Education

This selection of letters focus on Williams's education and the early education of her children. Letters were selected that focused on education and key works were picked out of the selected letters to complete analysis.

Figure 7.a: Bubblelines is an interactive tool where we can how terms in Williams's letters overlapped and how often she repeated terms. Williams frequently wrote about her compositions, and geometry. Sarah used these terms to describe her experience in at the Albany Academy for Girls.

Figure 7.b: Contexts allows us to see the term surrounded by the rest of the phrase used by Sarah. This tool searches only one term at a time but other terms can be looked at by typing them into the box. One phrase using the term school, "much pleasure it gives a 'school girl' to get a letter" is one of many examples of encouraging her parents to write to her while at the Academy.

Figure 7.c: From this Terms view we can see the frequency with which Williams used particular terms in her letters. We can add or subtract terms and focus on various aspects of Williams's phrasing. The line trend shows how and when each term is used together. Williams filled her time at the Academy with a variety of coursework, including geometry and composition.

Educational Experience of Sarah Hicks Williams

Throughout Williams's education, her letters described a love of learning and received good grades. She could have pursued a career as a writer, based on her delay in marriage and critical thought displayed in her letters. When Williams has children of her own she wanted them to have the same opportunities that she enjoyed in her youth.

As previously mentioned Williams took her studies very seriously. Belonging to the middle-class enabled her opportunities in education others did not have. Williams attended the Albany Academy for Girls in Albany, NY, about 100 miles from her home in New Hartford. She lived in a boarding house in downtown Albany with her friend Lib, who also attended the Academy. Her parents' social and economic capital set them apart, which meant her parents could and did invest in female education (Kelley, 4). The Academy is where Williams first encountered critical thought and introspection and she valued the independence school brought her; she writes to her parents that "in regard to the school I am delighted with it-study we must, to be anything in this school" (December 1, 1844). School also gave her a chance to balance notions of womanhood and education. Attending academies allowed women to learn to negotiate between aspirations created by education and the female duties expected of them (Kelley, 73). Williams appears to have reflected that as well as she travelled and assisted her sisters with their children and domestic duties between terms and after graduation.

Sarah Hicks Williams's education did not go further than the Academy. Women's education went no further than home and seminary, and no future was promised beyond domesticity (Kelley, 101). When it came to the education of her own children, Williams picked up the task on the plantation. She is consistently having her "patience tested" by educating her children herself, she recounted to her parents. Williams wanted her children to have the same education experiences she had during her youth but also knows that will not happen. Many Southern children, especially young children acquired their education on the plantation. Typically Northern women who trained as teachers worked as tutors to the young mistresses and masters of the South's plantations. Work as a plantation tutor had its advantages over traditional schools in New England, including better pay and less strenuous work (King, 6). Williams also aware of a woman's place on the plantation expected her daughters to learn "debutant education" with close attention to morals and manners, and received different knowledge than their brothers (Cashin, 24). Additionally the isolation in the woods affected the education of the children, with lack of schools, children had to be educated at home.

Williams did have the assistance of Hattie, a nanny and teacher to her children for a period of time, but Williams handled the majority of the educating the children. Hattie is a friend or governess that came to the plantation to teach the Williams children. Williams acknowledged Hattie's presence in three of her letters. It is difficult to determine if this is the same Hattie throughout, or if the Hattie who educated Sarah's children is another person. At times there are large gaps in Sarah's letters to her parents, which adds to the difficulty in identifying individuals definitively, even if they shared the same name. Education in the South found value in teaching women about the responsibilities of republican motherhood . Republican motherhood is based upon the idea of women being the custodians of civic virtue, responsible for the morality of the family. This model also encouraged the separate sphere ideology of women in the home. The identities of Southern women and girls growing up on plantations in the 1840s and 1850s focused on virtue and upholding a higher standard, which is the main goal of Republican Motherhood. Children in the South still received the majority of their education from their mothers. The focus on education, particularly for girls focused on careful attention to morals and manners (Cashin, 24).

After the Civil War, Williams continued to educate her children at home. She wrote her parents of "talking of beginning [a school] on for the blacks too," several years after the war ended (August 27, 1867). This is interesting because after the war African-Americans typically found themselves without assistance from whites to build schools. Northern women stopped coming South, and with local whites focused on rehabilitating soldiers over assisting newly freed slaves (Ginzberg, 179). The end of the war brought many adjustments to the South, and Williams may have attempted to show her parents she was not like those who shut out freed slaves. The collapse of racial and class distinctions caused new challenges and inequalities came into existence (Edwards, 110). She believed she did the best she could for the education of her children.