forty years of age, so much pleased with your
person, & so satisfied as to your ability in the capacity of a Teacher;
& in short, fully convinced, that, from a principle of Duty, you have
both, by night and by day endeavoured to acquit yourself honourably, in
the Character of a Tutor; & that this account, you have their free and
hearty consent, without making any manner of demand upon you, either to
stay longer in the Country with them, which they would choose, or
whenever your business calls you away, that they may not have it in
their Power either by charms or Justice to detain you, and when you must
leave them, have their sincere wishes & constant prayrs for Length of
days & much prosperity."[53]
We have little or no evidence concerning the education of women
belonging to the Southern laboring class, except the investigation of
court papers mentioned above, showing the lamentable amount of
illiteracy. In fact, so little was written by Southern women, high or
low, of the colonial period that it is practically impossible to state
anything positive about their intellectual training. It is a safe
conjecture, however, that the schooling of the average woman in the
South was not equal to that of the average women of Massachusetts, but
was probably fully equal to that of the Dutch women of New York. And yet
we must not think that efforts in education in the southern colonies
were lacking. As Dr. Lyon G. Tyler has said; "Under the conditions of
Virginia society, no developed educational system was possible, but it
is wrong to suppose that there was none. The parish institutions
introduced from England included educational beginnings; every minister
had a school, and it was the duty of the vestry to see that all poor
children could read and write. The county courts supervised the
vestries, and held a yearly 'orphans court,' which looked after the
material and educational welfare of all orphans."[54]
Indeed the interest in education during the seventeenth century, in
Virginia at least, seems to have been general. Repeatedly in examining
wills of the period we may find this interest expressed and explicit
directions given for educating not only the boys, but the girls. Bruce
in his valuable work, _Institutional History of Virginia in the
Seventeenth Century_, cites a number of such cases in which provisions
were made for the training of daughters of other female relatives.
"In 1657, Clement Thresh, of Rappahannock, in his will declared that all
his estate should be responsible for the outlay made necessary in
providing, during three years, instruction for his step-daughter, who,
being then thirteen years of age, had, no doubt, already been going to
school for some length of time. The manner of completing her education
(which, it seems, was to be prolonged to her sixteenth year) was perhaps
the usual one for girls at this period:--she was to be taught at a Mrs.
Peacock's, very probably by Mrs. Peacock herself, who may have been the
mistress of a small school; for it was ordered in the will, that if she
died, the step-daughter was to attend the same school as Thomas
Goodrich's children."[55] "Robert Gascoigne provided that his wife
should ... keep their daughter Bridget in school, until she could both
read and sew with an equal degree of skill."[56] "The indentures of Ann
Andrewes, who lived in Surry ... required her master to teach her, not
only how to sew and 'such things as were fitt for women to know,' but
also how to read and apparently also how to write." ... "In 1691 a girl
was bound out to Captain William Crafford ... under indentures which
required him to teach her how to spin, sew and read...."[57]
But, as shown in previous pages, female illiteracy in the South, at
least during the seventeenth century, was surprisingly great. No doubt,
in the eighteenth century, as the country became more thickly settled,
education became more general, but for a long time the women dragged
behind the men in plain reading and writing. Bruce declares: "There are
numerous evidences that illiteracy prevailed to a greater extent than
among persons of the opposite sex.... Among the entire female population
of the colony, without embracing the slaves, only one woman of every
three was able to sign her name in full, as compared with at least three
of every five persons of the opposite sex."[58]
_III. Brilliant Exceptions_
In the middle colonies, as in New England, schools for all classes were
established at an early date. Thus, the first school in Pennsylvania was
opened in 1683, only one year after the founding of Philadelphia, and
apparently very few children in that city were without schooling of some
sort. As is commonly agreed, more emphasis was placed on education in
New England than in any of the other colonies. A large number of the men
who established the Northern colonies were university graduates,
naturally interested in education, and the founding of Harvard, sixteen
years after the landing at Plymouth, proves this interest. Moreover, it
was considered essential that every man, woman, and child should be able
to read the Bible, and for this reason, if for no other, general
education would have been encouraged. As Moses Coit Tyler has declared,
"Theirs was a social structure with its corner stone resting on a book."
