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Other documents randomly have
different content
‘The attentive notice of every instructive fact and occurrence,’ was
exemplified in practice. Newspapers were taken in a few families;
books were scarce but freely lent; the Scriptures were much read;
and, as for time, ‘where there is a will there is a way.’”
Since the women of that day left almost no record of their thought
in print, the biography of Mrs. Adams, already quoted, may be called
upon to illustrate the intellectual and moral characteristics attributed
to them. Among the New England women of the early part of this
century who are still remembered by the present generation, there
was a noteworthy number who, in vigor of intellect and strength of
character, might truly be called her peers.
While Mr. Adams was in Europe (from 1780) as Commissioner
from the United States, Mrs. Adams was managing the family
property, at a time of depreciation of paper money. Speaking of this
period Mr. Charles Francis Adams says: “Her letters are remarkable
because they display the readiness with which she could devote
herself to the most opposite duties, and the cheerful manner in
which she could accommodate herself to the difficulties of the times.
She is a farmer, cultivating the land and discussing the weather and
crops; a merchant, reporting prices current and the rates of
exchange, and directing the making up of invoices; a politician,
speculating upon the probabilities of peace or war, and a mother,
writing the most exalted sentiments to her son. All of these pursuits
she adopts together; some from choice, the rest from the necessity of
the case; and in all she appears equally well.”
The complete sympathy of interest between Mrs. Adams and her
distinguished husband in “seeking for political truth in its
fundamental principles,” as Mr. Adams is said to have done, appears
in her letters, and it may be questioned whether, barring the
consideration of sex, the term “statesmanlike” might not apply to the
views of both.
Just a month before the resolution declaring the independence of
the colonies was offered in the Continental Congress by Richard
Henry Lee of Virginia and seconded by John Adams of
Massachusetts Mrs. Adams wrote to her husband, under date of May
7, 1776.
“I believe ’tis nearly ten days since I wrote you a line. I have not
felt in a humor to entertain you. If I had taken up my pen, perhaps
some unbecoming invective might have fallen from it. The eyes of
our rulers have been closed and a lethargy has seized almost every
member. I fear a fatal security has taken possession of them. While
the building is in flames they tremble at the expense of water to
quench it. In short, two months have elapsed since the evacuation of
Boston, and very little has been done in that time to secure it, or the
harbor, from future invasion. The people are all in a flame, and no
one among us, that I have heard of, even mentions expense. They
think, universally, that there has been an amazing neglect
somewhere.
“’Tis a maxim of state that ‘power and liberty are like heat and
moisture; where they are well mixed everything prospers; where they
are single they are destructive!’
“A government of more stability is much wanted in this colony,
and they are ready to receive it at the hands of Congress.
“And since I have begun with maxims of state, I will add another,
namely, that a people may let a king fall yet still remain a people; but
if a king let his people slip from him he is no longer a king. And as
this is most certainly our case, why not proclaim to the world, in
decisive terms, your own importance? Shall we not be despised by
foreign powers for hesitating so long at a word?”
To this Mr. Adams replied:

“Philadelphia, May 27, 1776.

“I think you shine as a statesman, of late, as well as a farmeress. Pray where do

you get your maxims of state? They are very apropos.”

All history shows how long the conception of a plan, in some acute
mind, precedes the popular impulse toward it. The fertile mind of
Daniel De Foe, in an “Essay on Projects,” published in 1699, suggests
the plan of an Academy of Music, with hints for cheap Sunday
concerts, an Academy for Military Science and Practice, and an
Academy for Women.
This is the earliest project for a school of this grade, for women,
and remained the only one for more than a century in England. In
America, from the middle of the eighteenth century, academies were
established in many towns where the law requiring instruction to fit
boys for the university did not apply. Some of these opened their
doors to girls, and, in a few instances, seminaries and academies for
young ladies were founded, and, once inaugurated, they multiplied
with constantly accelerating speed. A contemporary of these events,
writing as “Senex” in “The American Journal of Education,” says:
“When at length academies were opened for female improvement in
the higher branches, a general excitement appeared in parents, and
an emulation in daughters to attend them. The love of reading and
habits of application became fashionable.”
There appear, from the first, to have been no discouragements
from lack of mental capacity on the part of girls, even in the
academies where they were instructed with boys.
The “Moravian Brethren” have the honor of founding the first
private institution in America designed to give girls better
advantages than the common schools. A female seminary was
opened by them in Bethlehem, Pa., in 1749. Its service went beyond
its own work, for Rev. Mr. Woodbridge records that “after the
success of the Moravians in female education, the attention of
gentlemen of reputation and influence was turned to the subject. Dr.
Morgan, Dr. Rush,—the great advocate of education,—with others,
instituted an academy for females in Philadelphia. Their attention
and influence and care were successful, and from them sprang all the
subsequent and celebrated schools in that city.”
It is presumed that it was of the “Philadelphia Female Academy,”
which held commencement exercises from as early as 1794, that Mr.
Woodbridge says, “In 1780, in Philadelphia, for the first time in my
life, I heard a class of young ladies parse English.”
The “Penn Charter School” has a long and honorable record and
has admitted girls for more than a century.
The Penn Charter School was founded in Philadelphia in 1697 as a
public school, and has been carried on down to the present day
under three charters granted by William Penn in the years 1701,
1708, 1711. These make provision, at the cost of the people called
Quakers, for “all Children and Servants, Male and Female ... the rich
to be instructed at reasonable rates, the poor to be maintained and
schooled for nothing.” Provision is made in the charters for
instruction of both sexes in “reading, writing, work, languages, arts,
and sciences.”
The foundation laid is broad enough for a university for the
people. As a matter of fact the girls and boys have always been
educated separately, and the curriculum of the girls’ school has
always been less advanced than that of the boys. The Latin school has
not been opened to them, nor, it is believed, have the ancient
languages been taught them.
In 1795, “Poor’s Academy for Young Ladies” became “a place of
proud distinction to finished females.”
The earliest academy for girls in New England was founded in
1763, at Byfield, Mass., by bequest of William Dummer, whose name
it took. In 1784, Leicester Academy, open to both sexes, was
incorporated.
In the same year the “Friends” established a school which offered
the higher education to girls at Providence, R. I. This has been of
high repute down to the present day.
In the same city we find, in 1797, the advertisement of a gentleman
who “will conduct a morning school for young ladies in reading,
writing, and arithmetic,” and in 1808 Miss Brenton, at South
Kingston, R. I., offers instruction which will include “epistolary style,
as well as temple work, paper work, fringing, and netting.”
In 1785 Dr. Dwight founded a Young Ladies’ Seminary at
Greenfield, Conn.
