TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE. European Influence on Early Western Education. Willis L. Gard.. 23 Pioneer Schools and School Masters. D. C. Shilling... The Rise of the Denominational College. Russell M. Storey. Land Grants for Education in the Ohio Valley States. Clement L. Early Newspapers in the Virginias. By Henry S. Green.. Influences of Early Religious Literature in the Ohio Val- ley from 1815 to 1850. By Mrs. Irene D. Cornwell. Location of Site of Ohio Capital. By E. O. Randall.... 210 OHIO Archaeological and Historical QUARTERLY. THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN PREVIOUS TO 1840. BY JANE SHERZER. The section of country investigated in this paper under the name of "The Ohio Valley" includes Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia; Southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; and. Kentucky and Tennessee. In West Virginia, in Southern Indiana and Illinois there were no schools for the higher education of women up to 1840. It is true, early in 1840, in Indiana there were two schools started for the higher education of women, the Rockville Female Seminary on January 31, 1840, and the Crawfordsville Female Institute on February 24, 1840, but they will not be treated in this paper. Neither will we discuss Jacksonville, Illinois, as it is outside of the boundary set for this treatise, although it was a great educational center, for the Beechers had found their way thither. In 1830, or perhaps even before that time, good female academies had been started in that city. Nor can we take the time here to include the female academies in Dayton, Ohio, or that vicinity. The term, "higher education for women," in those early years covered a course of study not equal to that of good high schools of the present day, but the same may be said of colleges for men, and it was higher in the sense of giving young women an education much beyond the common branches of reading, writing, and arithmetic. It differed from the colleges for men. mainly in the substitution of French for Greek, and in the (1) addition of music and art to the curriculum. The first insti tutions for the higher education of women were necessarily private, for, although the states had established colleges and universities for their boys, they had ignored the education of the girls and excluded them from all their schools. MRS. WILLIAMS' SCHOOL, CINCINNATI.1 The first school for young ladies in the Ohio Valley was thus advertised in the Western Spy and Hamilton Gazette, July, 1802: "Mrs Williams begs to inform the inhabitants of Cincinnati that she intends opening a school in the house of Mr. Newman, sadler, for young ladies on the following terms:Reading, 250 cents; Reading and Sewing, $3.00; Reading, Sewing, and Writing, 350 cents per quarter." Nothing further is known of the school. It may seem of too primitive a character to be here considered, but it was evidently intended for young ladies, not for children, and it represents the first department in all similar schools of that period. REV. JOHN LYLE'S SCHOOL, KENTUCKY.2 In Kentucky the first of these schools was opened in Paris, in 1806, by the Rev. John Lyle, a Presbyterian clergyman. It prospered with an attendance of about two hundred pupils until in 1810 the President resigned because the trustees objected to the public reading of the Bible in the school, which seems to have broken up the school. FISK'S FEMALE ACADEMY, HILLMAN, TENNESSEE.3 Fisk's Female Academy at Hillman, Overton county, Tennessee, was chartered September 11, 1806; a female academy was chartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1811; and a female academy at Maysville, Blount county, Tennessee, in. 1813. No further information is obtainable in regard to these efforts. p. 273. 'Ford, "History of Cincinnati," p. 172. Lewis, "History of Higher Education in Kentucky," p. 33 & f. |