The
Importance of
Female
Education in Athens, Georgia
Danielle Sullivan
Students, professors, and citizens alike have all been known to label the current city of Athens, Georgia a “college town”. This concept can be drawn from the idea that the University of Georgia “made” the place Athens is today. Although the campus and surrounding areas are much different now than they were during the nineteenth century, the desire for a quality education is still the purpose for students to come to Athens and the reason that parents send them there. Education was the basis for the town’s beginnings and Athens soon became the educational center for the state of Georgia. The establishment of the University, chartered in 1785, not only encouraged higher education for the male population, but also played a role in the improvement and creation of primary and grammar schools for the young ladies of antebellum Athens.
“Those
persons who founded Athens to institute the University of Georgia also were
interested in the development of education at the lower levels.”[1]
This quote provides a background for the formation of a city striving for educational reform for all ages and sexes. Before 1806, Athens had at least one school for boys and one for girls, and several others followed in the next decade.[2] More grammar schools were instituted for both boys and girls, along with the growing number of academies and other levels of secondary education. The establishment of secondary education for girls is important during this time before females began to attend colleges to receive further education. There are many factors that contributed to the support for more education for females. With the help of some very influential citizens and the University, the education of females gained popularity in early nineteenth century Athens. The education of females cannot be excluded from educational reform that the city of Athens experienced during the antebellum period. The following examples of the schools and the people involved in the education transformation prove that female education was an important objective for the reform movement.
Before discussing the educational changes found in antebellum Athens, the nation wide movement for educational reform can provide background information in explaining this evolution. Prior to the Civil War, educational reform was largely centralized in the Northeast and Midwest, while the education in the South was “largely confined to private academies and informal ‘old-field’ schools.”[3] Before the 1820s, educating the young relied largely on dame schools, apprenticeships, and Sunday schools provided by churches. With the rise of “poverty, crime, and deepening social divisions” the campaign for public schools began in the 1820s by “religiously motivated reformers in the Northeast.”[4] These early reformers hoped that public schools would be the answer to the rising problems facing the nation at this time. “By the second half of the nineteenth century, no other nation spent more money on public education than the United States.”[5] A huge supporter of public education that cannot go unmentioned is Horace Mann. Mann became “the nation’s leading exponent of public schooling,” and as a member of the Massachusetts state senate, he “took the lead in establishing a state board of education.”[6] Mann, along with other reformers, helped push the importance of educating the young throughout antebellum America.
Unfortunately, during these early days of reform, education for women and nonwhites was often “severely restricted.”[7] Although, “female educational opportunities and literacy rates increased rapidly after the American Revolution” there was still room for advancements in female education.[8] Soon after 1810, separate female academies and seminaries provided more education for girls, and by the 1820s separate public high schools for girls opened in many cities.[9] Although the southern states found themselves somewhat behind in the reform movement including the female education movement, these same trends of educational improvements and the addition of female schools found worldwide match those found in the antebellum south. The education reform movement, which began predominantly in the Northeast and Midwest, encouraged the practice of female education to become an increasingly popular national idea.
Nationally, the struggle by the African American population was also a part of this education reform. Blacks were most often “specifically excluded” from public schools.[10] Supporters of black education found themselves subject to the violence of their opponents. For example, after a teacher in Connecticut allowed a daughter of a free black farmer to attend her school, “white parents withdrew their children from the school” and “hostile neighbors broke the school’s windows, contaminated its well with manure, and denied students seats on stagecoaches and pews in church.”[11] But despite the strong opposition, “no group exhibited a stronger faith in the power of education to break down social barriers and promote social advancement than African Americans.”[12] “Not until 1855 did Massachusetts become the first state to admit students to public schools irrespective of ‘race, color, or religious opinions.’”[13] The females of the African American population found that even elementary education was “either explicitly prohibited or customarily discouraged prior to the Civil War, although by the 1830s some academies for African-American girls had been established in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.”[14] Similar to the black female population, the Native American females found that there were not many opportunities for an education, “with the exception of a few missionary efforts to establish seminaries for elites among the Christianized Cherokee.”[15] This struggle by both genders of the black population and the Native Americans is very much like that of the white female population during the antebellum years. Both groups desired better educations in hopes to better their standings within society up against the white male population. The African American movement for better education was a part of the educational reform, and the African American female population cannot be excluded from the importance of the education of women in the nation and in the city of Athens.