About 1787, Mr. Caleb Brigham, a noted teacher, opened a school
for girls in Boston. This has been spoken of as “the most vigorous
and systematic experiment hitherto made, and the most
systematically antagonized.” Upon opening, however, the school was
immediately filled. The supply created a demand. More sought
admission than could be accommodated. With the selectmen’s
daughters in school female education was becoming popular.
In 1789 a female academy was opened in Medford, the first
establishment of the kind in New England. This was the resort of
scholars from all the Eastern States.
We get here and there, proof of the espionage exercised over young
women in those days.
 Mrs. Rawson was a distinguished teacher who established a
boarding-school for girls. The town voted, May 12, 1800, that the
second and third seats in the women’s side of the gallery of the
meeting-house be allowed for Mrs. Rawson, for herself and scholars;
and that she be allowed to put doors and locks on them.
In 1791–92 the Maine Legislature incorporated academies at
Berwick, Hallowell, Fryeburg, Westminster, and East Machias.
In 1792 Westford (Mass.) Academy was organized. It offered a very
extensive programme. The body of rules and laws for governance
provides that “the English, Latin, and Greek languages, together with
writing, arithmetic, and the art of speaking shall be taught, and, if
desired, practical geometry, logic, geography, and music; that the
said school shall be free to any nation, age, or sex, provided that no
one shall be admitted unless able to read in the Bible readily without
spelling.”
The impulse which single individuals often give to progress had its
exemplification in this awakening period.
Two students of Yale College, during a long vacation after the
British troops invaded New Haven, had each a class of young ladies
for the term of one quarter. One of these students, well known later
as the Rev. William Woodbridge, and before quoted here, during his
senior year in college, in 1779, kept a young ladies’ school in New
Haven, consisting of about twenty-five scholars, in which he taught
grammar, geography, composition, and the elements of rhetoric, and
the success of this school led to the establishment of others
elsewhere.
Mr. Woodbridge, on graduating, took for the subject of his thesis,
“Improvement in Female Education.” It would be interesting to know
whether the school of Mr. Woodbridge led, as seems probable, to the
following curious bit of history.
From Yale College, or from as near to it as a girl could get, issued,
in 1783, the following attested certificate:

“Be it known to you that I have examined Miss Lucinda Foote, twelve years old,
and have found that in the learned languages, the Latin and the Greek, she has
made commendable progress, giving the true meaning of passages in the Æneid of
Virgil, the select orations of Cicero, and in the Greek testament, and that she is
fully qualified, except in regard to sex, to be received as a pupil of the Freshman
Class of Yale University.
“Given in the College Library, the 22d of December, 1783.
“Ezra Stiles, President.”

Miss Foote afterwards pursued a full course of college studies and

Hebrew, under President Stiles. She then married and had ten
children.
Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College, traveled in 1803
through New England and New York, and made careful observation
of educational conditions. He reports that “of the higher class of
schools, generally styled academies, where pupils are qualified for
college, there are twenty in Connecticut and forty-eight in
Massachusetts.” He adds: “Two of those in Connecticut and three in
Massachusetts are exclusively female seminaries. Some others admit
children of both sexes.” He does not say that any one of the thirteen
in New Hampshire or of the twelve in Vermont was open to girls. A
third of a century afterwards Massachusetts had 854 academies and
private schools. Later, the advance in grade of the public school
system so reduced the number of personally supported schools, that
in 1886 there were but 74 academies and 348 private schools, about
one-half the number of a century before. The rapid growth and as
rapid decline of the academy system was due to the fact that, while
personal and associated effort had taken up a work for which the
people were not prepared, its success proved a rapid educator,
especially as to the capacity of girls, and the free school system was
steadily pressed to higher levels.
Salem established an English high school for boys in 1827; one for
girls eighteen years later, in 1845.
It was in 1836, as has been stated, when the school committee of
Newburyport decreed “that one female grammar school be kept
though the year”; it was only six years afterwards, in 1842, that the
town voted to establish a female high school. This was encouraging,
but when, later, the valuable “Putnam Fund” came into use for
advanced education, there was much discussion between the special
committee, appointed by the town, in conference with the trustees of
the fund, as to whether Mr. Putnam designed, by his bequest, to
include the instruction of females, and it required a decision of the
Supreme Court to sustain the position of the trustees that “youth”
might include both sexes.
The city of Lowell, Mass., which held its first town meeting in
1826, and was not incorporated until 1836, established a high school
in 1831, midway between these events, and, to its lasting credit, on a
co-educational basis. The first class which it graduated gave to
Lowell its first woman principal of a grammar school, and to the
country General B. F. Butler. This was one of the earliest high
schools, and, so far as the writer can learn, the first that was co-
educational.
In connection with the first and ephemeral high school for girls, in
Boston, we have unusual opportunities in the “Municipal History of
Boston,” by Josiah Quincy, to learn the public sentiment of the time
among the most intelligent and worthy, and to observe the struggle
which it cost the more progressive to persuade those in power that
girls had as great need of instruction, and as real claim on the public
funds, as their brothers.
In 1825 the school committee of Boston asked an appropriation
from the city council for a high school for girls. A few years previous
the monitorial, or mutual, system of instruction had been tried in a
town school. Some claimed that it had been successful; its cost was
certainly less than one-third that of the old system.
Speaking of the formation of the plan for a high school for girls,
Mr. Quincy says: “There being at that time a very general desire in
the school committee to test the usefulness of monitorial instruction,
it was proposed that the school should be conducted on that system;
and in respect of expense the report supposed that one large room
would be sufficient, at least for one year.”
It was objected to the foundation of the school that the best
scholars would be drawn away from the grammar schools, to the loss
of their influence and of their services as monitors; in spite of this
the city council voted an appropriation of $2000 to carry out the
plan. “The anticipations of difficulty were, however, so strong and so
plausible, that the project was adopted expressly as an experiment, if
favorable, to be continued, if adverse, to be dropped, of course.”
 Difficulties appeared immediately. “Before the examination of
candidates occurred, it becomes apparent that the result of a high
school for girls would be very different from that of the high school
for boys; and that, if continued upon the scale of time and studies
which the original project embraced, the expense would be
insupportable, and the effect upon the common schools positively
injurious.
“Instead of 90 candidates, the highest number that had ever
offered in one year for the school for boys, it was ascertained that
nearly three hundred would be presented for the high school for
girls ... and it was evident that either two high schools for girls must
be established the first year, or that more than one-half of the
candidates must be rejected.”
Two hundred and eighty-six candidates presented themselves, and
an arbitrary system was adopted to keep all but 130 out. “The girls
admitted were the élite of the grammar schools, and were among the
most ambitious and highly educated of them, and of private schools,
from which a majority of those admitted were derived.