However true this may be, we are not warranted in assuming that the
women of the better classes in Massachusetts were any more thoroughly
educated, according to the standards of the time, than the women of the
better classes in other colonies. We do indeed find more New England
women writing; for here lived the first female poet in America, and the
first woman preacher, and thinkers of the Mercy Warren type who show in
their diaries and letters a keen and intelligent interest in public
affairs.
It seems due, however, more to circumstances that such women as Mercy
Warren and Abigail Adams wrote much, while their sisters to the South
remained comparatively silent. The husband of each of these two colonial
dames was absent a great deal and these men were, therefore, the
recipients of many charming letters now made public; while the wife of
the better class planter in Virginia and the Carolinas had a husband who
seldom strayed long from the plantation. Eliza Pinckney's letters rival
in interest those of any American woman of the period, and if her
husband had been a man as prominent in war and political affairs as John
Adams, her letters would no doubt be considered today highly valuable.
True, Martha Washington was in a position to leave many interesting
written comments; for she was for many years close to the very center
and origin of the most exciting events; but she was more of a quiet
housewife than a woman who enjoyed the discussion of political events,
and, besides, with a certain inborn reserve and reticence she took pains
to destroy much of the private correspondence between her husband and
herself. Perhaps, with the small amount of evidence at hand we can never
say definitely in what particular colonies the women of the higher
classes were most highly educated; apparently very few of them were in
danger of receiving an over-dose of mental stimulation.
A few women, however, were genuinely interested in cultural study, and
that too in subjects of an unusual character. Hear what Eliza Pinckney
says in her letters:
"I have got no further than the first volm of Virgil, but was most
agreeably disappointed to find myself instructed in agriculture as well
as entertained by his charming penn, for I am persuaded tho' he wrote
for Italy it will in many Instances suit Carolina."[59] "If you will not
laugh too immoderately at mee I'll Trust you with a Secrett. I have made
two wills already! I know I have done no harm, for I con'd my lesson
very perfectly, and know how to convey by will, Estates, Real and
Personal, and never forgett in its proper place, him and his heirs
forever.... But after all what can I do if a poor Creature lies a-dying,
and their family takes it into their head that I can serve them. I can't
refuse; butt when they are well, and able to employ a Lawyer, I always
shall."[60]
And again she gives this glimpse of another study: "I am a very Dunce,
for I have not acquired ye writing shorthand yet with any degree of
swiftness." That she had made some study of philosophy also is evident
in this comment in a letter written after a prolonged absence from her
plantation home for the purpose of attending some social function: "I
began to consider what attraction there was in this place that used so
agreeably to soothe my pensive humour, and made me indifferent to
everything the gay world could boast; but I found the change not in the
place but in myself.... and I was forced to consult Mr. Locke over and
over, to see wherein personal Identity consisted, and if I was the very
same Selfe."[61]
Locke's philosophical theory is surely rather solid material, a kind
indeed which probably not many college women of the twentieth century
are familiar with. Add to these various intellectual pursuits of hers
the highly thorough study she made of agriculture, her genuinely
scientific experiments in the rotation and selection of crops, and her
practical and successful management of three large plantations, and we
may well conclude that here was a colonial woman with a mind of her own,
and a mind fit for something besides feminine trifles and graces.
Jane Turell, a resident of Boston during the first half of the
eighteenth century, was another whose interest in literature and other
branches of higher education was certainly not common to the women of
the period. Hear the narrative of the rather astonishing list of studies
she undertook, and the zeal with which she pursued her research:
"Before she had seen eighteen, she had read, and 'in some
measure' digested all the English poetry and polite pieces in
prose, printed and manuscripts, in her father's well furnished
library.... She had indeed such a thirst after knowledge that the
leisure of the day did not suffice, but she spent whole nights in
reading...."
"I find she was sometimes fired with a laudable ambition of
raising the honor of her sex, who are therefore under obligations
to her; and all will be ready to own she had a fine genius, and
is to be placed among those who have excelled."
"...What greatly contributed to increase her knowledge, in
divinity, history, physic, controversy, as well as poetry, was
her attentive hearing most that I read upon those heads through
the long evenings of the winters as we sat together."[62]
Mrs. Adams was still another example of that rare womanliness which
could combine with practical domestic ability a taste for high
intellectual pursuits. During the Revolutionary days in the hour of
deepest anxiety for the welfare of her husband and of her country, she
wrote to Mr. Adams: "I have taken a great fondness for reading Rollin's
_Ancient History_ since you left me. I am determined to go through with
it, if possible, in these days of solitude."[63] And again in a letter
written on December 5, 1773, to Mercy Warren, she says: "I send with
this the first volume of Molière and should be glad of your opinion of
the plays. I cannot be brought to like them. There seems to me to be a
general want of spirit. At the close of every one, I have felt
disappointed. There are no characters but what appear unfinished; and he
seems to have ridiculed vice without engaging us to virtue.... There is
one negative virtue of which he is possessed, I mean that of decency....
