Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T21:42:28.128Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Music Teachers in the North Carolina Education Market, 1800-1840

How Mrs. Sambourne Earned a “Comfortable Living for Herself and Her Children”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Abstract

Social historians have demonstrated that although men comprised the majority of teachers in North Carolina schools and academies during the early national period, women predominated by the end of the nineteenth century. This study concludes that among the music teachers who taught in academies and venture schools, women gained a majority decades earlier. In an effort to understand some of the underlying social processes that contributed to this shift, the following discussion analyzes the changing proportion of men and women in a sample of 65 music teachers, tracks the tuition they charged in a free market, and compares this to the tuition charged by teachers of Latin and Greek. The shift to women among music teachers in North Carolina presents an intriguing case, because it does not fit well with some earlier theoretical models of feminization among nineteenth-century teachers. The data suggest that women came to predominate among music teachers because a changing market for music instruction in venture schools and academies triggered a process of occupational abandonment and succession.

Type
Special Section: Education Markets
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2008 

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

Albisetti, James (1993) “The feminization of teaching in the nineteenth century: A comparative perspective.” History of Education 22: 255–56.Google Scholar
Apple, Michael W. (1985) “Teaching and ‘women’s work’: A comparative historical and ideological analysis.” Teachers College Record 86: 457–73.10.1177/016146818508600306Google Scholar
Apple, Michael W. (1986) Teachers and Texts: A Political Economy of Class and Gender Relations in Education. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Barnard, Richard M., and Vinovskis, Maris A. (1977) “The female teacher in antebellum Massachusetts.” Journal of Social History 10: 332–45.Google Scholar
Beadie, Nancy (2004) “In the pay of the public: Changing ideas about gender and political economy in nineteenth-century New York.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, April.Google Scholar
Beadie, Nancy, and Tolley, Kim, eds. (2002) Chartered Schools: Two Hundred Years of Independent Academies in the United States, 1727-1925. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Clifford, Geraldine J. (1989) “Man/woman/teacher: Gender, family, and career in American educational history,” in Warren, Donald (ed.) American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work. New York: Macmillan: 293–343.Google Scholar
Cobia, Mrs. (1839) “Cobia’s Select Female School.” Raleigh Register, December 21. North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Coon, Charles L., ed. (1915) North Carolina Schools and Academies, 1790-1840: A Documentary History. Raleigh, NC: Edwards and Broughton.Google Scholar
Cott, Nancy (1977) The Bonds of Womanhood: “Women’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Davies, Margery W. (1982) Woman’s Place Is at the Typewriter: Office Work and Office Workers, 1870-1930. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Dublin, Thomas (1994) Transforming Women’s Work: New England Lives in the Industrial Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Elsbree, Willard S. (1939) The American Teacher: Evolution of a Profession in a Democracy. New York: American Book Company.Google Scholar
Engle, Henry, ed. (1893) Documents Relating to the Connecticut Settlement in the Wyoming Valley, www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/pa/1pa/paarchivesseries/series2/vol18/paarch2-18toc.html (accessed October 15, 2004).Google Scholar
Farnham, Christie A. (1994) The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Socialization in the Antebellum South. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Fishlow, Albert (1966) “The American common school revival: Fact or fancy?” in Rosovsky, Henry (ed.) Industrialization in Two Systems: Essays in Honor of Alexander Gerschenkron. New York: Wiley: 40–67.Google Scholar
Franklin, John Hope (1971) The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Gadski, Mary E. (1986) The History of the New Bern Academy. New Bern, NC: Tryon Palace Commission.Google Scholar
Gales, Joseph, and Gales, Winifred (n.d.) “Gales reminiscences.” Typescript, Gales Family Papers, fol. 1, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia (1990) Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grumet, Madeline (1988) Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Hamilton, William (1823) “Fayetteville Academy.” Raleigh Register, November 18. North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Nancy (1981) Woman’s “True” Profession: Voices from the History of Teaching. New York: Feminist.Google Scholar
Holden, W. W. (1854) First Annual Report of the General Superintendent of Common Schools, docsouth.unc.edu/nc/schools1854/menu.html (January 10, 2006).Google Scholar
Johnson, Guion G. (1937) Antebellum North Carolina: A Social History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Kaestle, Carl F. (1983) Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Kerber, Linda K., Cott, Nancy F., Gross, Robert, Hunt, Lynn, Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll , and Stansell, Christine M. (1989) “Beyond roles, beyond spheres: Thinking about gender in the early Republic.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 44: 565–81.Google Scholar
Kessler-Harris, Alice (1982) Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Knight, Edgar W. (1930) “Notes on John Chavis.” North Carolina Historical Review 7: 328–29.Google Scholar
Kraditor, Aileen S., ed. (1968) Up from the Pedestal: Selected Writings in the History of American Feminism. Chicago: Quadrangle.Google Scholar
