1 Diary of Susan Nye Hutchison, 22 April 1815, Southern Historical Collection [hereafter SHC], Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Kim Tolley and Margaret A. Nash, “Leaving Home to Teach: The Diary of Susan Nye Hutchison, 1815–1840,” in Nancy Beadie and Kim Tolley, eds., Chartered Schools: Two Hundred Years of Independent Academies in the United States, 1717–1925 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 161–185.Google Scholar

2 Farnham, Christie Anne noted that these earlier generations of northern teachers “have not even left the legacy of a stereotype.” See Farnham, The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Antebellum South (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 97ff. For discussion of the northern migration to the South during this period, see Fletcher Green, The Role of the Yankee in the Old South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1972).Google Scholar

3 Perlmann, Joel and Margo, Robert A. Women's Work? American Schoolteachers 1650–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); See Victoria-María MacDonald, “The Paradox of Bureaucratization: New Views on Progressive Era Teachers and the Development of a Woman's Profession,” History of Education Quarterly 39 (Winter 1999): 427–53; Jo Anne Preston, “He lives as a master”: Seventeenth Century Masculinity, Gendered Teaching, and Careers of New England Schoolmasters,” History of Education Quarterly 43 (Fall 2003): 350–371; Preston, “Single or Double Salary Scales? Institutionalized Gender Discrimination in Teachers’ Pay: 1900–1950,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, 2004, San Diego.Google Scholar

4 Margo, Perlmann and Women's Work?, 2.Google Scholar

5 Our definition of socioeconomic incentives derives from utility theory, which attempts to analyze the inter-related economic incentives and social norms that give rise to purposeful behavior. For a collection of classic research papers in utility theory, see Bell, David E., Raiffa, Howard, and Tversky, Amos (eds.), Decision Making: Descriptive, Normative, and Prescriptive Interactions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988); R. L. Keeney and Howard Raiffa, Decisions with Multiple Objectives: Preferences and Value Tradeoffs (New York: John Wiley Press, 1976).Google Scholar

6 See Rury, John L. “Who Became Teachers and Why: The Social Characteristics of Teachers in American History,“ in Warren, Donald, ed., American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989), 9–48; Geraldine Jonçich Clifford, “Man/Woman/Teacher: Gender, Family and Career in American Educational History,” in ibid., 293–343; Michael W. Apple, “Teaching and ‘Women's Work'” A Comparative Historical and Ideological Analysis,” Teachers College Record 86 (Spring 1985): 457–473; Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1976), 97–98; Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), ch. 2; Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1983), ch. 6; Madeline Grumet, Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988); Alison Prentice and Marjorie Theobald, “The Historiography of Women Teachers: A Retrospect,” in Prentice and Theobald, eds. Women Who Taught: Perspectives on the History of Women and Teaching (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 3–33.Google Scholar

7 Apple, See Michael Teachers and Texts: A Political Economy of Class and Gender Relations in Education (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986). Patrick Harrigan made this argument in regard to Canada. See Harrigan, “The Development of a Corps of Public school Teachers in Canada, 1870–1980,” History of Education Quarterly 32 (Spring 1992): 510.Google Scholar

8 The source for the percentages in 1837 and 1847 is Eleventh Annual Report of the Board of Education (Boston, 1848), 24. The source for the percentage in 1829 is Perlmann & Margo, Women's Work?, 28.Google Scholar

9 See “Table 1.2: Feminization of Teaching, 1829–60, Massachusetts and New York,” in Perlmann & Margo, Women's Work?, 28.Google Scholar

10 Murray, See David Historical and Statistical Record of the University of the State of New York (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1885), 504. For a recent overview of the academy movement, see Kim Tolley and Nancy Beadie, “A School for Every Purpose: An Introduction to the History of Academies in the United States,” in Chartered Schools, 3–16.Google Scholar

11 First Annual Report of the General Superintendent of Common Schools of the State of North Carolina (Raleigh: W. W. Holden, 1854), North Carolina Collection [hereafter NCC], Wilson Library, U.N.C. Chapel Hill; Charles L. Coon, The Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina: A Documentary History, 1790–1840, vol. I (Raleigh: Edwards & Boulton, 1908), NCC.Google Scholar

12 The school's music teacher, Mr. Goneke, does not appear in this announcement but is identified in a later report on the academy's semi-annual examination. See “Raleigh Academy: Report of the Examination,” Raleigh Register, November 17, 1815, NCC.Google Scholar

