[Sidenote:  Age of Legal consent.]

[Sidenote:  The beginnings of higher education for women.]

The Puritans, burning with an unquenchable zeal for liberty, fled to America in order to build a land of freedom and strike off the shackles of despotism.  After they were comfortably settled, they forthwith proceeded, with fine humour, to expel mistress Anne Hutchinson for venturing to speak in public, to hang superfluous old women for being witches, and to refuse women the right to an education.  In 1684, when a question arose about admitting girls to the Hopkins School of New Haven, it was decided that “all girls be excluded as improper and inconsistent with such a grammar school as ye law enjoins and as in the Designs of this settlement.”  “But,” remarks Professor Thomas, “certain small girls whose manners seem to have been neglected and who had the natural curiosity of their sex, sat on the schoolhouse steps and heard the boys recite, or learned to read and construe sentences from their brothers at home, and were occasionally admitted to school.”

In the course of the next century the world moved a little; and in 1789, when the public school system was established in Boston, girls were admitted from April to October; but until 1825 they were allowed to attend primary schools only.  In 1790 Gloucester voted that “two hours, or a proportional part of that time, be devoted to the instruction of females.”  In 1793 Plymouth accorded girls one hour of instruction daily.

The first female seminary in the United States was opened by the Moravians in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1749.  It was unique.  In 1803, of 48 academies or higher schools fitting for college in Massachusetts, only three were for girls, although a few others admitted both boys and girls.

The first instance of government aid for the systematic education of women occurred in New York, in 1819.  This was due to the influence of a remarkable woman.  Mrs. Emma Willard had begun teaching in Connecticut and by extraordinary diligence mastered not only the usual subjects of the curriculum, but in addition botany, chemistry, mineralogy, astronomy, and the higher mathematics.  She had, moreover, striven always to introduce new subjects and new methods into her school, and with such success that Governor Clinton, of New York, invited her to that State and procured her a government subsidy.  Her school was established first at Watervliet, but soon moved to Troy.  This seminary was the first girls’ school in which the higher mathematics formed a part of the course; and the first public examination of a girl in geometry, in 1829, raised a storm of ridicule and indignation—­the clergy, as usual, prophesying the speedy dissolution of all family bonds and therefore, as they continued with remorseless logic, of the state itself.  But Mrs. Willard continued her ways in spite of clerical disapproval and by-and-by projected a system of normal schools for the higher education of teachers, and even suggested women as superintendents of public schools.  New York survived and does not even remember the names of the patriots who fought a lonely woman so valiantly.