EDUCATION OF WOMEN. The changes during the 19th century include none more sig nificant than those in the history of education for women. So swift has been the transition that it is difficult to realize that until after the Revo lution practically the only opportunities for a girl's education were found in the so-called "Dame Schools," where she was taught to read and sew, the New England Primer) being the chief textbook. Even the art of writing was not universal, as is shown by the number of wills, left by women of property, which were signed with a cross. The grammar schools, pro viding instruction sufficient to prepare young men for college, only occasionally admitted girls until the beginning of the 19th century. The exceptions were less than 12 in the first century of our colonial history, as shown by the records of nearly 200 towns in New England. The town of Medford, Mass., voted in 1766 that "The Committee have power to agree with the School Master to instruct girls two hours in a day after the boys are dismissed"; Dorchester in 1784 voted "that such girls as can read the Psalter be allowed to attend the grammar school from the first day of June to the first day of October ; and Gloucester in 1790 passed the fol lowing resolution: "And also that the master be directed to begin his school from the first day of April to the last day of September at 8 o'clock in the morning and close at 6 o'clock in the afternoon, or any 8 hours in the 24 as shall be thought the most convenient, but that two hours, or a proportionate part of that time, be devoted to the instruction of females —as they are a tender and interesting branch of the Community, but have been much neglected in the Public Schools of this town." In Norwich, Conn., they were admitted "from 5-7 a.m."; and Nathan Hale, school-master in New London in 1774, writes, "I have kept dur ing the summer, a morning school between the hours of 5 and 7, of about 20 young ladies: for which I have received 20 shillings a scholar by the quarter." This admission of girls at times during the day and year, when the schools were not needed for the boys, seems to have been common during the last years of the 18th century. Northampton, which had voted in
1788 "not to be at any expense for schooling girls," four years later voted "by a large ma jority to admit girls between the ages of 8 and 15 to the schools from May 1st to October 31st," and Boston, in 1790, opened the schools to girls during the summer months, when there were not enough boys to fill them.
One of the first advocates of education for girls was a graduate of Yale College in 1780, William Woodbridge, who took for the subject of his graduating essay, "Improvement in Fe male Education," and afterward opened an even ing school for them in which he dared to teach such abstruse subjects as grammar, geography, and the art of composition. The founding of academies, to which girls as well as boys were admitted, is another evidence that in the latter part of the 18th century and the early part of the 19th, there was a new sentiment concern ing their education. The first quarter of the 19th century might well be called the "Acad emy Age," since the most distinctive advance was in the founding of these institutions. The first one was at South Byfield, founded by be quest of a certain William Dummer, who died in 1761. Leicester, incorporated in 1784, West ford (1793), Bradford (1803), Monson (1804), were all coeducational at the beginning, although Bradford later excluded boys and has been for many years a school for girls. The so-called Academy at Medford, Mass., founded in 1789, is said to have been the first in New England for girls only, but was followed by others which became more famous such as Adams Academy in Derry, N. H., (1823), Ipswich Academy, in Massachusetts (1828), and Abbot Academy in Andover (1829).
Before the close of the 18th century there were efforts for the education of girls in other parts of the country ; by the Friends in Rhode Island, by the Friends and Moravians in Penn sylvania, the latter founding schools in Nazareth, and as far south as Lexington, Ky. None of these institutions, however, aimed to give higher education to women ; the academies prepared boys for college, but 200 years after the found ing of Harvard College there was not a college for women in the country.