13 “Raleigh Academy,” Raleigh Register, December 22, 1820, NCC.Google Scholar

14 This sample of North Carolina teachers represents all the teachers mentioned by name in the following sources: Charles L. Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies 1790–1840: A Documentary History (Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton, 1915); Mary Ellen Gadski, The History of the New Bern Academy (New Bern: Tryon Palace Commission, 1986), 166–168; Susan Nye Hutchison Diary, SHC; Ernest Haywood Papers, files 143–144, box 3, SHC; Mordecai Family Papers, files 1–11, box 1, file 113, box 8, file 15, box 2, SHC; John Steele Papers, files 67–69, box 4, SHC; The sample also includes teachers mentioned in newspaper advertisements appearing in the Raleigh Register, 1800–1840, NCC. Kim Tolley obtained the names of teachers appearing in the Register by sampling issues at regular monthly intervals (where possible) over a forty-year period; all of the teachers in this latter sample also appear in the body of Charles L. Coon's documentary history (although not all appear in Coon's index). She used a volume of Coon's history in Cubberley Library, Sanford University, but as of January 2005, this volume was available online at: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/coon/menu.html.Google Scholar

15 Many newspaper advertisements named the teacher's place of origin, particularly when a teacher was a new arrival to the school. Nevertheless, these numbers must be interpreted with caution, because it is not possible to know with absolute certainty that a teacher whose origin is not specified came from New England or North Carolina. In her analysis of newspaper sources, Kim Tolley presumed a teacher to be southern if he or she was not specifically identified as “northern.” Sample derived from all of the teachers mentioned in the following sources: Monthly interval sampling of the Raleigh Register, 1800–1840, North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Charles L. Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies 1790–1840: A Documentary History (Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton, 1915); Mary Ellen Gadski, The History of the New Bern Academy (New Bern: Tryon Palace Commission, 1986), 166–168; Susan Nye Hutchison Diary, Southern Historical Collection (SHC), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Ernest Haywood Papers, files 143–144, box 3, SHC; Mordecai Family Papers, files 1–11, box 1, file 113, box 8, file 15, box 2, SHC; John Steele Papers, files 67–69, box 4, SHC. Note: Some teachers may be represented more than once if they taught across a span of two or more decades. Because they also taught at these institutions, school principals/heads are included in this sample. Sources: Data compiled from advertisements in the Raleigh Register, 1800–1830, North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Charles L. Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies 1790–1840: A Documentary History (Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton, 1915); Mary Ellen Gadski, The History of the New Bern Academy (New Bern: Tryon Palace Commission, 1986), 166–168; Susan Nye Hutchison Diary, Southern Historical Collection (SHC), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Mordecai Family Papers, SHC.Google Scholar

16 Mordecai Family Papers, SHC. According to Christie Anne Farnham, a third daughter, Caroline, also assumed teaching duties. See Farnham, The Education of the Southern Belle, 45.Google Scholar

17 For example, see Fishlow, Albert “The American Common School Revival: Fact or Fancy?“ in Rosovsky, Henry, ed., Industrialization in Two Systems: Essays in Honor of Alexander Gerschenkron (New York: John Wiley, 1966), 67.Google Scholar

18 The figure of 121 schools is based on institutions appearing in the contents pages of Charles L. Coon, ed., North Carolina Schools and Academies: A Documentary History. Tolley's monthly interval sampling of the Raleigh Register, 1800–1840, NCC, did not reveal additional institutions of this sort. She analyzed this sample decade by decade. The proportion of schools known to have enrolled females was 50 percent in the fourth decade, but since it was not possible to determine the gender of the students from many newspaper sources, this figure may actually have been higher.Google Scholar

19 First Annual Report of the General Superintendent of Common Schools of the State of North Carolina (Raleigh: W. W. Holden, 1854), NCC, 31.Google Scholar

20 See especially, Thatcher Ulrich, Laurel The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001) and idem., A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York: Vintage, 1991).Google Scholar

21 Nash, Margaret A. “A Triumph of Reason“: Female Education in Academies in the New Republic,” in Chartered Schools, 64–88. The quotes are on pages 68 and 71, respectively.Google Scholar

22 Dublin, Thomas Transforming Women's Work: New England Lives in the Industrial Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Larcom, Lucy quoted in Elisabeth Anthony Dexter, Career Women of America, 1776–1840 (Clifton, N.J.: Augustus M. Kelley, 1972), 1.Google Scholar