“It was impossible that such a school should not be highly
advantageous to the few who enjoyed its benefits.”
After six months’ existence of the school, an alarming report was
sent to the school committee to the effect that according to the best
calculations, the number of candidates for admission at the next
examination would be 427.
Mr. Quincy notes that “the school was chiefly for the advantage of
the few and not for the many, and those, also, the prosperous few,”
and he regards with evident apprehension this large number of girls
“to whom a high classical education (though Greek and Latin were
excluded) was extremely attractive.”
“Again this experiment showed that in the school for boys the
number of scholars diminished every year, whereas of all those who
entered this high school for girls, not one, during the eighteen
months that it was in operation, voluntarily quitted it; and there was
no reason for believing that any one admitted to the school would
voluntarily quit it for the whole three years, except in case of
marriage.
 “It was apparent to all who contemplated the subject
disinterestedly, that the continuance of this school would involve an
amount of expense unprecedented and unnecessary, since the same
course of study could be introduced into the grammar schools.
“To meet the exigency many schemes were proposed, the principal
being that the age of admission should be fourteen instead of eleven,
and no female to be admitted after the age of sixteen; that the
requisitions for admission should be raised; and that the school
should be only for one year instead of three.
“These modifications, in which the school committee and city
council generally concurred, so greatly diminished the advantages
which the original plan proposed, that much of the interest which its
creation excited was also diminished. The school, however, was
permitted to continue, subject to this modification, until November
27, when a committee was raised to consider the expediency of
continuing it, which, on December 11, following, reported ‘that it was
expedient to continue it.’”
Much debate followed, in course of which “the Mayor declared that
his opinion was so decidedly adverse to the continuance of the
school, that he could not vote in its favor.” Largely, no doubt,
through the influential opposition of Mr. Quincy, who was then
Mayor of the city, and on motion of a Mr. Savage, who said that,
though, “as a member of the city council he had voted for the
appropriation for the high school for girls, it was merely to make a
public experiment of the system of mutual instruction as regards
females”; it was voted on June 3, 1826, “that the girls be permitted to
remain in the English common school throughout the year.”
Precisely what was meant by this vote, beyond the abolition of the
high school, appears, if we recall that girls were not yet admitted to
the grammar school except for half the year.
As Mr. Quincy states it, “The project of the high school was thus
abandoned and the scale of instruction in the common schools of the
city was gradually elevated and enlarged.” As in 1834, eight years
later, it was voted “that the school committee be directed so to
arrange the town schools that the girls enjoy equal privileges with the
boys throughout the year,” it is to be presumed that the permission
voted in 1826 was inoperative until this date. But the end was gained.
The school was abolished, of which Mayor Quincy said in an address
to the board of aldermen in 1829: “It may be truly said that its
impracticability was proved before it went into operation”; and he
again refers to “this high, classical school” with the remark that “no
funds of any city could endure the expense.”
It may have been that those who were parents of daughters as truly
as of sons, saw this action in relation to the fact that the English High
School, “for boys only,” had been supported for four years, and the
Latin School, “for boys only,” for almost two centuries, both from the
public funds; for, when Mr. Quincy wrote the account from which the
above quotations and summary have been made, he recalled the
intense opposition to his views of “a body of citizens of great activity
and of no inconsiderable influence.”
In 1851, speaking of his former opinions with regard to the high
school, he wrote: “The soundness of these views and their
coincidence with the permanent interests of the city, seem to be
sanctioned by the fact that twenty-three years have elapsed, and no
effectual attempt during that period has been made for its revival, in
the school committee, or in either branch of the city council.”
He did not consider that ideas of which the germ is sound have,
nevertheless, their periods of incubation; but, if shades are permitted
to “revisit the glimpses of the moon,” we can imagine the venerable
ex-Mayor, ex-President of Harvard, and most worthy man,
reflectively regarding the “Girls’ High School,” established in
connection with the Normal School in 1852, almost before his words
of self-gratulation had ceased to echo; and, with still more
astonishment, contemplating the Girls’ Latin School, established in
1878 to fit girls for college.
In Massachusetts in 1888, 198 cities and towns supported high
schools, most of them co-educational. The population of the cities
and towns in which these schools are maintained is over ninety-five
per cent. of the whole population of the State.
It is not to be understood that this marvelous progress had come
without resistance at every step, or had been achieved except in the
way that a plant with the growing power in it struggles to light from
under the pavement.
We have seen that in the lower schools when girls, in process of
time, came to be taught at all, it was out of fitting season, sometimes
out of due hours, without the best instructors, with limited range of
study, and always with deference to the superior claim of boys. In the
endeavor of girls toward the higher education, one is too sadly
reminded of the struggles of the plebeians against the patricians in
Rome, when positions wrung from usurping hands, were yielded,
only to be, to the uttermost, shorn of advantage.
As girls have gained successive opportunities for advanced study,
the aim of the opponents has always been to keep those only
analogous to, not identical with, those of boys. They have, therefore,
been steadily weighted with limiting conditions, as the educational
history of Boston serves to illustrate.
We have seen that the experimental high school of 1825 was, in its
feebleness, hampered by, if, indeed, it was not founded for the trial of
the monitorial system, and was moribund from its inception.
When, a quarter of a century later, the demand for better
education for girls again took form, those most active thought it
discreet to avoid the controversy of the past, and, as a more feasible
measure, a Normal School for teachers was projected, and was
established in 1852.
It was soon found that girls fresh from the grammar schools were
not fit candidates for normal training. To remedy this difficulty a few
additional branches of study were introduced, a slight alteration
made in the arrangement of the course, and the name changed to the
Girls’ High and Normal School. Under this name it continued until
1872, when it was found that the normal element had been absorbed
by the high school, and had almost lost its independent, distinctive,
and professional character. The two courses were then separated and
the normal department was restored to its original condition, for the
instruction of young women who intended to become teachers in
Boston.
Boston had now, at length, a school for girls, devoted, like that for
boys, to general culture, though still without opportunity for full
classical training, such as had been freely offered Boston boys for
almost two and a half centuries. But to taste intellectually, as well as
physically, is to stimulate appetite.
In 1877 a society of 200 thoughtful and influential women,
incorporated as the “Massachusetts Society for the University
Education of Women,” supported by men of equal dignity, and
prominently associated with educational and kindred movements,
petitioned the school committee “that a course of classical
instruction may be offered to girls in the Boston Latin School, as is
now offered to boys.”
