Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:33:28.729Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Not Only Ours But Others: The Quaker Teaching Daughters of the Mid-Atlantic, 1790–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Joan M. Jensen
Joan M. Jensen*
Affiliation:
History Department, New Mexico State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In their search for the ideological origins of the women's rights movement, historians have already defined rather clearly two distinct ideas. The first Linda Kerber has labeled “the ideology of the Republican mother,” a cluster of attitudes popular in the years after the American Revolution that emphasized the importance of mothers being educated in order to educate their children. These ideas were argued persuasively by both male and female writers in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, most eloquently by Judith Sargeant Murray, the New England essayist who stressed the need for female education in the 1790s. By the 1820s, a second ideology was taking form, one that I would like to label “the ideology of the teaching daughters,” in which writers argued the benefits of employing women as teachers.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , Spring 1984 , pp. 3 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

Research for this paper was completed under a Fellowship at the Regional Economic History Research Center, Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation, Greenville-Wilmington, DE., during 1980–81.

1. Kerber, Linda K., Women of the Republic: Intellect & Ideology in Revolutionary Ameria (Chapel Hill, 1980), p. 199; Cott, Nancy F., The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman's Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven and London, 1977), p. 121; and Norton, Mary Beth, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (Boston, 1980), pp. 265–272 discuss the ideology of republican mothers. Sklar, Kathryn Kish, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New York, 1976), p. 97.Google Scholar

2. Scott, Anne Firor, “The Ever Widening Circle: the Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminary, 1822–1872,” History of Education Quarterly 19:1 (Spring 1979):3, 7; Mulhern, James, A History of Secondary Education in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1933), p. 416; and Sack, Saul, History of Higher Education in Pennsylvania (2 vols., Harrisburg, 1963), 2, p. 378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Tully, Alan, “Literacy Levels and Educational Development in Rural Pennsylvania, 1729–1775,” Pennsylvania History 39 (1972):301–312.Google Scholar

4. James, Sydney V., “Quaker Meetings and Education in the Eighteenth Century,” Quaker History 51 (1962): 97, discusses problems of implementing educational goals.Google Scholar

5. Brookes, George S., Friend Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, 1937), p. 53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Diary of Sarah Cresson, 1789–1892, Quaker Collection, Haverford College Library; “Ruth Walmsley,” in The Friend's Library (15 vols.; Philadelphia, 1837–1850), v. 6, pp. 75–82.Google Scholar

7. Quoted in Kiefer, Monica, “Early American Childhood in the Middle Atlantic”, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 68 (1944):17.Google Scholar

8. Woody, Thomas, Early Quaker Education in Pennsylvania (New York, 1920), p. 181. Five women are mentioned in a 1784 list of teachers.Google Scholar

9. School for Black People, Overseers Minutes, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College. Hereafter cited as FHLSC.Google Scholar

10. Joseph Hawley, Diary, 1796 and School Account, 1796. Chester County Historical Society, West Chester, Pennsylvania. Hereafter cited as CCHS.Google Scholar

11. Providence Meeting Subscription List, Painter Collection, Series 5, Box 3, FHLSC.Google Scholar

12. Burstyn, Joan N., Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (Totowa, New Jersey, 1980), p. 11, discusses this tension for women in education. I have chosen to emphasize the liberating aspects for middle class women because the documents most clearly reveal this attitude. Woody, Thomas, A History of Women's Education in the United States (New York & Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1929), v. 1 p. 202 for Philadelphia Free Institute; Mirror of the Times, April 2, 1816, 2:2 describes the Harmony Society; and Rice, Edwin W., The Sunday-School Movement 1780–1917 and the American Sunday-School Union, 1817–1917 (Philadelphia, 1917), for literacy movement. Among Quakers I have found little of the rhetoric of piety and submissiveness described by Melder, Keith, “Woman's High Calling: The Teaching Profession in America, 1830–1860,” American Studies, 13 (Fall 1972):19–32.Google Scholar

13. Esther Fussell to John Lewis, Jr., 4-20-1817, Esther Lewis Papers, FHLSC. Wells, Robert V., “Quaker Marriage Patterns in a Colonial Perspective,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 29 (1972):415–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Johnson, Mary, “Madame Rivardi's Seminary in the Gothic Mansion,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 105 (1980):3–39, “Victorine du Pont: Heiress to the Educational Dream of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours,” Delaware History, (1981):88–105; and “Antoinette Brevost: A Schoolmistress in Early Pittsburgh,” Winterthur Portfolio, 15 (1980): 151–168. Cott, , Bonds of Womanhood, p. 121, talks of the “vissitudes of fortune” being recognized as a reason for education in tracts after 1819.Google Scholar

15. Dewess, Sarah, History of Westtown Boarding School 1799–1899 (Philadelphia, 1899), pp. 90, 99.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., pp. 20, 45.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., pp. 54, 69, 70, 92; and Hold, Helen G., Westtown Through the Years, 1799–1942, (Westtown, Pa., 1942), p. 55.Google Scholar

18. Rebecca Budd, Diary and Olive Baily to Rest Swayne, 11-9-1808, CCHS. Appel, John C., “Significance of the Quakers in Public Education In Pennsylvania, 1801–1860,” (Unpublished Master's Thesis, University of Maryland, 1943), pp. 86, 89, 91, 93 for teacher training.Google Scholar

19. Rachel Painter to Sarah Painter, 10-17-1821, Painter Collection and Martha Sharpless, Journal of Philadelphia Meeting, 4-1804, FHLSC.Google Scholar