Not only is it beneficial to compare Athens to the national changes, but we can also use comparisons from the southern region and specifically from the state of Georgia. The city of Athens is located in Clarke County, a northeastern Georgia county. The state of Georgia experienced its own struggles with the education movement of the nineteenth century. “Various state leaders attempted to develop public education, but they had little success until the late 1850s and their efforts then were cut short by the war.”[16] The efforts began around the 1820s, but reformers found most attempts to be ineffective until after the Civil War.[17] “Clarke County was, of course, a victim of conditions affecting the state, but it did have more grammar schools and academies than most of the other counties” and “its income for education” in 1850 “was $24, 703, fourth highest among Georgia’s ninety-five counties.”[18] Although a large portion of this money was probably spent on the University of Georgia, Clarke County did find itself in the “top sixth of the counties in numbers of students and schools.”[19] So, even though Athens may have lagged slightly behind in the national movement, it was making great progress when compared to the rest of the state. Without improvement in the education system as a whole, little could be done to help with the movement for more female education. Athens appeared to be on the right track for the advancement in not only women’s education, but also with the education reform that the nation’s states experienced together
For
most antebellum Americans receiving an education was expensive and only
possible for the already successful families.
Before the University of Georgia, Athens was much like other
agriculturally based areas in the South and found that “the schools had tuition
fees which were prohibitive for many persons.”[20] Public education and state assistance was
attempted, but remained unsuccessful until the late 1850s because of lack of
funds and because so many citizens were uninterested in the idea of education.[21] The most elite families found ways to
educate their children, despite the inconsistency and lack of schools, by
sending them to “small primary schools run by widowed European aristocrats”.[22] Private schools and academies were offered,
but could only be afforded by a limited number of families, and an attempt for
a public elementary education was a failure.[23] Athens needed assistance in educating their
young. The University wanted to provide some help in the cause, but without
much help from a state government any school must charge tuition, not resolving
the problem in Athens.
Athens as a community looked to the growing University for help in offering an education affordable to most families. The establishment of a grammar school in Athens can be attributed to the University of Georgia, which wanted “to prepare students for college,” and therefore built and operated a school beginning in 1807. This school became the Athens Grammar School, and remained in the education system for some time despite the multiple changes in the administration. [24] This school was successful, but still did not allow for all children to be educated. Other schools during this time were also successful in providing an education, but only for those that could afford it. For example, in the 1840s, Miss Emily Witherspoon ran an important co-educational elementary school. Her teaching included “reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, and history.”[25]
Like the courses offered in the Athens Grammar School and Miss Witherspoon’s school, the primary courses between coeds was quite similar, although girls were often exposed to “training in needle work, embroidery, and similar skills” and the boys would be taught Latin and Greek in preparation for college.[26] Upon finishing primary school, the boys would move on to the higher educational institutions. The girls were left with no school of their own to graduate to.
It was not until the 1820s that Athens supported a female school. This notion led to the Athens Female Academy, incorporated in December 1829.[27] The Trustees of the University donated a lot for the school, and the building was constructed from contributions. It was initially operated by Reverend Thomas Stanley, but later became known as Mrs. Coley’s School after she took charge and remained until the close of the war; this academy became the “principal school for girls in the town.”[28] The cost of the school depended on the amount of work taken, and the courses included “spelling, reading, counting, arithmetic (through vulgar fractions), English grammar, geography, rhetoric, history, uses of globes, natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, Latin and Greek, and the mathematics” with extra courses offered in drawing and painting.[29] In November of 1833 the school developed three subdivisions of courses with the costs increasing with each additional course.[30] Although the Athens Female Academy was very popular and successful, there was still not a high school for girls in Athens.