This petition was reinforced by a similar one from the “Woman’s
Educational Association,” which, later, instigated and supported the
Harvard examination for women. The trustees of “Boston University”
officially memorialized the school board in the same interest.
The claim was urged by distinguished divines, physicians,
educators, presidents of colleges, a founder of a college, statesmen,
and by mothers of girls. They argued a public advantage, a public
demand, and a public right. They showed that almost every
prominent city and town in the State gave to girls in its public high
school,—which was usually co-educational,—a chance to fit for
college; while the towns that had been annexed to Boston,—
Charlestown, Dorchester, Brighton, and West Roxbury, had thereby
lost such advantage, which their girls had previously enjoyed. The
presidents of co-educational and female colleges testified that while
no Boston high school girl was prepared to enter their institutions,
they were receiving well-prepared young women from the more
liberal West.
The ladies petitioning, called attention to the fact that the colonial
law of 1647 required every township of 100 families “to provide for
the instruction of youth so far as to fit them for the University,” and
that in Massachusetts, from that time, there never has been a law
passed concerning any public school which has authorized
instruction to one sex not equally open to the other; that nowhere
does the word “male” or “boy” occur, but always “children” or
“youth.”
It appeared that one young woman, daughter of a master, had
pursued a three years’ course of study in the Latin School, sitting and
reciting with the other pupils, and winning the highest esteem for
modesty and ability. From this course she had graduated with so
solid a foundation of scholarship that at the age of twenty-two she
had received the title of “Doctor of Philosophy” from “Boston
University,” and was the first woman in this country to take such a
degree.
 The opposition to the granting of the petition was most strongly
presented by six distinguished presidents of male colleges and by two
Harvard graduates.
President Eliot of Harvard College opposed the admittance of girls
to the Latin School, saying, “I resist the proposition for the sake of
the boys, the girls, and the schools, and in the general interest of
American education.”
Hon. Charles F. Adams wrote, “I suppose the experiment of
uniting the two sexes in education, at a mature age, is likely to be
fully tried. It will go on until some shocking scandals develop the
danger.”
President Porter of Yale College thought “boys and girls from the
ages of fourteen to eighteen should not recite in the same class-room,
nor meet in the same study hall. The natural feelings of rightly
trained boys and girls are offended by social intercourse of the sort,
so frequent, so free, and so unceremonious. The classical culture of
boys and girls, even when it takes both through the same curriculum,
should not be imparted by precisely the same methods nor with the
same controlling aims. I hold that these should differ in some
important respects for each.”
President Bartlett of Dartmouth College said: “Girls cannot endure
the hard, unintermitting, and long-continued strain to which boys
are subjected.... Were girls admitted to the Latin School I should
have no fear that they would not for the time hold their own with the
boys, spurred on as they would be by their own native excitableness,
their ambition, and the stimulus of public comparison. I should
rather fear their success with its penalty of shortened lives or
permanently deranged constitutions. You must, in the long run,
overtask and injure the girls, or you must sacrifice the present and
legitimate standard of a school for boys.... It should be added that
almost every department of study, including classical studies,
inevitably touches upon certain regions of discussion and allusion
which must be encountered and which cannot be treated as they
ought to be in the presence of both boys and girls.”
An eminent classicist, Prof. William Everett, said: “To introduce
girls into the Latin School would be a legal and moral wrong to the
graduates”; and declared that “Greek literature is not fit for girls”;
and, substantially, that what was a mental tonic for boys would be
dangerous for girls.
The outcome of the effort was the founding of a “Latin School for
Girls,” which opened February, 1878, with thirty-one pupils, which
number steadily increased to about two hundred.
Its graduates are in all the colleges of the State, at present, to the
number of about forty, and they are among the best prepared who
enter.
Not only the graduates of the school, but the whole community,
must ever hold in grateful memory the names of those who, as
representatives of the “Society for the University Education of
Women,” worked wisely and indefatigably for Boston girls: Mrs. I.
Tisdale Talbot, Mrs. James T. Fields, Miss Florence Cushing.
By following the history of high schools down to the present day in
one section of the North Atlantic States, taken as a type of progress,
we have not paused to note the few helpful agencies which were
gradually developed.
Returning to the beginning of the nineteenth century it is easier to
discover what women lacked than what they enjoyed in the way of
intellectual stimulus. Books and newspapers were few enough to be
highly valued by all.
In Boston there was a public library as early as 1637, but women
were not considered as patrons. The bold venture, on the part of the
sex, of invading the quiet precincts of the reading room of the library
of the Boston Athenæum, was made, after a decade or two of the
nineteenth century had passed, by a shy woman, grown courageous
only through her eagerness for knowledge. This was Hannah Adams,
who had learned Greek and Latin from some theological students
boarding in her father’s house, and who had written books. The
innovation shocked Boston people, who declared her out of her
sphere. They could not foresee that half a century later there would
be more women than men readers in the great public library of the
city.
Nor was it considered proper for ladies to attend public lectures,
nor to appear in public assemblies except those of a religious
character. Either as cause or consequence of this the Lyceum
audiences were so rude that it would not have been agreeable for
ladies to be present.
In 1828 the Boston Lyceum was started, and after considerable
discussion women were allowed to attend lectures. This so quickened
the interest and improved the manners that lectures became so
popular that the largest halls were required to hold the audiences.
There is something pathetic, as showing how small were the
pecuniary resources of women, in the fact that it was customary, at
least in the smaller cities, to admit them to lectures at about two-
thirds the price of men. “The Lowell Institute,” Boston, secured the
utmost service to its great benefaction by making no discrimination
against women in its free courses of lectures.
Among the English authors who were the resource of this country
in way of literature, there began to be known a few women, in whom
strong natural impulse had been fostered by exceptional educational
opportunity until they ventured to use the pen and even to publish.
This was usually done timidly, often protestingly, and one woman,
afterwards distinguished, screened her talent behind her father’s
name.
Lady Anne Barnard, who wrote “Auld Robin Gray,” for some
reason or other kept the secret of her authorship for fifty years.
Mr. Edgeworth suppressed a translation which his daughter Maria
had made, from the French, of a work on education “because his
friend, Mr. Day, the author of ‘Sanford and Merton,’ had such a
horror of female authors and their writings,” and it was published
only after Mr. Day’s death.
It is curious to note how large a ratio of the female writers of this
time involve, in their essays or novels, some reference to the need of
education for their sex. On the contrary, however, Mrs. Barbauld,
herself a classical scholar and thinker, and both happy and useful
through her acquirements, opposed the establishment of an academy
for young ladies. She “approved a college and every motive of
emulation for young men,” but thought that “young ladies ought only
to have such a general tincture of knowledge as to make them
agreeable companions to a man of sense, and ought to gain these
accomplishments in a more quiet and unobserved manner, from
intercourse and conversation at home, with a father, brother, or
friend. She regarded herself as peculiar, and not a rule for others.”