24 Coon, See ed., North Carolina Schools and Academies, 390.Google Scholar

25 For the origins of the theory about the bureaucratization of schooling and the lengthening of the school year, see Myra H. Strober and David Tyack, “Why do Women Teach and Men Manage? A Report on Research on Schools,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5:3 (Spring 1980): 494–503; Strober and Audri Gordon Lanford, “The Feminization of Teaching: Cross-Sectional Analysis, 1850–1880,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11:2 (Spring 1986): 212–35. Also, see the summary of these and related arguments in Perlmann & Margo, Women's Work?, 20–21; 27–28; 35–39; 101–106.Google Scholar

26 Lima's, population numbered 1764 in 1830. Fifth Census of the United States, Bureau of the Census, Department of the Interior, Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office. For further information on early settlement, community organization and schooling in Lima, see Nancy Beadie, “Defining the Public: Congregation, Commerce and Social Economy in the Formation of the Educational System, 1790–1840,” (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, 1989).Google Scholar

27 Record Book, Lima School District # 4, 1814–1854, Town Book, 1797–1818, and Town Book, 1818–1840, Lima Historical Society [hereafter LHS}, Tenny Burton Museum, Lima, New York.Google Scholar

28 Beadie, Nancy “In the Pay of the Public: Changing Ideas about Gender and Political Economy in 19th Century New York,“ Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, 2004.Google Scholar

29 Margo, Perlmann and Women's Work?, 102.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 35–39; 99.Google Scholar

31 Scholars like Alice Kessler-Harris and Thomas Dublin have portrayed women's family work and paid work as an interrelated whole. Dublin has also moved beyond traditional manufacturing contexts to consider women's work in teaching in three New Hampshire towns during the years from 1860 to 1880. See Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Dublin, Transforming Women's Work. For a study of a later period, see Leslie W. Tetlder, Wage-Earning Women: Industrial Work and Family Life in the United States, 1900–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

32 For example, Tyack, David reported that the incomes of teachers in 1841 were “below the wages paid to artisans … and often below the earnings of scrubwomen and day laborers.” See Tyack, Turning Points in American Educational History (Waltham, MA: Blaisdell, 1967), 414. Alice Kessler-Harris placed the wages of teachers in New England district schools in the 1830s and 1840s as comparable to those paid to domestic servants. See Harris, Out to Work, 55. Most recently, Perlmann and Margo state, “True: the wages offered to women teachers may not have been much higher than those of female domestics.” See Women's Work?, 32.Google Scholar

33 Harris, Out to Work, 37.Google Scholar

34 Data compiled from Record Book, Lima School District # 4, 1814–1854, LHS. The index used to convert wages to constant value terms is the Composite Consumer Price Index from John J. McCusker, How Much is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1992).Google Scholar

35 “Report of the Managers and Treasurer, read at the Annual Meeting, July 29th, 1822,” in Revised Constitution and By-Laws of the Raleigh Female Benevolent Society, Adopted July 23rd, 1823 (Raleigh: J. Gales & Son, 1828). http://socsouth.unc.edu/nc/benevolent/benevolent.html. 11 April 2003; Raleigh Register, 8 June 1827, in Coon, ed. Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina, 209–210.Google Scholar

36 Dublin, Transforming Women's Work. The quotes are from pages 59 and 69, respectively.Google Scholar

37 A significant proportion of women who worked outside the home in the antebellum period worked as domestic servants, but there exists no systematic data on the wages paid to domestic servants prior to the 1850s. Domestic service remained an important form of wage work for immigrant and African American in the latter half of the nineteenth century, but the long hours, sometimes difficult working conditions, and relatively lower social status of the occupation led to a decrease in the number of women willing to devote themselves to this form of work by the century's end. See Faye E. Dudden, Serving Women: Household Service in Nineteenth-Century America (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983). Sources: Eleventh Annual Report of the Board of Education (Boston, Massachusetts, 1848), 26; Annual Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools of Connecticut (Hartford: Case, Tiffany, and Burnham, 1846), 8; Annual Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools of the State of New York (Albany, Carroll and Cook, 1845), 13; “Labor Income Per Worker, by Industrial Sectors, 1840,” Lance E. Davis, Richard A. Easterlin, William N. Parker et. al., American Economic Growth: An Economist's History of the United States (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 26. Note: The labor income for agriculture, manufacturing, and “all other” is defined as gross income less gross property income. This figure has not been adjusted to allow for the costs or value of board. The table uses a female to male wage ratio of .45 to approximate female wages for agriculture, manufacturing, and “all other.”Google Scholar