Before the Athens Female Academy was instituted, there had been at least one other effort for a girls’ school. In July of 1803 there was an attempt to institute a “seminary for young ladies in Athens” by a Mrs. Allan, where “students were to be ‘boarded, and grammatically instructed in the French and English languages, the Elements of Geography, writing, Arithmetic, and all kinds of fashionable needle work, at one hundred dollars per annum.”[31] In May of 1810, the Allan family moved out of Athens, taking the school with them.[32]
Like Mrs. Allan’s school, most of the schools, boys, girls, and coed, struggled to remain open and never lasted long.[33] Schools came and went, mostly due to lack of funds. Some schools even looked to the church for financial support, for example, the “Athens Manual Labor School was operated for a time in the 1830s by the Presbyterian Education Society of Georgia.”[34] The struggle to survive financially could be one of the many difficult obstacles faced by those interested in providing more schools for girls. Still, many determined citizens continued like many of the other States to offer education for all girls. This would most likely include donations from the elite families and from the many churches that were interested in better educational opportunities.
The next step in furthering the education of the Athens’ females began in 1854 after a mother, Mrs. Williams Rutherford, sent a letter to the Southern Watchman suggesting that there should be a high school for girls in Georgia; leading to the building of the Athens Female High School in 1857.[35] The reason for wanting a high school instead of academies is because the curriculum of a high school is in general the same of an academy, but high schools could receive funds from taxation.[36] Thomas R. R. Cobb can be credited for the first high school for girls in Athens:
“He canvassed the town, enthused the people, got
subscriptions and organized the Trustees, some subscribed money, some
merchandise, some materials. He sold
the merchandise, used the materials and collected the money.” “Mr. Cobb bought the lot from the University
and gave his personal note for it. He
drew the charter…and had it passed by the Legislature. He gave his personal attention to furnishing
the school, and was the life of the enterprise.”[37]
Due to the hard work of Mr. Cobb, the Trustees named
the school Lucy Cobb Institute after the death of his eldest daughter.[38] The school first opened in January of 1859
with seventy-seven students, some local and some from a distance.[39] Along with its beginning came the May
Festival and concert, “which is part of the history of Lucy Cobb.”[40] The May Day celebration “included the
crowning of the May Queen” and “celebration by the young ladies of Athens.”[41]
Not only was the May Festival highly remembered,” but the Lucy Cobb
commencement also became one of the “greatest social attractions of which
Athens can boast.”[42] Although this school may be remembered for
its social occasions, it was a permanent girl’s high school for Athens that
lasted well into the twentieth century providing an education for many Athens’
females.[43]
There were many other schools that operated in antebellum Athens that
were of significance to the education of females. At the same time as the beginning of the Athens Female Academy,
Reverend John Wallis opened a school for “young ladies.”[44] Sadly, not long after Wallis “had organized
his school and got it well under way, Mrs. Wallis died, leaving a young
daughter and an inconsolable husband.”[45] Soon after, Rev. Wallis sold his home and moved
to Alabama.[46] The movement of people during this time is
yet another reason why schools were not always reliable and somewhat
inconsistent.
Another
school that was established for girls in Athens was the Athens High School for
Young Ladies in 1842.[47] William C. Richards opened the school and
said, “that it would be limited to thirty pupils, none under ten years of age.”[48] The school was advertised to “teach
everything taught in schools up north.”[49] This idea is an example of how the South was
following the North in the education reform.
The
Grove Seminary for Young Ladies was yet another important school for
females. This school was opened by 1850
with Reverend S. W. Magill as principal, and offered “the ordinary and higher
branches of an English education together with Latin, Greek, French, music,
drawing, and painting.”[50] This school along with those established
before and those instituted in later years were all a step in bettering the
education of females.
