Needlework education in antebellum Alexandria, Virginia

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2001 by Gloria Seaman Allen

Alexandria is situated on the river Potomac, one of the largest, handsomest, and most commercial cities in Virginia. The situation is pleasant and elevated, the city is built on the plan of Philadelphia, the streets are as wide if not wider than those of that city. The trade of Alexandria is very considerable; ships of almost any burthen can ride in the river.

Jo wrote a New England teacher visiting Alexandria (then part of the District of Columbia), for the first time in 1810. [1] Numerous other visitors to Alexandria also remarked on the city's orderly plan and riverfront prosperity, and at least one took time to observe the inhabitants, writing,

Females amongst them [are] uncommonly intelligent, uncommonly courteous and polite in their behavior with each other and especially with strangers. Polite and courteous conduct.. does much credit to parents, to the teachers, to the clergy and to human nature itself. [2]

Indeed, the young women of Alexandria did not lack opportunities to acquire the attributes of polite society. Individual schoolmistresses and teachers in the academies and seminaries that proliferated in Alexandria during the antebellum period offered instruction in a wide range of useful and ornamental subjects. Many parents who had benefited from Alexandria's commercial prosperity considered needlework an essential component of their daughters' genteel education. As one advice book proclaimed:

Amongst the accomplishments necessary to the female character...needlework may claim first place, it having so close a connection with neatness which is indisputably requisite to render you comfortable le to yourself or amiable in the esteem of others. [3]

While only a few examples of needlework by Alexandria schoolgirls are known today, documentary evidence in the form of newspaper advertisements contradicts the belief that there was little opportunity for southern girls to learn needlework. [4] Prior to 1830, numerous women in Alexandria provided instruction in plain and ornamental needlework. Even girls, including free blacks, whose parents lacked the financial resources to send their daughters to school or to a specialized instructor could become sufficiently proficient in sewing to obtain employment as seamstresses or skilled servants. [5] Mr. and Mrs. Winter offered such an opportunity when they advertised "Cheap Schooling" at their establishment on Wilkes Street in 1820:

Young Misses will be improved in Reading, Grammar, and Writing; and particular attention will be paid such whose abilities entitle them to become complete sempstresses. A part of the day will be taken up for that purpose. Price Two Dollars per Quarte. [6]

The Female Lancasterian School, founded in Alexandria in 1812 with an endowment established by Elizabeth Foote Washington (d. 1812), was dedicated to the free education of poor girls. [7] Also known as the Alexandria Free School for Girls, it was located in a newly constructed brick building in the 200 block of North Columbus Street and was organized along the lines of the monitorial system devised by the Anglo-American educator Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838). Older, more advanced students, or "monitors," taught a large number of younger students effectively and economically the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, and sewing. [8]

The Quakers adopted and implemented some aspects of the Lancasterian system. Rachel Judge, a Quaker, became the first teacher of the Female Lancasterian School in Alexandria, shortly before her sister, Margaret (1783-1872), took over as head of the female division of the Lancasterian school in Georgetown, D.C. [9] As the following advertisement for the Georgetown school indicates, Margaret Judge stressed practical needlework in her curriculum.

The school for girls under the direction of Miss Judge, which has been equally well conducted, consists of 169 scholars, 100 of whom entered within the last year, and 12 have been qualified and left the school...In addition to the customary instruction in this school, useful needlework has been advantageously taught, and the manufacture of yarn shawls, as an interesting amusement, that may prove a beneficial employment hereafter, to those who may leave the school. [10]

In the Alexandria school, Rachel Judge probably followed the course of needlework instruction as outlined in several Lancasterian manuals. [11] Daily a monitor, or more advanced student, distributed to each girl in her class a pinafore to wear and a thimble, needle, thread, and materials for work. Once a pupil could neatly reproduce the sewing specimen supplied by the monitor, she was promoted to the next level of difficulty. In the course of ten classes she would learn to hem, fell seams, draw threads, gather stitches, edge buttonholes, sew on buttons, make herringbone stitches, darn holes, tuck pleats, and mark linen. Starting with the practice of hemming on waste paper, the diligent student would finish her needlework education by completing a marking sampler. The girls worked simple samplers in black cross-stitches with upper- and lowercase alphabets and numbers enclosed by a zigzag border. [12] Although hundreds of young girls attended Lancasterian schools in the District of Columbia area, no samplers a ssociated with the Alexandria or Georgetown schools have yet been identified. [13]