38 On the history of academies, see Nancy Beadie and Kim Tolley, eds. Chartered Schools. On state-endowed common school and literature funds see Fletcher Harper Swift, A History of Public Permanent Common School Funds in the United States, 1795–1905 (NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1911). On the history of such funds in New York see Nancy Beadie, “Market-Based Policies of School Funding: Lessons from the History of the New York Academy System,” Educational Policy 13:2 (May 1999): 296–317; George Frederick Miller, The Academy System of the State of New York (Albany: J. B. Lyon Co., 1922). On the numbers of academies chartered in New York and North Carolina, see Miller, Academy System of the State of New York, 75; Coon, Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina and Gadski, The History of the New Bern Academy, 70.Google Scholar

39 Unfortunately, precise wage and board information for individual teachers exists for the academy only after 1832, while comparable information for the local district schools survives only for the period before 1834. Thus the data is directly comparable for only a single year, 1833. Still, this comparison for a single year provides the first example in the literature of the relative financial advantages of different kinds of teaching during the early antebellum period.Google Scholar

40 Data compiled from Account Book #178, Journal of the Doings of the Legal Board of Trustees of the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, 1830–1854, Genesee Wesleyan Seminary Collection [hereafter GWSC], Archives and Special Collections, Byrd Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. The index used to convert wages to constant value terms is the Composite Consumer Price Index from McCusker, How Much is That in Real Money?, 49–60.Google Scholar

41 “Minutes of the Board of Trustees of Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, August 13, 1833,” Account Book #178, Journal of the Doings of the Legal Board of Trustees of the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, 1830–1854, GWSC.Google Scholar

42 Ibid. Salaries for the male teachers of languages, sciences, and English increased by 25–33 percent (from $300 to $400 for the English teacher, and from $375 to $500 per year for the teacher of languages). Meanwhile, the salary for the female “preceptress” or head of the female department increased by 67 percent (from $200 to $334.50 per year). At the same time, the institution also hired an additional female to teach drawing at a salary of $300 a year, a figure 75 percent of that for male teacher of the English department.Google Scholar

43 Ibid.Google Scholar

44 Analysis based on Annual Reports of Genesee Wesleyan Seminary to the New York Board of Regents for 1845, Account Book #178, Journal, GWSC.Google Scholar

45 Margo, Perlmann and Women's Work?, 55 and 59. Perlmann and Margo cite a female/male wage ratio for the Mid-Atlantic region in 1832 of .42, and for New York State specifically in 1860 of .41.Google Scholar

46 Data compiled from Account Book #178, Journal of the Doings of the Legal Board of Trustees of the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, 1830–1854, GWSC.Google Scholar

47 Beadie, Nancy “Female Students and Denominational Affiliation: Sources of Success Among Nineteenth Century Academies,“ American Journal of Education 107: 2 (February 1999): 75–115.Google Scholar

48 Ibid. and idem, “Analyzing the Impact of Female Student Markets on the History of Higher Learning in the United States,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the History of Education Society, New Haven, CT, 2001; also Annual Reports of the Regents of the University of the State of New York (Albany: The State of New York, 1835–1880), passim.Google Scholar

49 Beadie, “Market-Based Policies.“Google Scholar

50 The decades from 1800 to 1845 witnessed several cycles of economic expansion and contraction in the United States. Periods of economic contraction include the years from 1814 to 1821, from 1827 to 1833, and from 1837 to 1843. See McCusker, How Much is That in Real Money? 107–6.Google Scholar

51 See newspaper advertisements in Coon, North Carolina Schools and Academies, 557–58, 616, and 605–06, respectively. The quote from Warrenton's Female Academy is on p. 606. Shady Grove Academy used the same language in its 1822 advertisement, on pp. 628–629.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., See advertisements placed by Hillsborough Female Seminary, p. 305, Wake Forest Pleasant Grove Academy, p. 559, Louisburg Female Academy, p. 103, and the North Carolina Literary, Scientific, and Military Institution, p. 629.Google Scholar

53 Ibid, p. 548. In 1837, Mount Pleasant Academy stated that it offered “as reasonable terms as the high prices of the times will possibly justify”, p. 317.Google Scholar

