from George Washington to Andrew Jackson.
When Prudence Crandall arrived at Brown’s school, she saw a large, brick school building, open fields and lawns, stands of oak and chestnut trees, and in the distance forests of maple and hemlock trees. Prudence likely joined with other students and climbed to the top of the school building’s cupola where they looked across the state toward Narragansett Bay.95
Crandall’s dormitory room was small and unadorned; Quaker traditions frowned on decorations of any kind.96 Prudence and her fellow female students did not curl their hair or wear lace, ruffles, bright colors, or jewelry. Chores included sweeping, chamber work, carrying wood from the cellar for the stoves and fireplaces, and on occasion making the beds of the male students, which fellow student Elizabeth Buffum noted “in our narrow circle of amusements, was considered a privilege.”97 The boys followed similar rules; they helped with outdoor maintenance of the school and adhered to simple traditions in appearance and manners. “Plain language was in use and plain apparel, with nothing for show in form or color … no rolling collars or extra buttons for ornament on coats being allowed,” one male student recalled.98
Classes began before sunrise and continued throughout the day.99 Tin oil lamps provided light on each desk.100 Faculty taught lessons in reading, spelling, and grammar in large classes with students reciting together. Other subjects, however, were taught on an individual basis. One of Prudence Crandall’s classmates remembered “each student being independent and going as slowly or rapidly as his brain-power and ambition prescribed.”101 In addition to classes in Latin, natural and intellectual philosophy, political economy, history, and religion, Prudence and the other female students learned knitting, spinning, and other needlework considered essential for young women.102 The entire school of 120 male and female students gathered together in the main room for Quaker meetings twice a week.
Crandall experienced firsthand Moses Brown’s progressive educational philosophy. The Friend’s School treated all students as equals. “All distinctions,” Brown said, “are to be avoided as much as possible.”103 The students came from a variety of family and financial backgrounds, with scholarships provided to those in need. “They are all to be considered as children of one family, under the care of that body which interests itself deeply in the welfare of them all,” Brown said. “The riches, the poverty, the good or bad conduct of their connections, must here have no other regard paid them.”104
Living in Providence surrounded by students from throughout New England exposed Crandall to a world with diverse perspectives and ideas. At the Friend’s School, teachers valued the intellect of all students, including women. Prudence Crandall’s academic and life lessons at the Friend’s School influenced her decision to become a teacher and provided her with the confidence to open a school of her own.
When Crandall returned to eastern Connecticut in 1830, she began her teaching career. Connecticut’s fledgling public schools lacked books and adequate funding. “There is no State of the Union today in a more desperate plight in respect to popular education than Connecticut in 1830,” a commentator noted.105 The “reactionary” repeal of the state school tax a few years earlier plunged the public schools—known as “district” or “common” schools—into steep decline.106 “In addition to a lack of books, equipment was scarce and outmoded, facilities were poor, and teachers were underpaid and badly trained,” one historian wrote. “Small wonder that teaching was neither a desired nor respected profession.”107
Educators in the 1830s faced additional challenges. “The coming in of a foreign-born population at the call of the rising manufacturing interest” brought new languages and cultures into the classroom.108 Connecticut had no child labor laws, and mill owners encouraged young children to leave school and work in their factories (the state did not address child labor in any way until 1841, when the legislature required that children under the age of fifteen work no more than ten hours a day).109 Teachers taught obedience through liberal use of corporal punishment—the rod was a constant presence in the classroom. “If I was not whipped more than three times a week, I considered myself for the time peculiarly fortunate,” remembered Eliphalet Nott, a student at the district school in Ashford, Connecticut.110
Connecticut native Noah Webster—the man who created the famous dictionary—spoke at a convention of educators in Hartford and pleaded for reform. Teachers could barely survive on their wages; male teachers were paid between twelve and sixteen dollars per month and female teachers received four to five dollars per month and were expected to “board round.”111 Reverend Samuel Joseph May, who moved from Boston to Brooklyn, Connecticut, in the 1820s and became a close friend of Prudence Crandall, “was astonished to find that the public schools were even inferior to those of Massachusetts.”112
Prudence Crandall’s first teaching job was in town of Lisbon, Connecticut, and shortly thereafter she taught at a small school in Plainfield. Plainfield was known for its numerous cotton and woolen mills and its excellent private school, the Plainfield Academy. Plainfield Academy attracted students from throughout New England and was “one of the most important, if not at the time the most important academy in the state.”113 Crandall did not teach at the Academy. The contrast between Plainfield Academy and every other school in northeastern Connecticut was not lost on Crandall. The families of most local children could not afford the tuition of a private academy. Amory Dwight Mayo wrote, “Naturally, the wealthy and educated class, as in all similar conditions of public opinion and policy, provided for themselves through the multiplication of private and academical schools.”114 Crandall taught at a more humble school where the conditions were similar to those found by Jehiel Chester Hart, a teacher at a district school in Connecticut. Hart described his school as an unsightly structure covered with poorly matched boards and an interior that was rough and tumbled down. “The seats were made from slabs from the neighboring saw mill … it was no uncommon thing to have them tip over and leave a lot of urchins sprawling on the floor.”115
While teaching in the shadow of the Plainfield Academy, Crandall learned that the Academy provided a different model for educating young men and women, similar to what Crandall had experienced at the Friend’s School in Providence. There was no corporal punishment. Instead, the Academy achieved results through “the use of moral suasion, and other kindred and kindly influences, in place of the rod.”116 At the Plainfield Academy, both men and women received lessons together in the same classroom.117 Crandall sought to emulate many of the methods and practices enjoyed by those fortunate enough to attend Plainfield Academy.
Both parents and students recognized Crandall’s superior teaching ability.118 One year later, with the encouragement of local citizens in Canterbury, she made plans to open her own school and bought the former Luther Paine home. The house became the Canterbury Female Seminary, located in the center of town next to the home of Andrew Harris, a doctor, and across the street from Andrew T. Judson, an attorney and aspiring politician. Both men agreed to assist and promote her school for young women as members of the school’s “Board of Visitors.” Crandall bought the Luther Paine home for two thousand dollars; she paid five hundred dollars from her family’s funds and borrowed the rest from Samuel Hough, who owned a local factory that made axes. Hough also agreed to serve on the school’s Board of Visitors.119
The community happily embraced Prudence Crandall’s school for a variety of reasons. Public high schools or their equivalent did not exist in Connecticut. Parents who wanted an education for their daughters beyond the inadequate local district schools had few choices. Colleges were exclusively for men; Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard were all closed to women. Finishing schools taught women social graces and domestic skills but lacked academic rigor. Crandall’s school provided a local solution for parents who wanted to truly educate their daughters. In addition, the town fathers believed Crandall’s school would bring prestige and commerce to the small town by attracting young women from prominent families throughout the region and introducing them to the shops of the village.
As a show of support, eighteen local men, including three attorneys, a doctor, a minister, and local merchants,