teaching in the shadow of the Plainfield Academy, Crandall learned that the Academy provided a different model for educating young men and women, similar to what Crandall had experienced at the Friend’s School in Providence. There was no corporal punishment. Instead, the Academy achieved results through “the use of moral suasion, and other kindred and kindly influences, in place of the rod.”116 At the Plainfield Academy, both men and women received lessons together in the same classroom.117 Crandall sought to emulate many of the methods and practices enjoyed by those fortunate enough to attend Plainfield Academy.
Both parents and students recognized Crandall’s superior teaching ability.118 One year later, with the encouragement of local citizens in Canterbury, she made plans to open her own school and bought the former Luther Paine home. The house became the Canterbury Female Seminary, located in the center of town next to the home of Andrew Harris, a doctor, and across the street from Andrew T. Judson, an attorney and aspiring politician. Both men agreed to assist and promote her school for young women as members of the school’s “Board of Visitors.” Crandall bought the Luther Paine home for two thousand dollars; she paid five hundred dollars from her family’s funds and borrowed the rest from Samuel Hough, who owned a local factory that made axes. Hough also agreed to serve on the school’s Board of Visitors.119
The community happily embraced Prudence Crandall’s school for a variety of reasons. Public high schools or their equivalent did not exist in Connecticut. Parents who wanted an education for their daughters beyond the inadequate local district schools had few choices. Colleges were exclusively for men; Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard were all closed to women. Finishing schools taught women social graces and domestic skills but lacked academic rigor. Crandall’s school provided a local solution for parents who wanted to truly educate their daughters. In addition, the town fathers believed Crandall’s school would bring prestige and commerce to the small town by attracting young women from prominent families throughout the region and introducing them to the shops of the village.
As a show of support, eighteen local men, including three attorneys, a doctor, a minister, and local merchants, offered to provide assistance and guidance to Crandall and her school. Led by Andrew Judson, they sent her a formal note of encouragement on October 3, 1831. “Take this method to signify our entire approbation of the proposed undertaking, and our strong desire in its accomplishment,” Judson wrote. “Permit us to offer you our efficient aid, and our cordial support.”120
Crandall’s school served the white daughters of well-established families in Windham County. There was no reason to foresee controversy for Crandall’s school regarding the education of black women. The Canterbury Female Seminary was a private school. The tuition, while not exorbitant, was a barrier to some and would have been regarded—if anyone had thought about it—as impossible for the few black families in the region.
When Crandall moved into the schoolhouse in October 1831, newspaper advertisements promoted the new Canterbury Female Seminary: “The Board of Visitors recommend to the public patronage of Miss Crandall’s school and cheerfully add that she has already acquired a high reputation as an instructress, and the assiduity and attention which she devotes to the health and morals of her pupils renders her school a suitable place for education.”121 Twenty-seven-year-old Prudence Crandall launched her school.
Crandall’s experience working as a teacher in the neighboring town of Plainfield did not fully prepare her for the challenges involved in establishing an academy for girls. The idea of a woman creating a school, purchasing the necessary real estate, and serving as the school’s director and head teacher conflicted with fundamental conventions of the day. When Crandall joined the Canterbury Temperance Society to fight alcohol abuse, protocol prohibited Crandall and other women from speaking at the society’s public meetings—that privilege was reserved for men.122 In the 1830s women could not speak or vote at town meetings. Ironically, the fact that Crandall was not married provided her with a crucial advantage; under common law married women did not have the right to own real estate, control their finances, or conduct business through contracts.123 As a single woman, Crandall could control and manage the business affairs of her school.
The school operated continuously throughout the year, and students entered on a rolling basis. In the fall of 1831, more than twenty young women enrolled in the school. Most students came from Canterbury, but a few traveled from other towns and boarded at the school, including the daughter of State Senator Philip Pearl, who lived in the nearby town of Hampton.124 Crandall expanded the course offerings to include art, piano, and French.125 Her efforts impressed the Board of Visitors when they toured the Canterbury Female Seminary in January 1832.
Religion was always a central part of Crandall’s life; she adopted the Quaker beliefs of her parents and attended Quaker schools. Crandall believed moral affronts such as slavery, however, demanded active opposition, which was not always the Quaker way.126 At this pivotal moment in her life a religious movement took hold in much of the United States—a movement that drew her away from her Quaker roots.127
In the late 1820s and 1830s religious revivalism swept though the Northeast. After experiencing significant change in their social and economic lives, many Americans hungered for meaning and purpose beyond profit and materialism. Urbanization challenged agricultural traditions. Improved transportation created new markets and sources of goods, increased competition, and facilitated migrations of population.128 These changes brought higher standards of living for some, but also hastened the end of a diverse and local village economy. Industrialization and the expanding scale of manufacturing threatened the livelihoods of individual craftsmen and artisans and caused many to question whether the economic changes benefited their communities.129 As economic and social changes threatened older, familiar traditions, a new religious revival movement was born: the Second Great Awakening.130
Ministers such as Lyman Beecher preached evangelicalism as the religion of the common man.131 “Men are free agents, in the possession of such faculties, and placed in such circumstances, as render it practicable for them to do whatever God requires,” Beecher said.132 Beecher was wary of too much activism, however, especially regarding slavery and emancipation. He opposed the immediate abolition of slavery and favored the plan of gradual repatriation of blacks to Africa as advocated by the American Colonization Society.133 The religious awakening, however, soon promoted activism in all matters of reform, including abolitionism.
The religious movement became a crusade that challenged existing churches and denominations. Traveling ministers toured the New England countryside and held services in tents and open farm fields. Staid and predictable religious ceremonies were abandoned in favor of spontaneous revivals with emphatic and thrilling sermons. The charismatic preachers rejected complicated doctrine and spoke plainly and directly to parishioners. The outdoor revivals typically lasted three or four days and pushed all who attended to the brink of their endurance. In spite of exhaustion or perhaps as a result of it, those who participated were often filled with a sense of revelation and connection to the spiritual world.
The evangelical churches that focused on revivalism and reform included the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, and the Baptists. Charles G. Finney, a Presbyterian minister who led revivals throughout the Northeast, was born in Connecticut, raised in upstate New York, and believed in religious self-determination. “Religion is the work of man,” Finney said. “It is something for man to do.”134 Finney believed that true Christians followed the word of God and actively worked to eradicate sin. Finney expected the revival movement to achieve nothing less than the universal reformation of the world.135 Finney preached against slavery on moral grounds, and other clergy and denominations in the Northeast followed suit.136 The New England Baptists broke away from their southern colleagues on the issue of slavery and adopted a proabolition stance.137
Plainfield mill
