The girl so bound out, if maintaining a good moral character, should receive $300 as a marriage portion, if the man she was to marry seemed a worthy man. If he was unworthy, the girl was to be aided in sickness or mental derangement up to the full amount of the marriage portion.
SOPHIA SMITH.
Each young woman in indigent or moderate circumstances, if she were to marry a sober man, could, by applying to the trustees, receive a marriage portion of fifty dollars, to be expended for necessary articles of household furniture. Each widow, with a child or children dependent on her for support, could receive fifty dollars; and this might be given yearly if the trustees thought wise.
Mr. Smith lived and died unmarried; but he knew that the pathway of many struggling lovers would be made easier if the young woman had even fifty dollars, or, if the girl had been bound out with strangers, $300 would make many a little home after marriage comfortable.
Mr. Smith has been dead over half a century, but his quaint and beautiful gift has been doing its work. During the year 1894, 51 boys and 17 girls were placed in good homes, and reared for useful lives. Nine received their marriage portion, and sixteen were helped in sickness. Thirty boys received their loan of $500 each, and thirty their gift of a like amount. There are now apprenticed 137 boys and 38 girls. Marriage gifts were made to 118 young women, and $50 were paid to each of 116 widows. Last year 289 persons received gifts to the amount of $30,785. What happiness this money means to those for the most part just looking out into the cares and work of life! How many fortunes are built on that first $500 so difficult to accumulate! How many homes kept from dire poverty by that first $300 with which to make the place attractive as well as comfortable! What an incentive for a boy or girl to be industrious, saving, temperate, and upright! What a comfort to feel that after we are silent our work can speak for us through a whole State, and even a whole nation!
Mr. Oliver Smith depended much upon his nephew, Austin Smith, a successful and wealthy man, to carry out his wishes. Austin and his brother Joseph were members of the General Court of Massachusetts. When their father died, though he was not wealthy like Oliver, he left his two sons the larger part of his fortune, and his two daughters, Harriet and Sophia, enough to support them with close economy. The father was a soldier in the Revolutionary War; and the grandfather, Samuel Smith, was commissioned lieutenant in 1755 by Governor Phipps.
Sophia, who must have been a sweet-faced girl, judging from her appearance in later life, was eager for study; but there was little chance for a girl to obtain an education, and little sympathy, as a rule, with those girls who desired it. She was born in Hatfield, Mass., Aug. 27, 1796. When Sophia was a little girl, Abigail Adams, the noble wife of John Adams, our second president, wrote to a friend in England, "You need not be told how much, in this country, female education is neglected, nor how fashionable it is to ridicule female learning."
Mrs. Samuel D. (Locke) Stow, in a history of Mount Holyoke Seminary, shows how meagre were the early advantages for girls. "Boston did not permit girls to attend the public schools till 1790, and then only during the summer months, when there were not boys enough to fill them. This lasted till 1822, when Boston became a city. An aged resident of Hatfield used to tell of going to the schoolhouse when she was a girl, and sitting on the doorstep to hear the boys recite their lessons. No girl could cross the threshold as a scholar. The girls of Northampton were not admitted to the public schools till 1792. In the Centennial Hampshire Gazette it was stated: 'In 1788 the question was before the town, and it was voted not to be at any expense for schooling girls.' The advocates of the measure were persistent, however, and appealed to the courts; the town was indicted and fined for this neglect. In 1792 it was voted by a large majority to admit girls between the ages of eight and fifteen to the schools from May 1 to Oct. 31. It was not till 1802 that all restrictions were removed."
These summer schools from May to October were of comparatively little worth. All children brought their work, braiding, sewing, and knitting, and were taught to read and write, and to have "good manners," according to the accepted notions of the time. "At first arithmetic and geography were taught only in the winter, for a knowledge of numbers or ability to cast accounts was deemed quite superfluous for girls. When Colburn's Mental Arithmetic was introduced, some of our mothers who desired to study it were told derisively, 'If you expect to become widows, and have to carry pork to market, it may be well enough to study mental arithmetic.'