Late in the eighteenth century, Mary Wollstonecraft issued a
strong and direct appeal for a recognition of the intellectual needs
and capacities of women. She shocked the world into antagonism by
her opinions, and by her use of the word “rights,” as applied to her
sex.
Much interest was felt in the graceful letters of Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, and society found entertainment in the small talk of the
heroines of Frances Burney, “Evelina,” “Cecilia,” and “Rosa Matilda.”
Twenty years after the eloquent appeal had been made for “The
Rights of Women,” Hannah More, in “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife,”
introduced to the novel-reading world the subject of female
education, with a tact and moderation which the stronger cravings of
Mary Wollstonecraft did not permit. Without offensive presumption,
and with deference to the superior claim of the other sex to the whole
loaves, she meekly, but plainly, suggested the relish of the female
mind for intellectual crumbs. The more favorable reception of her
milder views, which was said “to have caused more than one
dignified clergyman to take down his Eton grammar from the shelf,
to initiate his daughters into the hitherto forbidden mysteries of ‘hic-
hæc-hoc,’” goes to prove, by analogy, the theory of the high potency
school of homœopathists, for the smaller the dose administered the
greater appear to have been the results.
The tender sentiment and graceful verse of Mrs. Hemans, and the
sad domestic experience of Hon. Mrs. Norton, from whose unmasked
sorrows her husband could gather pecuniary return, and the sturdy,
intellectual vigor of Harriet Martineau, who grappled with the
problems of political economy and social ethics, and was the friend
and counselor of the first statesmen of her time, could not fail to
appeal, on their several lines, to women of corresponding type, if not
of equal gifts of expression, on both sides of the Atlantic. So
education was going on for women in other ways than in schools,
which still furnished them limited supplies, both in quantity and
quality.
Among the voices which directly or indirectly were calling women
to higher levels of intelligence and of thought, was that of the
celebrated wit and divine, Sidney Smith, who proved by his claims
for them, what he said of himself, “I have a passionate love for
common justice and for common sense.” In the Edinburgh Review,
of which he was one of the founders, he had a way of asking such
pointed inquiries as whether the world had hitherto found any
advantage in keeping half the people in ignorance, and whether, if
women were better educated, men might not become better educated
too; and he adds, “Just as though the care and solicitude which a
mother feels for her children, depended on her ignorance of Greek
and mathematics, and that she would desert her infant for a
quadratic equation!”
But so strong are the bonds of prejudice, that, although this was as
early as 1810, abundant cause has been found down to the present
day to iterate and reiterate the same arguments, and still to pierce
the bubble of conceit of superior right with the arrows of wit and
sarcasm.
To show what the best schools open to girls were offering
meantime, we quote what “one who had as good advantages in 1808
as New England then afforded,” gives as her course of study: “Music,
geography, Murray’s Grammar, with Pope’s Essay on Man for a
parsing book, Blair’s Rhetoric, Composition, and embroidery on
satin. These were my studies and my accomplishments.”
“Twenty-five years later than that,” says the aged lady once before
quoted, “a considerable part of the gain I brought from a private
school in Charlestown, Mass., was a knowledge of sixty lace
stitches.”[3]
Looking back to this period from the vantage ground of less than a
century, most women of nowadays would echo the sentiment of the
small boy, one of four brothers, who heard a visitor say to his
mother: “What a pity one of your boys had not been a girl!” Dropping
his game to take in the full significance of her words, he called out:
“I’d like to know who’d ’a benn ’er! I wouldn’t ’a benn ’er; Ed
wouldn’t ’a benn ’er; Joe wouldn’t ’a benn ’er, and I’d like to know
who would ’a benn ’er!”
The third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century marked an
epoch in education through the service done by a few teachers, who
seemed to have fresh inspirations as to the capabilities of women,
and practical ability to embody them. They helped to verify the
forecast of Rev. Joseph Emerson, principal of the Academy at
Byfield, Mass.
Mr. Emerson was deeply interested in the theme of the
millennium, and regarded woman, in the capacity of educator, as the
hope of the world’s salvation. Unlike his cotemporaries, he believed
in educating young women as thoroughly as young men, and in 1822
predicted “a time when higher institutions for the education of young
women would be as needful as colleges for young men.” Among his
pupils was Mary Lyon.
The pioneer in the new departure was Mrs. Emma Hart Willard,
born in 1787, in Connecticut, into a home of liberal thought and
tender affection. The clearness of intellect and keen sense of justice
which characterized her life, were all indicated, when, as a young
woman, on settling her father’s straightened estate, she insisted that
children have no claim as compared with the mother’s superior right
to what she has helped to earn. From a child she was noted for
interesting herself in the politics of the day. To relieve her husband
from financial difficulties, and, as she says, “with the further motive
of keeping a better school than those about me,” she established a
boarding school at Middlebury. This was the beginning of thirty
years’ service as a teacher, during which she taught 5000 pupils, one
in ten of whom became teachers. She aimed to make her pupils
comprehend the subject taught, and to give them power to
communicate what they knew. Says her biographer, Dr. John Lord,
“Her profession was an art. She loved it as Palestrina loved music
and as Michael Angelo loved painting, and it was its own reward.”
There was no flattery to her pupils nor to their parents. Her regular
duties, and her never-ending struggle for self-improvement and for
better methods of instruction, kept her at her work from ten and
sometimes for fifteen hours per day. She keenly felt the
disadvantages under which she labored. She wrote: “The Professors
of the college attended my examinations, although I was advised by
the President that it would not be becoming in me, nor a safe
precedent, if I should attend theirs; so, as I had no teacher in
learning my new studies, I had no model in teaching or examining
them. But I had faith in the clear conclusions of my own mind. I
knew that nothing could be truer than truth, and hence I fearlessly
brought to examination before the learned the classes to which had
been taught the studies I had just acquired.... My neighborhood to
Middlebury College made me feel bitterly the disparity in educational
facilities between the two sexes, and I hoped if the matter was once
set before the men as legislators they would be ready to correct the
error.”