I fear I shall incur the charge of vanity by thus criticising an author
who has met with so much applause.... I should not have done it, if we
had not conversed about it before."[64]
Evidently, at least a few of those colonial dames who are popularly
supposed to have stayed at home and "tended their knitting" were
interested in and enthusiastically conversed about some rather classic
authors and rather deep questions. Mrs. Grant has told us of the aunt of
General Philip Schuyler, a woman of great force of character and
magnetic personality: "She was a great manager of her time and always
contrived to create leisure hours for reading; for that kind of
conversation which is properly styled gossiping she had the utmost
contempt.... Questions in religion and morality, too weighty for table
talk, were leisurely and coolly discussed [In the garden]."[65]
Again, Mrs. Grant pays tribute to her mental ability as well as to her
intelligent interest in vital questions of the hour, in the following
statement: "She clearly foresaw that no mode of taxation could be
invented to which they would easily submit; and that the defense of the
continent from enemies and keeping the necessary military force to
protect the weak and awe the turbulent would be a perpetual drain of men
and money to Great Britain, still increasing with the increased
population."[66]
There were indeed brilliant minds among the women of colonial days; but
for the most part the women of the period were content with a rather
small amount of intellectual training and did not seek to gain that
leadership so commonly sought by women of the twentieth century.
Practically the only view ahead was that of the home and domestic life,
and the whole tendency of education for woman was, therefore, toward the
decidedly practical.
_IV. Practical Education_
These brilliant women, like their sisters of less ability, had no
radical ideas about what they considered should be the fundamental
principles in female education; they one and all stood for sound
training in domestic arts and home making. Abigail Adams, whose tact,
thrift and genuine womanliness was largely responsible for her husband's
career, expressed herself in no uncertain terms concerning the duties of
woman: "I consider it as an indispensable requisite that every American
wife should herself know how to order and regulate her family; how to
govern her domestics and train up her children. For this purpose the
All-wise Creator made woman an help-meet for man and she who fails in
these duties does not answer the end of her creation."[67]
Indeed, it would appear that most, if not all, of the women of colonial
days agreed with the sentiment of Ben Franklin who spoke with warm
praise of a printer's wife who, after the death of her husband, took
charge of his business "with such success that she not only brought up
reputably a family of children, but at the expiration of the term was
able to purchase of me the printing house and establish her son in
it."[68] And, according to this practical man, her success was due
largely to the fact that as a native of Holland she had been taught "the
knowledge of accounts." "I mention this affair chiefly for the sake of
recommending that branch of education for our young females as likely to
be of more use to them and their children in case of widowhood than
either music or dancing, by preserving them from losses by imposition of
crafty men, and enabling them to continue perhaps a profitable
mercantile house with establish'd correspondence, till a son is grown up
fit to undertake and go on with it."[69]
And Mrs. Franklin, like her husband and Mrs. Adams, had no doubt of the
necessity of a thorough knowledge of household duties for every woman
who expected to marry. In 1757 she wrote to her sister-in-law in regard
to the proposed marriage of her nephew: "I think Miss Betsey a very
agreeable, sweet-tempered, good girl who has had a housewifely
education, and will make to a good husband a very good wife."
