ld be responsible for the outlay made necessary in
providing, during three years, instruction for his step-daughter, who,
being then thirteen years of age, had, no doubt, already been going to
school for some length of time. The manner of completing her education
(which, it seems, was to be prolonged to her sixteenth year) was perhaps
the usual one for girls at this period:--she was to be taught at a Mrs.
Peacock's, very probably by Mrs. Peacock herself, who may have been the
mistress of a small school; for it was ordered in the will, that if she
died, the step-daughter was to attend the same school as Thomas
Goodrich's children."[55] "Robert Gascoigne provided that his wife
should ... keep their daughter Bridget in school, until she could both
read and sew with an equal degree of skill."[56] "The indentures of Ann
Andrewes, who lived in Surry ... required her master to teach her, not
only how to sew and 'such things as were fitt for women to know,' but
also how to read and apparently also how to write." ... "In 1691 a girl
was bound out to Captain William Crafford ... under indentures which
required him to teach her how to spin, sew and read...."[57]

But, as shown in previous pages, female illiteracy in the South, at
least during the seventeenth century, was surprisingly great. No doubt,
in the eighteenth century, as the country became more thickly settled,
education became more general, but for a long time the women dragged
behind the men in plain reading and writing. Bruce declares: "There are
numerous evidences that illiteracy prevailed to a greater extent than
among persons of the opposite sex.... Among the entire female population
of the colony, without embracing the slaves, only one woman of every
three was able to sign her name in full, as compared with at least three
of every five persons of the opposite sex."[58]

_III. Brilliant Exceptions_

In the middle colonies, as in New England, schools for all classes were
established at an early date. Thus, the first school in Pennsylvania was
opened in 1683, only one year after the founding of Philadelphia, and
apparently very few children in that city were without schooling of some
sort. As is commonly agreed, more emphasis was placed on education in
New England than in any of the other colonies. A large number of the men
who established the Northern colonies were university graduates,
naturally interested in education, and the founding of Harvard, sixteen
years