To this end Mrs. Willard prepared an address to the public, which
in 1819, when she resided in New York, she presented to the New
York Legislature. As the views set forth mark a distinct departure in
educational demands for women, however familiar or antiquated
they may now seem, they are quoted and summarized here. She
published them only after long and thoughtful deliberation, and said,
“I knew that I should be regarded as visionary, almost to insanity,
should I utter the expectations that I secretly entertain.” She asks
that as the State has endowed institutions for its sons it shall do the
same for its daughters, and “no longer leave them to become the prey
of private adventurers, the result of which has been to make the
daughters of the rich frivolous and those of the poor drudges.” She
laments that “the end of education of one sex has been to please the
other ... until we have come to be considered the pampered and
wayward babies of society, who must have some rattle put into our
hands to keep us from doing mischief to ourselves or to others. But
reason and religion teach that we, too, are primary existences; that it
is for us to move in the orbit of our duty around the Holy Center of
Perfection, the companions, not the satellites of men.”
Mrs. Willard fears that “should the conclusion be almost admitted
that our sex, too, are the legitimate children of the Legislature, and
that it is their duty to afford us a share of their paternal bounty, the
phantom of a college-learned lady would be ready to rise up and
destroy every good resolution in our favor.”
To show that it is not a masculine education that is here
recommended, Mrs. Willard sketches her ideal of a female seminary.
She desires it “to be adapted to the female character and duties, and
her first plea is that to which the softer sex should be formed.” “To
raise the female character will be to raise that of men.... It would be
desirable that the young ladies should spend part of their Sabbaths in
hearing discussions relative to the peculiar duties of their sex. The
difficulty is not that we are at a loss what sciences we ought to learn,
but that we have not proper advantages for learning any.... Many
writers have given us excellent advice in regard to what we should be
taught, but no Legislature has provided us the means of
instruction.... In some of the sciences proper to our sex the books
written for the other would need alteration, because in some they
presuppose more knowledge than female pupils would possess, in
others they have parts not particularly interesting to our sex, and
omit subjects immediately relating to their pursuits. Domestic
instructions should be considered important. Why may not
housewifery be reduced to a system as well as other arts?
“If women were properly fitted for instruction they would be likely
to teach children better than the other sex; they could afford to do it
cheaper; and men might be at liberty to add to the wealth of the
nation by any of those thousand occupations from which women are
necessarily debarred.”
While “coarse men laughed at this proposition to endow a
seminary for girls,” the plan was so well received by the Legislature
that Mrs. Willard’s Seminary at Waterford was incorporated, and
placed on the list of institutions which received a share of the literary
fund. Though this was a small recognition of a large need, to New
York belongs the honor of making the first appropriation of public
funds for the higher education of women.
The character of the support given to Mrs. Willard is more
encouraging than the legislative action. Governor Clinton, a man of
great educational foresight, recommended Mrs. Willard’s plan in
these words, which incidentally indicate common sentiment at the
time: “As this is the only attempt ever made to promote the
education of the female sex by the patronage of government.... I trust
you will not be deterred by commonplace ridicule from extending
your munificence to this meritorious work.” Distinguished men
advocated the plan before the New York Legislature, and John
Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and others wrote letters favoring it, all
with little success.
A bill passed the Senate granting $2000 to the seminary of Mrs.
Willard at Waterford, but failed in the Lower House.
It was at this seminary that in 1820 a young lady was publicly
examined in geometry, and “it called forth a storm of ridicule.”
 The corporation of Troy, N. Y., came to the rescue of Mrs. Willard’s
project, and raised $4000 by tax, and another fund by subscription,
and erected a building of brick, to which Mrs. Willard came in 1821.
She was convinced that “young women are capable of applying
themselves to the higher branches of knowledge as well as young
men,” and that the study of domestic economy could be pursued at
the same time. Developing these theories she made for the “Troy
Female Seminary” and its pupils a distinguished reputation, and
gave a decided uplift to the standard of female education.
More than two hundred institutions of the grade of Troy Seminary
are now reckoned, extending to South America and to Athens,
Greece. Half the number are in the Southern United States, and two-
thirds of them confer degrees.
Associated with Mrs. Willard at Troy, in the department of science,
was her distinguished sister, Mrs. Almira Lincoln Phelps. Later she
was the head of “Patapsco Institute,” a female diocesan school of
high reputation. She was the second woman elected a member of the
“American Association for Advancement of Science,” and in 1866
read before that body a paper on “The Religious and Scientific
Character and Writings of Edward Hitchcock,” and in 1878, one on
“The Infidel Tendencies of Modern Science.” Her educational works
on botany, chemistry, geology, and natural philosophy had a large
circulation.
Names which soon rose to high distinction in educational work
were those of Miss Grant and Miss Lyon, of Massachusetts, Miss
Catherine Fiske of Keene, N. H., Miss Catherine Beecher of
Connecticut, and the Misses Longstreth of Philadelphia, Pa.
The work of Miss Fiske was nearly cotemporary with that of Mrs.
Willard. For twenty-three years, up to her death in 1836, she carried
on a school which received some 2500 pupils to a course of study
which embraced botany, chemistry, astronomy, and “Watts on the
Mind.”
Miss Catherine Beecher, who was endowed with the marked
individuality of her family, conducted a seminary at Hartford, Conn.,
from 1822 to 1832, and later one at Cincinnati, O. Her course of
study included Latin, and calisthenic training was a conspicuous
feature. She gave prominence in her instruction to the worth of
domestic skill.
 She wrote text-books on mental and moral philosophy and upon
theology, and did not forget to prove by publishing “a domestic
receipt book,” that, though learned, she had not soared above the
true sphere of woman.
To the schools already mentioned came pupils from every State in
the Union, either from families of means or to receive the generosity
of the principals.
Mary Lyon was born among the Massachusetts hills in 1797, and
graduated from the position of teacher in the little schoolhouses, and
again as a student from Byfield Academy; then from the charge of
Adams Academy at Derry, N. H., and from a like position in Ipswich
Academy, Mass., in both which she was associated with Miss Grant.
To her was due the conception of “a school which shall put within
reach of students of moderate means such opportunities that the
wealthy cannot find better ones.”
To the execution of her plan the gathering of a few thousand
dollars was necessary. The labor involved may be inferred from the
fact that in the list of contributions the sum of fifty cents repeatedly
appears. The most serious obstacles were found in the antagonism to
what seemed to many a needless project. Said Dr. Hitchcock:
“Respectable periodicals were charged with sarcasm and enmity to
Miss Lyon’s plans. She remained unruffled.”
When, in 1834, the Massachusetts General Association declined to
indorse the enterprise, a Doctor of Divinity made haste to say, “You
see that the measure has utterly failed. Let this page of Divine
Providence be attentively considered in relation to this matter!”
But in face of all disheartenments, in 1837 Mount Holyoke
Seminary was opened in the beautiful Connecticut valley. The mode
of living was for a time almost ascetic. The work of the house was
mainly done by the pupils, but the cost, lights and fuel excepted, was
only sixty dollars per school year of forty weeks, and so continued for
sixteen years.
