Good information and sources, Morton, and thanks.

You write, "My impression of the schooling in the eastern plantations of
Virginia is that it was often done by tutors hired by families for their
children.
There is an interesting volume entitled Journal & Letters of Philip
Vickers Fithian 1773-1774: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion.  This
was republished in 1965.

The Scotch-Irish in the Valley often had schools run by their ministers.
There is a detailed description of the Augusta Academy at Fairfield, VA,
later to become the Liberty Hall Academy, and eventually to become
Washington and Lee University.  This is by Dr. Samuel Campbell in the
Southern Literary Messenger,  Volume 4, Issue 6, June, 1838, pp. 361-367.
 The Lyburn Library of Washington and Lee University has a copy of this
article.  It may also be obtained from the University of Michigan Library
on web page entitled Makers of America.
>
Morton H. Smith"
****
In the 17th Century there really was very little education available for
anyone, except for those with parents with the means to send their sons to
England, hire "live-in" tutors, or pay local literates to teach their
children in the rudimentary educational needs that life required.  As for
the poor, the principal sources were the parents and the "Old Field
Schools", and even there, it was thought quite unnecessary for girls.

In the latter, after the planting season when young men and boys were not
called upon to work in the tobacco fields and on what we might call "farms"
for a couple months till late summer and the harvest season, schools -
places of instruction, better said - were "held" in cleared fields central
to the settlements that not been planted because those had been exhausted of
the minerals and nutrients needed for the usual crops.  Those gatherings
were taught by preachers, literate members of the community, elderly
citizens, and here and men by traveling through.

The "students" were instructed only in the most basic of educational needs.
It was thought quite necessary that boys learn the basics of arithmetic in
order that they could bargain, trade, buy and sell, manage the business of
their crops, and otherwise enter upon the very limited commerce of that day.
Similarly, those boys within a couple hours of travel time also had
available there the basics of the language, the spelling, and a tad of
writing instruction.

Tragically by our standards, though then quite accepted and not at all
remarkable, all but daughters of the affluent were provided no education in
those same subjects.  They were expected to learn what they needed from
their immediate and expanded families and in church.  Since almost no women
engaged in commerce, it was not unusual if they could not do even the most
basic calculations.

As Bruce reminded us 100 years ago, we would be embarrassed by the grammar
and knowledge of other than "women's things" by all wives, grown girls, and
widows and spinsters.

Paul


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