[28] Diary, Vol.  I, p. 364.

[29] Narratives of Witchcraft Cases, p. 366.

[30] Narratives of Witchcraft Cases, p. 215.

[31] Narratives of Witchcraft Cases, p. 159.

[32] Fisher:  Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times, p. 165.

[33] Fisher:  Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times, p. 165.

[34] Fisher:  Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times, p. 171.

[35] Pages 22, 35.

[36] Institutional History, Vol.  I, p. 29.

[37a],[37b] Ravenel:  Eliza Pinckney, p. 65.

[38] Letters, p. 106.

[39] Wharton:  Martha Washington, p. 280.

[40] Brown:  Mercy Warren, p. 96.

[41] Memoirs of an American Lady, p. 29.

[42] Memoirs of an American Lady, p. 155.

CHAPTER II

COLONIAL WOMAN AND EDUCATION

I.  Feminine Ignorance

Unfortunately when we attempt to discover just how thorough woman’s mental training was in colonial days we are somewhat handicapped by the lack of accurate data.  Here and there through the early writings we have only the merest hints as to what girls studied and as to the length of their schooling.  Of course, throughout the world in the seventeenth century it was not customary to educate women in the sense that men in the same rank were educated.  Her place was in the home and as economic pressure was not generally such as to force her to make her own living in shop or factory or office, and as society would have scowled at the very idea, she naturally prepared only for marriage and home-making.  Very few men of the era, even among philosophers and educational leaders, ever seemed to think that a woman might be a better mother through thorough mental training.  And the women themselves, in the main, apparently were not interested.

The result was that there long existed an astonishingly large amount of illiteracy among them.  Through an examination made for the U.S.  Department of Education, it has been found that among women signing deeds or other legal documents in Massachusetts, from 1653 to 1656, as high as fifty per cent could not write their name, and were obliged to sign by means of a cross; while as late as 1697 fully thirty-eight per cent were as illiterate.  In New York fully sixty per cent of the Dutch women were obliged to make their mark; while in Virginia, where deeds signed by 3,066 women were examined, seventy-five per cent could not sign their names.  If the condition was so bad among those prosperous enough to own property, what must it have been among the poor and so-called lower classes?