With these fundamentals in female education settled, some of the
colonists, at least, were very willing that the girls should learn some
of the intellectual "frills" and fads that might add to feminine grace
or possibly be of use in future emergencies. Franklin, for instance,
seemed anxious that Sally should learn her French and music. Writing to
his wife in 1758, he stated: "I hope Sally applies herself closely to
her French and musick, and that I shall find she has made great
Proficiency. Sally's last letter to her Brother is the best wrote that
of late I have seen of hers. I only wish she was a little more careful
of her spelling. I hope she continues to love going to Church, and would
have her read over and over again the _Whole Duty of Man_ and the Lady's
Library."[70] And again in 1772 we find him writing this advice to Sally
after her marriage to Mr. Bache: "I have advis'd him to settle down to
Business in Philadelphia where he will always be with you.... and I
think that in keeping a store, if it be where you dwell, you can be
serviceable as your mother was to me. For you are not deficient in
Capacity and I hope are not too proud.... You might easily learn
Accounts and you can copy Letters, or write them very well upon
Occasion. By Industry and Frugality you may get forward in the World,
being both of you yet young."[71]
_V. Educational Frills_
Toward the latter part of the eighteenth century that once-popular
institution, the boarding school for girls, became firmly established,
and many were the young "females" who suffered as did Oliver Wendell
Holmes' dear old aunt:
"They braced my aunt against a board,
To make her straight and tall;
They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light, and small;
They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
They screwed it up with pins;--
Oh, never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins."
One of the best known of these seminaries was that conducted by Susanna
Rowson, author of the once-famous novel _Charlotte Temple_. A letter
from a colonial miss of fourteen years, Eliza Southgate, who attended
this school, may be enlightening:
"Hon. Father:
"I am again placed at school under the tuition of an amiable
lady, so mild, so good, no one can help loving her; she treats
all her scholars with such tenderness as would win the affection
of the most savage brute. I learn Embroiderey and Geography at
present, and wish your permission to learn Musick.... I have
described one of the blessings of creation in Mrs. Rowson, and
now I will describe Mrs. Lyman as the reverse: she is the worst
woman I ever knew of or that I ever saw, nobody knows what I
suffered from the treatment of that woman."[72]
The Moravian seminaries of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and of North
Carolina were highly popular training places for girls; for in these
orderly institutions the students were sure to gain not only instruction
in graceful social accomplishments and a thorough knowledge of
housekeeping, but the rare habit of doing all things with regularity,
neatness, decorum, and quietness. The writer of the above letter has
also described one of these Pennsylvania schools with its prim teachers
and commendable mingling of the practical and the artistic. "The first
was merely a _sewing school_, little children and a pretty single
spinster about 30, her white skirt, white short tight waistcoat, nice
handkerchief pinned outside, a muslin apron and a close cap, of the most
singular form you can imagine. I can't describe it. The hair is all put
out of sight, turned back, and no border to the cap, very unbecoming and
very singular, tied under the chin with a pink ribbon--blue for the
married, white for the widows. Here was a Piano forte and another sister
teaching a little girl music. We went thro' all the different school
rooms, some misses of sixteen, their teachers were very agreeable and
easy, and in every room was a Piano."
It was a notable fact that dancing was taught in nearly all of these
institutes. In spite of Puritanical training, in spite of the
thunder-bolts of colonial preachers, the tide of public opinion could
not be stayed, and the girls _would_ learn the waltz and the prim
minuet. Times had indeed changed since the day when Cotton Mather so
sternly spoke his opinion on such an ungodly performance: "Who were the
Inventors of Petulant Dancings? Learned men have well observed that the
Devil was the First Inventor of the impleaded Dances, and the Gentiles
who worshipped him the first Practitioners of this Art."
Colonial school girls may have been meek and lowly in the seventeenth
century--the words of Winthrop and the Mathers rather indicate that
they were--but not so in the eighteenth. Some of them showed an
independence of spirit not at all agreeing with popular ideas of the
demure maid of olden days. Sarah Hall, for instance, whose parents lived
in Barbadoes, was sent to her grandmother, Madam Coleman of Boston, to
attend school. She arrived with her maid in 1719 and soon scandalized
her stately grandmother by abruptly leaving the house and engaging board
and lodging at a neighboring residence. At her brother's command she
returned; but even a brother's authority failed to control the spirited
young lady; for a few months after the episode Madam Coleman wrote:
"Sally won't go to school nor to church and wants a nue muff and a great
many other things she don't need. I tell her fine things are cheaper in
Barbadoes. She says she will go to Barbadoes in the Spring. She is well
and brisk, says her Brother has nothing to do with her as long as her
father is alive." The same lady informs us that Sally's instruction in
writing cost one pound, seven shillings, and four pence, the entrance
fee for dancing lessons, one pound, and the bill for dancing lessons for
four months, two pounds. No doubt it was worth the price; for later
Sally became rather a dashing society belle.
