Bibliographic Notes from JER Summer 1997

Nash, Margaret A. "Rethinking Republican Motherhood: Benjamin Rush and the Young Ladies' Academy of Philadelphia" p174-191


Original Source References

Cadogan, William, "An Essay upon Nursing and the Management of Children from Their Birth to Three Years of Age" [1748] in Reinier, "Rearing the Republican Child..."

-, The Rise and Progress of the Young Ladies' Academy of Philadelphia: Containing an Account of a Number of Public Examinations & Commencements; The Charter and Bye-Laws; Likewise, A Number of Orations delivered By the Young Ladies, and several by the Trustees of said Institutions (Philadelphia, 1794). p182

Neal, J. A., An Essay on the Education and Genius of the Female Sex. To Which is Added, An Account, of the COmmencement of the Young Ladies' Academy of Philadelphia, Held the 18th Day of December, 1794 (Philadelphia, 1795): p186,7(Nash).

Rush, Benjamin, "Plan for the Establishment of Public Schools" [1786] in Rudolph, Essays ...

Rush, Benjamin "Thoughts on Female Education, Accommodated to the Present State of Society, Manners, and Government in the United States of America" [1787] in Rudolph, Essays ...

Rush, Benjamin, "Thoughts on the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic" [1786] in Rudolph, Essays ...

Smith, Samuel Harrison, "Remarks on Education, Illustrating the Close Connection between Virtue and Wisdom. To Which Is Annexed a System of Liberal Education" [1797] in Rudolph, Essays ...


Berkin, Carol Ruth, and Norton, Mary Beth, eds, Women of America: A History. Includes Gordon, Ann D., "The Young Ladies Academy of Philadelphia"

Bloch, Ruth H., "American Feminine Ideals in Transition: The Rise of the Moral Mother, 1785-1815", Feminist Studies, 4 (June 1978), 100-26. p174(Nash):argues (Nash paraphrase) "motherhood simply was not a primary focus for many writers of the revolutionary era"

Cremin, Lawrence A., American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783 (New York, 1970). p173: N. criticizes C. for refering to girls only 3 times in 700 pages.

Cremin, Lawrence A., American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 (New York, 1980). p176: citation for advocacy of universal education by Jefferson, Rush, and Noah Webster.

Evans, Sara M., Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York, 1989). p172: N's interp. of E. is that women could not, after their activism in the revolution, "happily go back to back to a life devoid of a political dimension".

Ginzberg, Lori D., Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the 19th-Century United States (New Haven, 1990).

Gordon, Ann D., "The Young Ladies Academy of Philadelphia" in Women of America: A History, ed. Berkin, Norton.

Kaestle, Carl F., Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (New York, 1983)

Kerber, Linda, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (NY 1985). Cited many times in this article; e.g. p172:"Kerber believes that postrevolutionary women adopted republican motherhood as an ideology that carved out a political niche for themselves. Constrained to the domestic sphere, they imbued that domain with unprecedented significance... Motherhood assumed almost the role of a 'forth branch of government'".

Kerber, Linda, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," Journal of American History, 75 (June 1988)

Lewis, Jan, "The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic", William and Mary Quarterly, 44 (Oct. 1987). p174(Nash): argues (Nash paraphrase) "motherhood simply was not a primary focus for many writers of the revolutionary era"

List, Karen K., "Magazine Portrayals of Women's Role in the New Republic," Journalism History, 13 (Summer 1986). p174(Nash): argues (with Lewis and Bloch -- I think -- Nash paraphrase) "motherhood simply was not a primary focus for many writers of the revolutionary era"

Malkmus, Doris Jeanne, "Female Academies in the Early Republic" (M.A. Thesis, University of Oregon, 1993). p175: Sees little evidence of "the ideology of republican motherhood in the lives of young women [who attended prominent female academies in the 1780s]

May, Henry F. The Enlightenment in America (New York, 1976) p177(Nash) cites pp208-10 on Benjamin Rush's various activities and beliefs.

Norton, Mary Beth, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 (Boston, 1980). p172:Nash' paraphrase of Norton: "prior to the Revolution, political leaders viewed the domestic realm as peripheral to public welfare, but afterward, they saw the home as pivotal to the fate of the republic.
  p181(Nash): "MBN claims that the 'founders of the academies sought to train republican wives and mothers, and this task they unquestionably accomplished.' Speechs by trustees of [B. Rush's] Young Ladies' Academy in Philadelphia indicate otherwise".

Potter, Robert E., The Stream of American Education (NY 1967)

Reinier, Jackquiline S., "Rearing the Republican Child: Attitudes and Practices in Post-Revolutionary Philadelphia", William and Mary Q'ly, 39 (Jan., 1982). p176: Quotes Cadogan.

Rudolph, Frederick, ed., Essays on Education in the Early Republic (Cambridge, MA, 1965):p176(Nash) cites Rush, "Thoughts upon the Mode of Education..." [1786], p177(Nash) cites "Thoughts on Female Education" and "Plans for Est. of Public Schools", p181 cites Smith, "Remarks on Education..."

Solomon, Barbara Miller, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven, 1985).

Vine, Phyllis, "The Social Function of Eighteenth-Century Higher Education," History of Education Quarterly, 16 (Winter 1976) 410-2.

Welter, Barbara, "..cult of true womanhood". p174: Criticized (by Kerber in particular) as too much stuck in a 1960s feminist paradigm, a la Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.

Wood, Gordon, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969)

Woody, Thomas, History of Women's Education in the United States (2 vol, New York, 1929)