54 Tolley, Kim documented the increase in women among music teachers during this period, in: “‘A Comfortable Living for Herself and Her Children': The Gender and Wages of North Carolina Music Teachers in a Free Market, 1800–1840.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association, Chicago, 2004. See also Tolley, The Science Education of American Girls: A Historical Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2002), chs. 4 & 7.Google Scholar

55 Beadie, “Market-Based Policies,“ 296–317.Google Scholar

56 In 1838, Regents academies derived 82 percent of their revenue from tuition, and 84 percent of combined total revenues went to pay teacher salaries. See ibid., 296–317.Google Scholar

57 Minutes of the Board of Trustees, Sherburne Academy, 13 September, 1842, Sherburne Academy Collection, New York State Historical Association [hereafter NYSHA], Cooperstown, New York. Sherburne Academy was located in Sherburne, NY.Google Scholar

58 Box #4, Minutes of the Board of Trustees, June 21st, 1849, Falley Seminary (aka Fulton Academy), Fulton Academy Collection, Fulton Public Library, Fulton, New York. A number of factors must be taken into account in comparing the Sherburne and Falley cases with that of Genesee. For one thing, the figures for Sherburne and Falley represent salaries trustees decided to offer teachers; they do not reflect the negotiations that in Genesee's case resulted in a further narrowing of the gap between male and female salaries. Also, although the salaries offered by Sherburne and Falley were substantially lower than those paid by Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in the 1840s, the sizes and structures of the institutions were significantly different. Genesee Wesleyan was Methodist-affiliated and as a consequence, it was more heavily capitalized and had a wider and more powerful network for student recruitment than many comparable institutions, a resource that soon made it substantially larger than most other academies. These factors in turn allowed Genesee Wesleyan to hire a larger faculty than other institutions and to achieve a greater degree of differentiation among faculty positions.Google Scholar

59 Eleventh Annual Report of the Board of Education, 28.Google Scholar

60 Margo, Perlmann and Women's Work?, 58.Google Scholar

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62 See Davis, Lance E. Easterlin, Richard A. Parker, William N. eds., American Economic Growth: An Economist's History of the United States (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 24–26; J. Leander Bishop, A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860 (Philadelphia: Edward Young & Co., 1864), 179; See “Table A-1” in McCusker, How Much is That in Real Money?, 53–55.Google Scholar

63 Smith, Mark M. ed., The Old South (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), xv–xvi; 2–3. For discussion of the expansion of cotton production in the South, see Broadus Mitchell, The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1921).Google Scholar

64 See the treasurer's reports in Revised Constitution and By-Laws of the Raleigh Female Benevolent Society, Adopted July 23rd, 1823. With the Reports of the Society, from Its Commencement (Raleigh: J. Gales & Son, 1828). http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/benevolent/benevolent.html. Retrieved 10 May 2003.Google Scholar

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67 Examples of sliding tuition scales in North Carolina academies and venture schools abound in Coon, ed., North Carolina Schools and Academies. For example, in 1820, Mr. J. H. Hassam's Private Academy in Raleigh charged $8.00 for tuition in spelling, reading, and English Grammar. Students interested in studying the higher subjects along with the classics had to pay $16.00. Schools like Hassam's academy enrolled students older than seven. The few schools instructing primary children charged less. For instance, Margaret Eastwood's infant school in Raleigh charged tuition of $2.50 in 1827. See pp. 523–524 and 559, respectively.Google Scholar

68 For example, Raleigh Academy supported a preparatory department throughout most of its history. See Kim Tolley, “A Chartered School in a Free Market: The Case of Raleigh Academy, 1801–1828,” Teachers College Record 107 (January 2005): 59–88.Google Scholar

69 Sklar, Kathryn Kish “The Schooling of Girls and Changing Community Values in Massachusetts Towns, 1750–1820,“ History of Education Quarterly 33: 4 (Winter 1993): 511–42.Google Scholar

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71 Until we have comparative data for a wider range of institutions, locations and years, we cannot really assess the relative value of a salary earned by someone like Fanny Jackson (Coppin), long-time principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia. Although the school dated from 1840, salary information is readily available only for the post-bellum period. According to historian Linda Perkins, Fanny Jackson earned a salary of $1200 in 1869, a figure that, when converted to constant dollars, amounts to $732. See Perkins, Fanny Jackson Coppin and the Institute for Colored Youth, 1865–1902 (New York: Garland, 1987).Google Scholar