One thing always emphasized in the training of the colonial girl was
manners or etiquette--the art of being a charming hostess. As Mrs. Earle
says, "It is impossible to overestimate the value these laws of
etiquette, these conventions of custom had at a time, when neighborhood
life was the whole outside world." How many, many a "don't" the colonial
miss had dinned into her ears! Hear but a few of them: "Never sit down
at the table till asked, and after the blessing. Ask for nothing; tarry
till it be offered thee. Speak not. Bite not thy bread but break it.
Take salt only with a clean knife. Dip not the meat in the same. Hold
not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down at the right hand of
plate with blade on plate. Look not earnestly at any other that is
eating. When moderately satisfied leave the table. Sing not, hum not,
wriggle not.... Smell not of thy Meat; make not a noise with thy Tongue,
Mouth, Lips, or Breath in Thy Eating and Drinking.... When any speak to
thee, stand up. Say not I have heard it before. Never endeavour to help
him out if he tell it not right. Snigger not; never question the Truth
of it."
Girls were early taught these forms, and in addition received not only
advice but mechanical aid to insure their standing erect and sitting
upright. The average child of to-day would rebel most vigorously against
such contrivances, and justly; for in a few American schools, as in
English institutions, young ladies were literally tortured through
sitting in stocks, being strapped to backboards, and wearing stiffened
coats and stays re-inforced with strips of wood and metal. Such methods
undoubtedly made the colonial dame erect and perhaps stately in
appearance, but they contributed a certain artificial, thin-chested
structure that the healthy girl of to-day would abhor.
As we have seen, however, some women of the day contrived to pick up
unusual bits of knowledge, or made surprising expeditions into the realm
of literature and philosophy. Samuel Peters, writing in his _General
History of Connecticut_ in 1781, declared of their accomplishments:
"The women of Connecticut are strictly virtuous and to be compared to
the prude rather than the European polite lady. They are not permitted
to read plays; cannot converse about whist, quadrille or operas; but
will freely talk upon the subjects of history, geography, and
mathematics. They are great casuists and polemical divines; and I have
known not a few of them so well schooled in Greek and Latin as often to
put to the blush learned gentlemen." And yet Hannah Adams, writing in
her _Memoir_ in 1832, had this to say of educational opportunities in
Connecticut during the latter half of the eighteenth century: "My health
did not even admit of attending school with the children in the
neighborhood where I resided. The country schools, at that time, were
kept but a few months in the year, and all that was then taught in them
was reading, writing, and arithmetic. In the summer, the children were
instructed by females in reading, sewing, and other kinds of work. The
books chiefly made use of were the Bible and Psalter. Those who have had
the advantages of receiving the rudiments of their education at the
schools of the present day, can scarcely form an adequate idea of the
contrast between them, and those of an earlier age; and of the great
improvements which have been made even in the common country schools.
The disadvantages of my early education I have experienced during life;
and, among various others, the acquiring of a very faulty pronunciation;
a habit contracted so early, that I cannot wholly rectify it in later
years."
North and South women complained of the lack of educational advantages.
Madame Schuyler deplored the scarcity of books and of facilities for
womanly education, and spoke with irony of the literary tastes of the
older ladies: "Shakespeare was a questionable author at the Flatts,
where the plays were considered grossly familiar, and by no means to be
compared to 'Cato' which Madame Schuyler greatly admired. The 'Essay on
Man' was also in high esteem with this lady."[73] Many women of the day
realized their lack of systematic training, and keenly regretted the
absence of opportunity to obtain it. Abigail Adams, writing to her
husband on the subject, says, "If you complain of education in sons what
shall I say of daughters who every day experience the want of it? With
regard to the education of my own children I feel myself soon out of my
depth, destitute in every part of education. I most sincerely wish that
some more liberal plan might be laid and executed for the benefit of the
rising generation and that our new Constitution may be distinguished for
encouraging learning and virtue. If we mean to have heroes, statesmen,
and philosophers, we should have learned women. The world perhaps would
laugh at me, but you, I know, have a mind too enlarged and liberal to
disregard sentiment. If as much depends as is allowed upon the early
education of youth and the first principles which are instilled take the
deepest root great benefit must arise from the literary accomplishments
in women."[74]
And again, Hannah Adams' _Memoir_ of 1832 expresses in the following
words the intellectual hunger of the Colonial woman: "I was very
desirous of learning the rudiments of Latin, Greek, geography, and
logic. Some gentlemen who boarded at my father's offered to instruct me
in these branches of learning gratis, and I pursued these studies with
indescribable pleasure and avidity. I still, however, sensibly felt the
want of a more systematic education, and those advantages which females
enjoy in the present day.... My reading was very desultory, and novels
engaged too much of my attention."
