IV.  Practical Education

These brilliant women, like their sisters of less ability, had no radical ideas about what they considered should be the fundamental principles in female education; they one and all stood for sound training in domestic arts and home making.  Abigail Adams, whose tact, thrift and genuine womanliness was largely responsible for her husband’s career, expressed herself in no uncertain terms concerning the duties of woman:  “I consider it as an indispensable requisite that every American wife should herself know how to order and regulate her family; how to govern her domestics and train up her children.  For this purpose the All-wise Creator made woman an help-meet for man and she who fails in these duties does not answer the end of her creation."[67]

Indeed, it would appear that most, if not all, of the women of colonial days agreed with the sentiment of Ben Franklin who spoke with warm praise of a printer’s wife who, after the death of her husband, took charge of his business “with such success that she not only brought up reputably a family of children, but at the expiration of the term was able to purchase of me the printing house and establish her son in it."[68] And, according to this practical man, her success was due largely to the fact that as a native of Holland she had been taught “the knowledge of accounts.”  “I mention this affair chiefly for the sake of recommending that branch of education for our young females as likely to be of more use to them and their children in case of widowhood than either music or dancing, by preserving them from losses by imposition of crafty men, and enabling them to continue perhaps a profitable mercantile house with establish’d correspondence, till a son is grown up fit to undertake and go on with it."[69]

And Mrs. Franklin, like her husband and Mrs. Adams, had no doubt of the necessity of a thorough knowledge of household duties for every woman who expected to marry.  In 1757 she wrote to her sister-in-law in regard to the proposed marriage of her nephew:  “I think Miss Betsey a very agreeable, sweet-tempered, good girl who has had a housewifely education, and will make to a good husband a very good wife.”

With these fundamentals in female education settled, some of the colonists, at least, were very willing that the girls should learn some of the intellectual “frills” and fads that might add to feminine grace or possibly be of use in future emergencies.  Franklin, for instance, seemed anxious that Sally should learn her French and music.  Writing to his wife in 1758, he stated:  “I hope Sally applies herself closely to her French and musick, and that I shall find she has made great Proficiency.  Sally’s last letter to her Brother is the best wrote that of late I have seen of hers.  I only wish she was a little more careful of her spelling.  I hope she continues to love going to Church, and would have her read over and over again the Whole Duty