Thursday, January 19, 2017

Edward William Johnston: 1837 Advertisement for Bedford Female Academy

[Richmond Enquirer, Volume XXXIV, Issue 56 (November 17, 1837), page 4. Extra paragraph breaks added for easier reading.]

BEDFORD FEMALE ACADEMY.---The subscriber, late Librarian and Teacher of the Modern Languages in the State College of South Carolina, will, on the 15th day of November next, re-open the Institution, situated at Liberty, and endeavor to give it an organization and methods fit to revive for it the public favour, which it once enjoyed.

The plan, to which he will give effect, is, in its main outline, as follows:

1st. To go back to that plainer, less multifarious education, which formed the Virginia lady, some sixty years ago, before Northern improvements came in.

2dly. To banish whatever of pretended sciences, taught only in name, vitiates, instead of either strengthening or adorning, the female mind.

3dly. Teaching only what fits the character and the pursuits of woman, to teach it thoroughly.

4th. To make the first aim of Education, the securing of that sort of knowledge which trains the mind the best, and best fills it with things truly useful and graceful:

5th. To leave untaught all that is less worthy in itself, less fit for the sex, and less capable of being learnt with solidity:

6th. To do whatever is done upon methods which will leave the child the feelings, the opinions, the manners and the principles proper to Southern birth, and for it to be the basis of an Education purely Southern.

Women are not destined to be Navigators, not Opticians, nor Almanac-makers, nor Practical Mechanics, nor Miners, nor Doctors in Medicine. Why give them a half or quarter-proficiency, in that of which a whole knowledge would be useless to them?

Of all futile things, half science is surely the paltriest, and in the worst taste. So, too, Metaphysics, Logic, Political Economy, belong to the Masculine offices and pursuits only, and cannot be brought into female education, without wasting the time and injuring the perceptions, which should be employed in feminine things.

Of History, and of whatever bright or singular examples it offers: of her own land and its fortunes: of her own tongue and its literature: of the cultivated Modern Dialects and their authors: of the Manners and Arts of all countries, a woman cannot know too much. She should understand Practical Arithmetic, though not Mathematics; and much more of cookery than of Chemistry. She should also learn to speak and write English with precision and purity -- but this out of the good authors, and a familiarity with them, not from systems of Rhetoric, that are mere rigamarole to such as are put at learning the Art of Composition, before they have read a book.

Books upon the method of set Question and Answer, and all illiterate compilations in general will be excluded from the school: with every other plan whatever of patent-right Teaching. So will the teaching of English Grammar. In its place French will be taught to every scholar -- a plan by which more English, as well as French, is learnt.

If women can only be stimulated to learn, by being set to exhibit themselves on the stage, they had better remain in ignorance.

The Pupils will be dressed in uniform; with every attention to a simple gracefulness of appearances; but plainly, cheaply, without jewelry, and with the strict prohibition of whatever might mark a difference of fortune. The morals and manners will receive all possible care. Parents will be expected to direct to what church their children shall be regularly taken.


PRICES.

Tuition in the English and French, $50 per annum, (these, every Pupil must learn; the remaining branches, voluntary,) Music, $40, Italian or Spanish, $40, Embroidering, $5. 

No extra charges for use of Piano, Plain Sewing, Fires, Desks, Entrance money, or the like.--- Clothes and Books the only expenses, besides Tuition. Board may be in good houses at $10 per month.---

The Academy buildings can be made to lodge 25 pupils in the best manner. Boarders placed there in the Principal's family, will have every possible care, the use of a good library, and the advantage of speaking French, (the habitual language of the household) and of practising either further tongue they may learn.

Boarders will provide each, a single mattress of hair or shucks; their own bed linen and towels; a silver table spoon, and a silver teaspoon. They will not go into public except to church; and neither visit nor receive visits, except by particular permission. The ordinary recitations will always be open to the attendance of parents, guardians, or recommended visitors.


     EDWARD WM. JOHNSTON.

Refer to His Excellency P. M. Butler, Governor of S. Carolina; Messrs. J. C. Calhoun and Wm. C. Preston, of the U.S. Senate; Generals Hamilton, Hayne, and McDuffie, late Governors of South Carolina. Dr. Thos. Cooper, L. L. D., President Barnwell and Professor Lieber, of the South Carolina College. 

In Virginia, President Dew and Professor Tucker, of William and Mary; Benjamin Watkins Leigh, Wyndham Robertson, and George W. Munford, of Richmond; Walter Jones, Postmaster, Norfolk; John and Winston Henry, Charlotte; Gen. Edward C. Carrington, Halifax; Valentine W. Southall, Charlottesville; Edw. Johnston and Dr. Wm. McDowell, Fincastle; Henry S. Langhorne, Dr. J. T. Royall, and Samuel Wyatt, Lynchburg; Col. James P. Preston, Montgomery; Gen. P. C. Johnston, Scott Court-house; Beverly R. Johnston, Abingdon.

Pupils will bring each two dresses of bottle green circassian, with two capes of the same, and a cane or straw bonnet, Nun's shape, trimmed with plain crimson ribbon.

N.B.--- The pleasant little town of Liberty, is situated near the Eastern base of the Blue Ridge, 10 miles from the Peaks of Otter, in a region exceedingly healthy, well cultivated, and of a population generally respectable and kindly. It is accessible by good public conveyances, three times a week, along the Piedmont route, from North and South; the Lewisburg and Kanawha route, from North-west; the Abingdon, Lynchburg and Richmond route, from East and West.

                                                          EDWARD W. JOHNSTON
Nov 3                                                              52-w4w

  
[Edward William Johnston (1799-1867)
$50 in 1837 equivalent to about $1200 in early 2017.
Other names fairly easy to identify, several of them relatives of Johnston by blood or marriage, especially useful for pinpointing where they were living at the time, and indicating social and communication networks.]

[Many thanks to William Myers, Mary Davy, Sally Young and Susan Davis for their ongoing research collaboration.]  


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