Bible study held a leading place in the curriculum.
It was Miss Lyon’s ambition to make the course equal to that
required for admission to college, and she planned for steady growth
from the small beginnings. Nobly have her expectations been
fulfilled!
 The hindrances encountered again indicate the slow growth of
public sentiment. It was desired that the ancient and some of the
modern languages should be studied, but it was necessary to wait ten
years before Latin could appear in the course, because “the views of
the community would not allow it.” As an optional study it was
pursued in classes every year after the first. So French, which was
taught from the very first year, became a part of the course only in
1877, after the lapse of forty years.
As time has passed, the thorough work done, and the steadily
expanding course of study have won to the institution devoted
friends, who have added generously to its grounds, its buildings, and
its funds. Once the State has been asked for aid, mainly for payment
for a gymnasium, and a grant of $40,000 was obtained in 1867.
The triple strain of study, labor, and economy, under the stimulus
of lofty aims, might well have given cause, in those early days, for
anxiety on the score of health, but statistics were tabulated in 1867
which showed the comparative longevity of graduates of eight
institutions, covering a period of thirty years. The colleges noted
were “Amherst,” “Bowdoin,” “Brown,” “Dartmouth,” “Harvard,”
“Williams,” and “Yale.”
Exclusive of mortality in war, the record of “Mount Holyoke
Seminary” was more favorable than any other except that of
“Williams College,” which fell two and one-half per cent. below it in
mortality, while “Dartmouth” exceeded it by more than thirty-eight
per cent.
It has been the theory of “Mount Holyoke Seminary” that she must
have every advantage that the state of education will allow. She must
be a college in fact, whether or not she take the name.
In this she reversed the theory of many of the 400 institutions in
the United States, which easily take the name of college first.
Recently her advanced course of study, pursued by 200 pupils,
seemed to justify her adding to her powers and to her dignities, and
in 1888 the Massachusetts Legislature granted a charter “authorizing
Mount Holyoke Seminary and College to confer such degrees and
diplomas as are conferred by any university, college or seminary of
learning in this Commonwealth.”
 Educational institutions, which have taken form and gathered
impetus from Mount Holyoke Seminary, are to be found not only
from ocean to ocean in the United States, including the “Cherokee
Seminary,” founded by John Ross in the Indian Territory in 1851, but
in Turkey, in Spain, in Persia, in Japan, and in Cape Colony, South
Africa.
After display of so great administrative ability as appeared in Miss
Lyon and her successors, it strikes one as still another mark of the
traditional reluctance to recognize true values, that close upon half a
century from the founding of the institution had passed before the
name of a woman appeared in the list of trustees. Meantime every
principal of the seminary had been a woman, every resident
physician had been a woman, and every anniversary address had
been made by a man.
The debt which the public owes to a few individuals who have used
lavishly, for its benefit, their own great endowments, whether of
brains or of money, before this same public was conscious of its own
highest needs, is distinctly traceable in the kindergarten, kitchen-
garden, industrial school, college, and university movements of the
present day. Truly, many of these to whom much has been given
have read their duty in the light of the scripture, “Of him much shall
be required.” When values are once demonstrated to the people, they
are ever ready to carry on important work with liberality.
While recognizing the importance of the many lines of educational
effort, if we sought to learn which has done most to give a solid basis
of thoroughness to woman’s education, and, secondarily, to general
education, during the middle part of the present century, we should
find the answer in the Normal Schools. While other institutions have
contributed greatly to increase the scope of woman’s study, these
have added thereto the important consideration of methods.
As a part of the thrifty policy which the States have shown when
dealing with the education of girls, they have furnished Normal
School instruction with the especial view to getting skilled labor in
return.
Perhaps there is nothing which would insure so great care in
instilling first principles. The result has certainly been to make their
invaluable influence felt from the cities to the remotest school
districts.
 The story of the establishment of these schools is another story of
personal struggle against more than indifference, and indifference
itself may justly be regarded as a solid substance.
The interest in Normal Schools in America, which was aroused by
Prof. Denison Ormstead in 1816, and was advocated by De Witt
Clinton, by Gallaudet, and by Horace Mann, grew to fervor in the
Rev. Charles Brooks of Medford, Mass., who caught his inspiration
from Dr. Julius, of Hamburg, who was sent to the United States by
the King of Prussia to study our public institutions. In 1865 Mr.
Brooks rode in his chaise over two thousand miles to present the
subject, at his own cost, to the people. He held conventions and
presented the topic in pulpits as “Christian Culture.” He says, “My
discouragements were legion.”
The leading paper in Boston and in New England expressed its
sense of the absurdity of the movement by admitting a caustic
communication, which ended by representing Rev. Mr. Brooks with a
fool’s cap on his head, marching up State Street at the head of a
crowd of ragamuffin young men and women, who bore a banner,
inscribed, “To a Normal School in the clouds.” Mr. Brooks was,
however, invited to speak on the subject before the House of
Representatives, and “some members of the Legislature called the
new movement by funny names.”
But educators like George B. Emerson, and thinkers like Rev.
William Ellery Channing, and statesmen like Horace Mann lent their
aid, and, stirred by Mr. Brooks, support was given in public speech
by Hon. John Q. Adams and Daniel Webster.
Mr. Mann was Secretary of the Board of Education upon its
organization in 1837, and, in his first report, recommended that the
Legislature establish Normal Schools. A donation of $10,000 being
made by Mr. Dwight to stimulate this interest, a State appropriation
was made, and a Normal School for girls was opened at Lexington,
Mass., in 1838. Later, others were opened, some of which admitted
boys also, but for the first twenty years, eighty-seven per cent. of the
graduates were girls. These schools are now widely scattered through
the United States. The history of that at Oswego, N. Y., is of especial
interest.
The first systematic effort for the physical development of women
was made in 1861 in Boston. A “Normal Institute for Physical
Culture,” was established by Dr. Dio Lewis, aided by the president
and some of the professors of Harvard College. At the outset the
young women pupils were found lamentably deficient in respect of
physical development. Later, Dr. Lewis stated that “in every one of
the thirteen classes which were graduated, the best gymnast was a
woman. In each class there were from two to six women superior to
any of the men.” Dr. Walter Channing, one of the professors, often
spoke with enthusiasm of the physical superiority of the women to
the men. From the graduates of these classes instruction in light
gymnastics was widely introduced into schools throughout the
country. Now the well-appointed gymnasium is a prominent feature
of the leading colleges to which women are admitted, and the
erection and endowment of this department is a favorite form of
benefaction from the alumnæ.
