At first three or four schools were suggested for girls between five and nine years of age, which were “to be furnished with dames to learn them good manners and proper decency of behavior.” These were the essentials, but in addition they were to be taught “spelling and reading sufficient to read the Bible, and, if the parents desired it, needlework and knitting.”... The sessions of the school were to be from April to October.... But a later petition being presented to the town, that some arrangement might be made for the instruction of girls over nine years of age, the town graciously voted, March, 1792, that “during the summer months, when the boys in the school had diminished, the master shall receive girls for instruction in grammar and reading, after the dismission of the boys, for an hour and a half.”
Even to this poor privilege there were limitations. No person paying a tax of over three hundred pounds was permitted to send his daughters to these supplementary schools. But the scheme for the larger girls did not work well for the boys, so the masters were directed “not to teach females again.”
As late as 1804 we find the female children, over nine years of age, as great a burden on the hands of the school committee of the town as ever. In answer to another petition, of eleven persons, that this class of girls might be taught, by the town, arithmetic and writing, four girls’ “schools were established, to be kept six months in the year, from six to eight o’clock in the morning, and on Thursday afternoons.” So that, in addition to their other accomplishments, they were in a fair way of being taught early rising.
It was not until 1836 that the school committee decreed “that one female grammar school be kept through the year.” This is probably the time of which it is recorded “that, when a school was started for girls in Newburyport, a taxpayer objected to it, and applied for an injunction, bringing out Judge Shaw’s celebrated opinion on that point.” (Cushing vs. Newburyport.)
In 1788 the town of Northampton voted “not to be at any expense for schooling girls.” Upon an appeal to the courts the town was indicted and fined for its neglect. In 1792 it voted “to admit girls, between eight and fifteen, to the schools from May 1 to October 31.”
Within the memory of a recent resident of Hatfield, an influential citizen, whose children were girls, appealed in townmeeting for the privilege of sending them to the public school, which he helped by his taxes to support. An indignant fellow townsman sprang to his feet and exclaimed, “Hatfield school shes? Never!”
The gentleman who narrated this fact lived to witness, also, the foundation and endowment of a college for girls at Northampton by Miss Smith of Hatfield, one of the sex, and probably one of the girls contemptuously forbidden a common-school education.
For a long time after summer schools were provided for girls, in many of the New England towns they were not supported, by a general tax, as were the winter schools for boys, but by tuition fees.
Josiah Quincy, in his “Municipal History of Boston,” says “After the peace of 1783, a committee on schools ‘laments that so many children should be found in the streets, playing and gaming in school hours.’” There seems as yet to be no search for girls who are losing school advantages.
In 1789 great educational advance was made in Boston. A system was adopted which provided “a ‘Latin School’ for fitting boys of ten years old and over, by a four years’ course, including Greek and Latin, for the University; also three reading and writing schools.”