20. Catalog of Westtown Through the Years, pp. 340, 341, 351.Google Scholar

21. Kimberton School, Clipping File, CCHS.Google Scholar

22. Esther Lewis to Edwin & Rebecca Fussell, 4-10-1839, Esther Lewis Papers, FHLSC. Lewis, Graceanna, “Kimberton Boarding School for Girls: Abby Kimber,” Friends' Intelligencer, 52 (1895):615–6, 633–4, 662–3, and Lewis, Alice, “Abby Kimber,” Friends' Intelligencer, 53 (1896):734.Google Scholar

23. Student memoirs and letters are in the Howard M. Jenkins Papers, RG 5, S. C. Haines Manuscripts, and Palmer Papers, RG 5, especially series of letters from Pattie to Sallie T. Palmer in 1843 from Kimberton, FHLSC.Google Scholar

24. The joy of learning is strongly conveyed by an unidentified writer at Wilmington Boarding School to Esther Lewis, 12-8-18 [17], Esther Lewis Papers, FHLSC. Information of Sharon Female Seminary from undated brochure Sharon Female Seminary, Painter Collection, Box 6, Folder 16 and Weston, Rosa D., “Quaker Sharon,” Misc. Mss. [c. 1902], FHLSC; Thompson, Eleanor Wolf, Education for Ladies, 1830–1860 (New York, 1947), pp. 64–65; Bartram, Mary S., “John Jackson,” Friends' Intelligencer, 53 (1896): 155–156; and Warner, Deborah Jean, “Science Education for Women in Autebellum America,” Isis, 69 (1978):59. Private normal schools were set up in Vermont and Massachusetts in the 1820s. Massachusetts established the first public single purpose normal schools in 1839. Borrowman, Merle L., The Liberal and Technical in Teacher Education: A Historical Survey of American Thought (New York, 1956,), p. 37.Google Scholar

25. Rachel Painter to Elizabeth Painter, 11-30-1822, Painter Collection, FHLSC.Google Scholar

26. Rachel Painter to Minshall Painter, 6-20-1815 and 1-3-1817, Letter Book, Index A, Letters to Minshall and Enos Painter, 1820–1863, Painter Papers, Tyler Arboretum, Lima, Pennsylvania.Google Scholar

27. Rachel Painter to Minshall Painter, 1-16-1820, Ibid. Google Scholar

28. Rachel Painter to Minshall Painter, 3-15-1823, Ibid. Google Scholar

29. Superintendent of Common Schools of Pennsylvania, Eighth Annual Report (Harrisburg, 1842). Over 25 percent of 1041 teachers receiving payments for teaching paupers between 1805 and 1834 in Chester County were female. Most of the payments were from the 1830s and the earliest names were usually female. The 286 names of women teachers are listed in the appendix to Hanning, George T., “A Historical Survey of the Schools in Chester County Prior to 1834,” (Master's Thesis, Temple University, 1937). West Chester elected the first female superintendent in the state of Pennsylvania in 1865 and in 1872 elected two of the first nine women school directors in the state. Support for legislation authorizing the election of women and the election of the first women directors of schools came from areas with heavy Quaker populations. Shur, Irene G., “Emergence of the Free, Common Schools in Chester County, Pennsylvania: 1834–1874,” (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1976), pp. 191–192.Google Scholar

30. There are no comparable statistics for New Castle County, Delaware, but scattered indications of women's lower employment and wage rates are in Federal Writer's Project, University of Delaware, Special Collections, Newark, Delaware, Vol. 2, especially pp. 278–285. Employment statistics for Delaware county are in Minshall Painter, “Statistics of the Populations of Middletown Township and Delaware County,” Painter Papers, Tyler Arboretum, Lima, Pennsylvania. District schools employed six times as many males as females and paid them one-third more in 1850. Opposition to schooling of Afro-Americans included using the courts to invalidate an endowment for a black college in Wilmington. The Delaware Gazette and Watchman noted the decision with approval on Dec. 12, 1834, 2:1. Indenture records, Hall of Records, Dover, Delaware, reflect the growing opposition to black literacy. Livesay, Harold C., “Delaware Negroes, 1865–1915,” Delaware History, 13 (1968); 89, erroneously states that all blacks were illiterate. This was not true for blacks in New Castle County. Some public schools in Pittsburgh did not admit girls to them. Widows and daughters of widows were hired at lower salaries than males. By 1847, Pittsburgh schools were beginning to hire single daughters of the middle-class. Renner, Marguerite, “Who Will Teach? Changing Job Opportunity and Roles for Women in the Evolution of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, 1830–1900,” (PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1981), pp. 103–106, 145.Google Scholar

31. Hancock, Harold B., “Mary Ann Shadd: Negro Editor, Educator, and Lawyer,” Delaware History 15 (April 1973); 187–194; Beorden, James and Butler, Linda Jean, Shadd: The Life and Times of Mary Shadd Cary (Toronto, 1977), and Lewis, Elsie M., “Mary Ann Shadd Cary,” in James, Edward T., ed., Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary (2 vols.; Cambridge, 1971), v. 1, pp. 300–301.Google Scholar

32. Biographical information in Alsop, Gulielma F., “Ann Preston,” Ibid, v. 3, pp. 96–97 and Judson, Eliza E., Address in Memory of Ann Preston, M.D. (1873), FHLSC.Google Scholar

33. Ann Preston to Hannah Darlington during 1837 to 1854 describe her activities. Quotes from letters of 1-9-1851 and 2-9-1850, CCHS.Google Scholar