Prof. Huxley says, “No system of education is worthy the name,
unless it creates a great educational ladder, with one end in the
gutter and the other in the university.” Such was the intuitive feeling
of our ancestors, even in the Colonial days, with regard to boys.
When, however, in the course of centuries, conviction came to a few
that what had been for one sex only was, in fairness, due to the other
as well, the atmosphere of the older States did not prove bracing
enough to sustain so utopian a theory, and the ambitious daughters
of New England were obliged to follow those who, transplanted to
the virgin soil of Ohio, had opened Oberlin College, offering such
opportunities as it could furnish without distinction of race, and with
but limited discrimination against sex.
Something more remarkable than the hungry young mind seeking
mental food at disadvantage, was witnessed in 1853, when the full
mind and earnest spirit of the leading New England educator, Hon.
Horace Mann, eager to inaugurate the best methods of the higher
education in a co-educational college, found his only chance by
leaving his native New England, to build an institution from its very
foundation, in a section remote from literary association. The pathos
is deepened that his life was sacrificed in the contest with obstacles.
Following this magnetic leader; again a few New England girls
turned westward, and gained, at Antioch College, Ohio, what the
East still denied them. Twelve years later, and two hundred and forty
years after Harvard was established for boys, private beneficence
endowed “Boston University” on a co-educational basis, and in 1869
a college in Massachusetts was opened to girls for the first time.
In place of the reply which Harvard College made to girls who
asked admission to its vacant seats, “We have no such custom,” was
heard the cheering, “Welcome to all we have to offer!” and the old
habit of keeping something of the best in reserve for the male sex,
which has been so persistent in State, and municipal, and
institutional economy, and which made the restricted sex feel an
unwelcome pensioner on somebody’s bounty, has never
characterized Boston University. As a result, the report of the
University for the year 1879–80, shows that already over thirty-
seven per cent. of the regular classes in the College of Liberal Arts
were women, and, in encouraging contrast to many colleges from
which women are excluded, it adds, “no rowdyism or scandal has
brought discredit on the institution.”
In a few cases institutions for the higher education of women have
been established in university towns or cities, and have availed
themselves of the opportunity afforded for instruction by professors
of the neighboring university, and have been granted, under
restrictions, use of the libraries, museums, etc., connected with it.
Each of these differs from the other in respect of its relationship to
the university. The first established was that at Cambridge, Mass., in
1879, under the direction of “The Society for the Collegiate
Instruction for Women,” which has, unfortunately, come to be
known by the misleading title of “The Harvard Annex.” Applicants
for admission to the most advanced work of the institution are
required to pass the same examinations which admit young men to
Harvard College, and these examinations are conducted in different
parts of the country by local committees, under the auspices of The
Society for the Collegiate Instruction for Women. Certificates of
proficiency thus gained admit the student to classical and scientific
courses at the collegiate institution, corresponding to those given to
young men at Harvard College.[4]
 EVELYN COLLEGE.
Evelyn College, Princeton, N. J., founded under similar
circumstances in 1888, differs from the institution at Cambridge,
having been formally authorized to confer degrees and to exercise all
the functions of a college for the higher education of women.[5]
It offers classical and scientific courses corresponding to those of
the neighboring university; also elective and post graduate courses.
By resolution of the Board of Trustees of Princeton College any
help may be given to Evelyn College by the Princeton Faculty which
does not interfere with their duties in the University, and the use of
the libraries, museums, etc., is granted.
COLUMBIA COLLEGE IN RELATION TO THE
HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.
The first college for women to confer degrees upon graduates of an
affiliated college is Columbia College, New York City. As the aim of
this paper is rather to trace the growth of educational opportunity
than to tabulate results, the various steps which led to the opening of
Barnard College, New York City, in 1889 are given, as typical of the
progressive nature of movements for opening the doors of
established colleges to women. While many still regard it as wise to
discriminate between the sexes in respect of opportunities, while
others would instruct them equally but separately, there is
apparently an increasing number of these who would apply to
colleges, in general, what the late far-sighted President Barnard of
Columbia said of that under his charge. “I regard the establishment
of an annex as desirable only considered as a step toward what I
think must, sooner or later, come to pass, and that is the opening of
the College proper to both sexes equally.”[6]
Efforts to gain for young women the advantages of Columbia
College, New York City, have been made at intervals since 1873,
when several qualified young women applied for admission to the
college, and one, a graduate of Michigan University, for admission to
the medical school. A plea in their behalf was made before the faculty
by Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, on the ground that the charter of the
College declared that it was “founded for the education of the youth
of the city,” and “youth” includes both sexes. President Barnard and
several of the faculty favored the admission of women as students,
but the committee on education decided that any action was
inexpedient.
In December, 1876, a memorial was presented to the Board of
Trustees of Columbia College by “Sorosis,” a well-known woman’s
club, of the city, asking that young women should be admitted to the
college classes. The memorial was laid on the table by a unanimous
vote.
 Up to 1879 women were informally admitted to the lectures of
certain professors, during regular class hours. This was forbidden in
1879, not from any harm resulting, but because it was discovered
that the statutes forbade any but regularly matriculated students to
attend lectures. This law had no reference to women, but the trustees
declined to change the letter of the law and women were banished.
Three years later a motion made in the board that the statutes should
be so changed as not to prohibit the attendance of women,
conditionally, on certain courses of lectures was lost. But from 1886
women have been admitted to lectures given on Saturday mornings,
and two hundred ladies have listened weekly, and many more have
desired admittance.
In 1883 an association was formed in New York to promote the
higher education of women. A petition signed by 1400 persons, many
of them of highest distinction in public and private life, and indorsed
by President Barnard of Columbia, asked that the benefits of
education at Columbia College be extended to qualified women with
as little delay as possible, by admitting them to lectures and
examinations. In June of that year, 1883, the trustees of Columbia
College resolved that a course of collegiate study, equivalent to the
course given to young men, should be offered to such women as may
desire it, to be pursued under the general direction of the faculty of
the College.
This resolve was, however, restricted by regulations which seemed
to contradict both its spirit and its letter, since it narrowed the
opportunity of women to that of getting the required instruction
where they might, except at Columbia, which would, however, admit
them to examinations to prove whether or not they had done so. As
these examinations were not limited to the subjects as treated in the
courses of lectures, as were the corresponding examinations of
matriculated students of the University, they were more difficult. In
spite of the great difficulties to be encountered, and the very limited
advantage to result, many young women were attracted by the offer.
In 1888 twenty-eight girls were availing themselves of this
opportunity for examination tests of proficiency. In 1885 the trustees
of Columbia resolved to grant the degree of Bachelor of Arts to
women who had pursued for four years a course of study fully
equivalent to that for which the same degree is conferred in the