The Schooling of Girls and Changing Community Values in Massachusetts Towns, 1750-1820

Abstract

This essay addresses a gap in our understanding of the social forces promoting female literacy in New England between 1750 and 1820. Historians generally agree that a rapid expansion of female literacy occurred during that century. Measuring literacy by the ability to sign one's name, studies have shown that in many communities only half as many women as men were literate in 1750. An example of this differential is the case of Elbridge Gerry, who courted but did not marry a young woman who, though she was the daughter of a Harvard graduate and state legislator, could neither read nor answer his letters to her from the Continental Congress. Yet by 1850 when the first federal census measured literacy by gender, both white women and men in New England were almost universally literate. Since older women were also universally literate, the change appears to have been complete among girls by 1820. After Kenneth Lockridge first pointed out the discrepancy between male and female literacy rates in colonial New England, scholars have amended many of his findings, but they have not yet found a way to explain the rapid increase in female literacy that occurred in New England after 1750.

Reinventing Boston: 1630-2003

“…Goldin and Sokoloff (1984) argue that Massachusetts' early industrialization is the result of relatively low wages for women in New England, which in turn were the result of the nature of New England agriculture. Sklar (1993) documents the strong New England educational system that ensured that women were unusually well-educated for the time period, and as such they provided a first-rate and inexpensive labor force.…”

Reinventing Boston: 1640-2003

“…The Lowell labor force was predominantly female. Sklar (1993) documents the strong New England educational system that ensured that women were unusually well-educated for the time period, and as such they provided a first-rate and inexpensive labor force.…”

Literacy Acquisition in an Orphanage: A Historical‐Longitudinal Case Study

“…In a comparable study of children in mid-nineteenth-century New York State, girls were just as likely as boys to be literate, holding age and prior residence constant (Murray 1997). Despite variation in cultural emphases on girls' education, even within a single state such as Massachusetts, on the whole Northern communities devoted more resources to teaching girls than the South did (Sklar 1993).…”

“…The age at which formal schooling begins has been found to be relatively unimportant in literacy acquisition among children, which is of some relevance to the Charleston orphans, who entered the Orphan House over a range of ages. 11 Historical studies of childhood literacy indicate that family and home influenced literacy acquisition in the past and may have been especially important among poor families (Fishback and Baskin 1991;Sklar 1993). Figure 1 shows signature literacy rates by age for children who signed or marked their indentures at entrance to the Orphan House with the solid black marks.…”