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The Female Seminary Movement and Woman's Mission in Antebellum America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Leonard I. Sweet
Leonard I. Sweet*
Affiliation:
president of the United Thelogical Seminary, Dayton, Ohio.
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Extract

The years 1820–1850 were characterized by a remarkable transition in American education. A decisive shift occurred in the philosophy and patterns of educating American women which would have marked social, economic, and political ramifications in antebellum America. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, females were seen as weaker intellectually than males; they were denied the right to an equal education with males; and they were educated haphazardly, with few formal opportunities beyond a district school education for any but the rich. Even the “advanced” education at dame schools, boarding schools, and female academies sought only to further domestic skills, social polish, and parlor savvy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 1985 , pp. 41 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1985

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References

1. Beatty, Charles C., Lecture on the Formation of Female Character (Steubenville, 1848), p. 12.Google Scholar William, Rogers Chapman, Education of Daughters: An Address Delivered at the Close of the First Term of the Union Springs Young Ladies Seminary (Aurora, 1852), p. 17.Google Scholar

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19. See as an example the publicity for the Macon Female Academy run by a minister and his wife, in the Memphis Daily Eagle, 17 August 1848, and Mary, Lyon's “Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary,” Old South Leaflets. No. 145 (n.p., n.d.), p. 4.Google Scholar

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21. Mrs. E. H. Sivley to Jane Sivley, 20 May 186(?), Jane Sivley Papers, SHC. For evidence that parents who could not send their daughters to seminary still strove to provide arrangements for the learning of Latin, see Virginia Shelby to Jamor Thomas H. Shelby, 8 February 1839, Grigsby Collection, Virginia (Hart) Shelby Breckenridge Papers, Filson Club.

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58. Western Review and Miscellaneous Magazine 4 (1821): 48 Google Scholar, as quoted in Parrish, Gladys V., “The History of Female Education in Lexington and Fayette Counties (Kentucky),” (M. A. thesis, University of Kentucky, 1932), p. 23 Google Scholar; Circular and Annual Catalogue of the New Albany Female Seminary, New Albany, Indiana. For 1858–9 (New Albany, 1858), p. 13.Google Scholar Also see Tappan, Henry P., Discourse, p. 38.Google Scholar See also Rockwell, , Address, pp. 8, 10 Google Scholar; and Circular and Annual Catalogue, Glasgow, Kentucky, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

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