After all, it would seem that fancy sewing was considered far more
requisite than science and literature in the training of American girls
of the eighteenth century. As soon as the little maid was able to hold a
needle she was taught to knit, and at the age of four or five commonly
made excellent mittens and stockings. A girl of fourteen made in 1760 a
pair of silk stockings with open work design and with initials knitted
on the instep, and every stage of the work from the raising and winding
of the silk to the designing and spinning was done by one so young.
Girls began to make samplers almost before they could read their
letters, and wonderful were the birds and animals and scenes depicted in
embroidery by mere children. An advertisement of the day is significant
of the admiration held for such a form of decorative work: "Martha
Gazley, late from Great Britain, now in the city of New York Makes and
Teacheth the following curious Works, viz.: Artificial Fruit and Flowers
and other Wax-works, Nuns-work, Philigre and Pencil Work upon Muslin,
all sorts of Needle-Work, and Raising of Paste, as also to paint upon
Glass, and Transparant for Sconces, with other Works. If any young
Gentlewomen, or others are inclined to learn any or all of the
above-mentioned curious Works, they may be carefully instructed in the
same by said Martha Gazley."
Thus the evidence leads us to believe that a colonial woman's education
consisted in the main of training in how to conduct and care for a home.
It was her principal business in life and for it she certainly was well
prepared. In the seventeenth century girls attended either a short term
public school or a dame's school, or, as among the better families in
the South, were taught by private tutors. In the eighteenth century they
frequently attended boarding schools or female seminaries, and here
learned--at least in the middle colonies and the South--not only reading
and writing and arithmetic, but dancing, music, drawing, French, and
"manners." In Virginia and New York, as we have seen, illiteracy among
seventeenth century women was astonishingly common; but in the
eighteenth century those above the lowest classes in all three sections
could at least read, write, and keep accounts, and some few had dared to
reach out into the sphere of higher learning. That many realized their
intellectual poverty and deplored it is evident; how many more who kept
no diaries and left no letters hungered for culture we shall never know;
but the very longing of these colonial women is probably one of the main
causes of that remarkable movement for the higher education of American
women so noticeable in the earlier years of the nineteenth century.
Their smothered ambition undoubtedly gave birth to an intellectual
advance of women unequalled elsewhere in the world.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] Vol. I, p. 231.
[44] Vol. I, p. 161.
[45] Vol. I, p. 165.
[46] Vol. I, p. 344.
[47] _Letters of Abigail Adams_, p. 24.
[48] _Memoirs of an American Lady_, p. 27.
[49] Humphreys: _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 8.
[50] Smyth: _Writings of Ben Franklin_, Vol. III, p. 203.
[51] Smyth: _Writings of Ben Franklin_, Vol. III, p. 4.
[52] Ford: _Writings of Thomas Jefferson_, Vol. III. p. 345
[53] _Selections from Fithian's Writings_, Aug. 12, 1774.
[54] _American Nation Series, England in America_, p. 116.
[55] Vol. I, p. 299.
[56] Vol. I, p. 301.
[57] Vol. I, p. 311.
[58] _Institutional History of Virginia_, Vol. I, p. 454.
[59] Ravenel: _Eliza Pinckney_, p. 50.
[60] Ravenel: _Eliza Pinckney_, p. 51.
[61] Ravenel: _Eliza Pinckney_, p. 49.
[62] Turell: _Memoirs of Life and Death of Mrs. Jane Turell._
[63] _Letters of Abigail Adams_, p. 11.
[64] _Letters of Abigail Adams_, p. 9.
[65] Grant: _Memoirs of an American Lady_, p. 136.
[66] Grant: _Memoirs of an American Lady_, p. 267.
[67] _Letters of Abigail Adams_, p. 401.
[68] Smyth: _Writings of Franklin_, Vol. I, p. 344.
[69] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 344.
[70] Smyth: Vol. III, p. 431.
[71] Smyth: Vol. V, p. 345.
[72] Quoted in Earle's _Child Life in Colonial Days_, p. 113.
[73] Humphreys; _Catherine Schuyler_, p. 75.
[74] Brooks: _Dames and Daughters of Colonial Days_, p. 199.