Lerner, Gerder (1968) “The lady and the mill girl: Change in the status of women in the age of Jackson.” Midcontinent American Studies Journal 10: 5–15.Google Scholar
McCusker, John J. (2001) How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Commodity Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States. 2nd ed. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society.Google Scholar
Miller, Pavla (1998) Transformations of Patriarchy in the West, 1500-1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Thornton W., ed. (1992) North Carolina Wills: A Testator Index, 1665-1900. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing.Google Scholar
Murray, David (1885) Historical and Statistical Record of the University of the State of New York. Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons.Google Scholar
Nash, Margaret A. (2002) “A triumph of reason: Female education in academies in the new Republic,” in Beadie, Nancy and Tolley, Kim (eds.) Chartered Schools: Two Hundred Years of Independent Academies in the United States, 1727-1925. New York: Routledge: 64–88.Google Scholar
Nash, Margaret A. (2005) Women’s Education in the United States, 1780-1840. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Oppenheimer, Valerie K. (1970) The Female Labor Force in the United States: Demographic and Economic Factors Governing Its Growth and Changing Composition. Berkeley: University of California, Institute of International Studies.Google Scholar
Perlmann, Joel, and Margo, Robert A. (2001) Women’s Work? American Schoolteachers, 1650-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Powers, Jane Bernard (1992) The “Girl Question” in Education: Vocational Education for Young Women in the Progressive Era. London: Falmer.Google Scholar
Roberts, Mary Louise (2002) “True womanhood revisited.” Journal of Women’s History 14: 150–55.Google Scholar
Robinson, Ben (1812) “Fayetteville Academy.” Raleigh Register, January 10. North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Rury, John L. (1989) “Who became teachers and why: The social characteristics of teachers in American history,” in Warren, Donald (ed.) American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work. New York: Macmillan: 9–48.Google Scholar
Ryan, Mary P. (1981) Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ryan, Mary P. (1990) Women in Public: Between Banner and Ballot, 1825-1880. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Sambourne, Mrs. (1808) “Mrs. Sambourne.” Raleigh Register, May 19. North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Sambourne, Mrs. (1809) “Announcement.” Raleigh Register, January 19. North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Sambourne, Thomas (1807) “Announcement.” Raleigh Register, August 13. North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Sklar, Kathryn Kish (1976) Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Solomon, Barbara M. (1985) In the Company of Educated Women. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Strober, Myra H. (1984) “Toward a general theory of occupational sex segregation: The case of public school teaching,” in Reskin, Barbara (ed.) Sex Segregation in the Workplace: Trends, Explanations, Remedies. Washington, DC: National Academy Press: 144–56.Google Scholar
Strober, Myra H., and Tyack, David (1980) “Why do women teach and men manage? A report on research on schools.” Signs 5: 494–503.Google Scholar
Tolley, Kim (2002) “Mapping the landscape of higher schooling, 1727-1850,” in Beadie, Nancy and Tolley, Kim (eds.) Chartered Schools: Two Hundred Years of Independent Academies in the United States, 1727-1925. New York: Routledge: 19–43.Google Scholar
Tolley, Kim (2003) The Science Education of American Girls: A Historical Perspective. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tolley, Kim (2005). “A chartered school in a free market: The case of Raleigh Academy, 1801-1823.” Teachers College Record 107: 59–88.Google Scholar
Tolley, Kim, and Beadie, Nancy (2006) “Socioeconomic incentives to teach in New York and North Carolina: Toward a more complex model of teacher labor markets, 1800-1850.” History of Education Quarterly 46: 36–72.Google Scholar
Tolley, Kim, and Nash, Margaret A. (2002) “Leaving home to teach: The diary of Susan Nye Hutchison,” in Beadie, Nancy and Tolley, Kim (eds.) Chartered Schools: Two Hundred Years of Independent Academies in the United States, 1727-1925. New York: Routledge: 161–85.Google Scholar
Tyack, David, and Hansot, Elizabeth (1992) Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Public Schools. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher (1991) A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1853) Seventh Census of the United States: 1850. Washington, DC: Robert Armstrong, Public Printer.Google Scholar
Valentine, William D. (1854) Diary. Vol. 14. Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Walbert, Kathryn (2002) “‘Endeavor to improve yourself’: The education of white women in the antebellum South,” in Beadie, Nancy and Tolley, Kim (eds.) Chartered Schools: Two Hundred Years of Independent Academies in the United States, 1727-1925. New York: Routledge: 116–36.Google Scholar
Welter, Barbara (1985) Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
White, William (1808) “Raleigh Academy.” Raleigh Register, March 3. North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Whitehead, Kay (2007) “The teaching family, the state, and new women in nineteenth-century South Australia,” in Tolley, Kim (ed.) Transformations in Schooling: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 153–72.Google Scholar
Winterer, Caroline (2003) The Culture of Classicism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Wynne, Frances Holloway (1985) Abstract of Record of Wills, Inventories, Settlements of Estates, 1802-1812, Wake County, North Carolina. Vol. 2. Fredericksburg, VA: Bookcrafters.Google Scholar
Zaeske, Susan (2003) Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women’s Political Identity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar