Queer Places:
The Litchfield Female Academy, North St, Litchfield, CT 06759
West Cemetery, Litchfield, CT 06759
Sarah
Pierce (June 26, 1767 – January 19, 1852) was a teacher, educator and
founder of one of the earliest schools for girls in the United States, the
Litchfield Female Academy in
Litchfield, Connecticut. The school having been established in her
house in 1792 became known as the
Litchfield Female Academy in 1827. The school for girls attracted an
estimated 3,000 students from across the United States and Canada. Some of
her most famous attendees and protégés were
Catharine Beecher and
Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Sarah Pierce, also called Sally, born in 1767, was the fifth child and
fourth daughter of Litchfield farmer and potter, John Pierce, and his wife
Mary Paterson. Sarah's mother died in 1770 and two years later her father
remarried and had three more children. Her father died in 1783, leaving
her brother John Pierce, responsible for his step-mother and seven younger
siblings. During the Revolutionary War, John had a distinguished record,
rising to become the Assistant Paymaster of the Continental Army, and
personal friend of General George Washington. Following the close of the
war, he was named Commissioner of the Army, responsible for settling the
army's debts. John Pierce became engaged to Ann Bard, the daughter of Dr.
John Bard, Washington's personal doctor in New York. In order to marry,
Pierce sent his younger sisters Mary and Sarah to New York City schools
specifically to train to become teachers so that they could help support
their step-mother and younger half-siblings. Returning to Litchfield,
Sarah Pierce brought a few students with her from New York and established
her school in order to help support her family.
It was a family undertaking as her sister Mary handled the boarders and
the school accounts, while her sister Susan's husband, James Brace, also
taught in the school.
Sarah Pierce seized upon the post-revolutionary rhetoric of
Republican Motherhood, which stressed the responsibility of women to
provide the early intellectual and moral training of their children so
they could provide adequate and intelligent opinions to politics which was
believed to be crucial for the survival of the country.
She deeply believed in the intellectual equality of the sexes, while
holding increased educational opportunities for women would not jeopardize
the status quo of separate spheres of activity for men and women. Pierce
did not believe women should enter the all-male colleges or professions,
but believed their work as mothers and in benevolent, charitable and
reform organizations was equally, if not more, important, than the work of
men. Also, she believed that women should be educated enough to provide
their own opinions, in the confines of their own home, to their husbands
to help men control their new republican duties that would benefit the
republic rather than themselves. Sarah believed the most important roles a
woman had in her life was to be a wife and a mother and to do so needed to
be educated as the new republic would provide new and growing
responsibilities for the women in it.
Not only did Pierce believe women were to educate the youth but she also
believed that the future of the new republic depended on them to be
spiritual and moral guardians in society. She preached this to her
students and pushed them to lead lives of moral, intellectual, and
spiritual growth because of the importance of their role in the survival
of society.
The Litchfield Female Academy had an academic curriculum which
developed and grew throughout its thirty-one year history. In 1792 the
school differed little from the large number of small female academies
opening throughout the country, especially in the northeastern states.
Pierce first offered a limited curriculum of a smattering of English,
ancient and European history, geography, arithmetic and composition. Her
primary goal was to provide educational programs that would "Vindicate the
equality of female intellect".
The presence of
Tapping Reeve's
Litchfield Law School from 1784 to 1833 greatly enhanced the success
of Sarah Pierce's school. The presence of the law school helped the
academy to achieve a national reputation. Families from distant homes,
some from as far as the British West Indies, often sent their daughters to
school in Litchfield while their sons were also traveling there to attend
the law school.
The presence of the two schools ensured an active social life, seen as a
part of the educational training of young women. With the Law School near
by Sarah's school gained a reputation of having highly suitable marriages
for her girls.<
In fact, more than 100 of Sarah Pierce's pupils married students from the
Law School, helping to reinforce the fame of the academy. Many students of
the two schools later sent their own daughters to the Litchfield Female
Academy.
Many educational historians have dismissed the importance of the
Litchfield Female Academy because of the supposed emphasis on art and
needlework, rather than examining the ways in which Pierce integrated the
academic subjects and the ornamental arts, using painting and embroidery
to enforce intellectual topics. Pierce insisted that her students work on
more than these ornamental subjects and pushed them to read aloud or have
serious conversations to ornament their minds.
Unlike most women heading female academies, Pierce was lacking in any
talent for art, needlework, music and French, hiring assistant teachers
for those subjects. She continued instruction in these traditional
disciplines, which were demanded by most parents in the education of their
daughters. At the same time however, she was unopposed to developing a
more demanding academic curriculum far in advance of most female academies
of the period. In fact, her school would provide two types of curricula:
an ornamental curriculum which was less expensive and shorter as well as
an intellectual curriculum that was more expensive and longer. Also, once
the students had completed the intellectual curriculum they would receive
a diploma.
A few of these intellectual subjects are chemistry, history (foreign and
domestic), botany, natural philosophy, Latin, and Greek.
To help herself educate her students on these subjects she sent her
nephew,
John Pierce Brace, to
Williams College to receive training in teaching the “higher branches”
of mathematics and science. He joined the school as her assistant in 1814,
teaching till 1832 when he left to take over his former student
Catharine Beecher's
Hartford Female Academy.
The Litchfield Female Academy was run by Sarah Pierce as a
proprietary school. In 1798 the leading men of the town took up a
subscription of $385 to build an academy building for Pierce's school, but
left full control of the school to Pierce. She ran the school efficiently
making a substantial profit while providing a means of support for many
members of her family. It was only in 1827, when Pierce was sixty years
old and the school was in decline, that a board of trustees was formed and
the school incorporated in order to finance a new building in an attempt
to attract more students. The effort was not a success and John Pierce
Brace left Litchfield to head the Hartford Female Seminary in 1832. The
Board attempted to keep the school going, with former students as
teachers, but to no avail. By the following year Pierce ended her 41-year
association with the school.
Pierce never married and died at the age of 83 years. The
Litchfield Enquirer newspaper published an obituary on January 22,
1852 which read "We regret the necessity which compels us to announce the
departure from this life of one who has perhaps been more extensively
known for a period of sixty years than any other lady in New England. Miss
Sarah Pierce died at her residence in this village on Monday morning, the
19th last, at the advanced age of 83 years. In 1792, Miss Pierce
established a Female Seminary in this place which, as it was the first
institution of the kind in this part of the country required great
celebrity and pupils resorted to it from distant States as well as from
various parts of our own State. This institution was incorporated by the
Legislature of Connecticut under the name of the 'Litchfield Female
Academy.' Miss Pierce retired from the institution several years ago and
has since lived in quiet enjoyment of an ample fortune, universally
respected for her constant piety, systematic benevolence and cheerful
hospitality."
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Pierce