As
time progressed more and more schools were built focusing on the education of
females in Athens. Various reasons can
be tied to the growing support Athens, and the South in general, had to the
educational reform occurring in their city, state, and nation. Particular to the education of females,
there can be numerous explanations for its growth. One popular argument for activists was “the notion of rights
based on equality of intellect,” and “that women have the right to be educated
in common or equal with man.”[51] The movement for female education was due in
most part to “upper class men” that “wanted their daughters to achieve their
intellectual potential,” but these same men “also worked to keep the changes
within their control and within the desired framework” so that there was not
“too much educational reform.”[52] “Southern reformers were not interested in
destroying this ideal of separate spheres for the sexes but in aiding women in
their efforts to attain the ideal of the ‘true woman.’”[53] Like with any movement, there will be
disagreement. Luckily for females, the
fight for education was in their favor, and more schools, including colleges,
began to open for the sole purpose of educating girls.
Without
the increased popularity the nation experience in the desire for a better
educational experience for all young white males and females and the black
population, there would not have been such extraordinary improvements and
additions to the education of women. On
the other hand, the educational reform movement would not deserve such recognition
if female education was not included in the many objectives obtained throughout
the antebellum period. Particular to
the Athens community, education for young ladies took a huge leap during this
time thanks to the many people who believed that females deserve the
opportunities that had been given to males for some time. Soon, females found themselves able to
attend colleges and state universities all over the country. The movement for improved education for all
and especially the movement focused on women have been beneficial to the city
of Athens, the state of Georgia, and the nation as a whole. The benefits of women’s education can still
be seen today as our country experiences more and more profits from its female
citizens.
[1] Ernest C. Hynds, Antebellum
Athens and Clarke County (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press,
1974), 79.
[2] Hynds, 81.
[3] Steven Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers (London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995), 112.
[4] Mintz, 108.
[5] Mintz, 106.
[6] Mintz, 111.
[7] Mintz, 112.
[8] Mintz, 113.
[9] Mintz, 114.
[10] Mintz, 112.
[11] Mintz, 113.
[12] Mintz, 113.
[13] Mintz, 113.
[14] Christie Anne Farnham, The Education of the Southern Belle, (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 5.
[15] Farnham, 5.
[16] Hynds, 79.
[17] Hynds, 79-80.
[18] Hynds, 80.
[19] Hynds, 80.
[20] Hynds, 79.
[21] Hynds, 79.
[22] Michael Gagnon, Transition to an Industrial South: Athens, Georgia, 1830-1870 (Michigan: Bell and Howell Co., 1999), 182.
[23] Hynds, 79.
[24] Hynds, 82.
[25] Hynds, 83.
[26] Hynds, 82.
[27] Hynds, 86.
[28] Augustus L. Hull, Annals of Athens, Georgia 1801-1901, (Danielsville, Georgia: Heritage Papers, 1978),99.
[29] “Athens Female Academy,” Southern Banner, 7 December 1833, Col. 6, p.4.
[30] Hynds, 86.
[31] Hynds, 84.
[32] Hynds, 84.
[33] Gagnon, 181.
[34] Hynds, 83.
[35] Hull,180.
[36] Farnham, 65.
[37] Hull 359-360.
[38] Hull, 360.
[39] Hynds, 85.
[40] Hull, 181, 361.
[41] “Celebration of the First of May,” Southern Banner, 20 May 1837, Col.23, p.2.
[42] Hull, 365.
[43] Gagnon, 182.
[44] Hull, 110.
[45] Hull, 110.
[46] Hull, 110.
[47] Hynds, 84.
[48] Hynds, 84.
[49] “Private High School for Young Ladies,” Southern Banner, 21 October 1842, Col. 4, p.3.
[50] Hynds, 84-85.
[51] Farnham, 68-69.
[52] Farnham, 76.
[53] Farnham., 76.