About 1787, Mr. Caleb Brigham, a noted teacher, opened a school for girls in Boston. This has been spoken of as “the most vigorous and systematic experiment hitherto made, and the most systematically antagonized.” Upon opening, however, the school was immediately filled. The supply created a demand. More sought admission than could be accommodated. With the selectmen’s daughters in school female education was becoming popular.
In 1789 a female academy was opened in Medford, the first establishment of the kind in New England. This was the resort of scholars from all the Eastern States.
We get here and there, proof of the espionage exercised over young women in those days.
Mrs. Rawson was a distinguished teacher who established a boarding-school for girls. The town voted, May 12, 1800, that the second and third seats in the women’s side of the gallery of the meeting-house be allowed for Mrs. Rawson, for herself and scholars; and that she be allowed to put doors and locks on them.
In 1791–92 the Maine Legislature incorporated academies at Berwick, Hallowell, Fryeburg, Westminster, and East Machias.
In 1792 Westford (Mass.) Academy was organized. It offered a very extensive programme. The body of rules and laws for governance provides that “the English, Latin, and Greek languages, together with writing, arithmetic, and the art of speaking shall be taught, and, if desired, practical geometry, logic, geography, and music; that the said school shall be free to any nation, age, or sex, provided that no one shall be admitted unless able to read in the Bible readily without spelling.”
The impulse which single individuals often give to progress had its exemplification in this awakening period.
Two students of Yale College, during a long vacation after the British troops invaded New Haven, had each a class of young ladies for the term of one quarter. One of these students, well known later as the Rev. William Woodbridge, and before quoted here, during his senior year in college, in 1779, kept a young ladies’ school in New Haven, consisting of about twenty-five scholars, in which he taught grammar, geography, composition, and the elements of rhetoric, and the success of this school led to the establishment of others elsewhere.
Mr. Woodbridge, on graduating, took for the subject of his thesis, “Improvement in Female Education.” It would be interesting to know whether the school of Mr. Woodbridge led, as seems probable, to the following curious bit of history.
From Yale College, or from as near to it as a girl could get, issued, in 1783, the following attested certificate: