Esther Edwards Burr to Sarah Prince

I had almost forgot to tell you that I have begun to govourn Sally. She has been Whip'd once on Old Adams account, and she knows the difference between a smile and frown as well as I do. When she had done any thing that she suspects is wrong, will look with concern to see what Mama says, and if I only knit my brow she will cry till I smile, and altho' she is not quite Ten months old. Yet when she knows so much, I think tis time she should be taught.

Anna Green Winslow, February 21, 1772 (12 years old)

As I am (as we say) a daughter of liberty I chuse to wear as much of our own manufactuory as pocible.

Abigail Adams to her daughter Nabby, 1777

I am happy in a daughter who is both a companion and an assistant in my Family affairs and who I think has a prudence and steadiness beyond her years.

Judith Sargent Murray, 1798

Female academies are everywhere establishing and right pleasant is the appellation to my ear.... I may be accused of enthusiasm; but such is my condience in THE SEX that I expect to see our young women forming a new era in female history.

Abigail Foote diary, Colchester, Connecticut

Fix'd gown for Prude, --Mend Mother's Riding-hood, Spun short thread, --Fix'd two gowns for Welsh's girls, --Carded tow, --Spun linen, --Worked on Cheese-basket, --Hatchel'd flax with Hannah, we did 51 lbs. apiece, --Pleated and ironed....--Spooled a piece,--Milked the Cows,--Spun linen, did 50 knots, --Made a Broom of Guinea wheat straw,--Spun threat to whiten, --Set a Red dye....I carded two pounds of whole wool and felt, --Spun twine, --Scoured the pewter....

Emma Willard

Mothers visiting a class were so shocked at the sight of a pupil drawing a heart, arteries and veins on a blackboard to explain the circulation of blood, that they left the room in shame and dismay. To preserve the modesty of the girls, and spare them too frequently agitation, heavy paper was pasted over the pages in their textbooks which depicted the human body.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

It was a cold morning in January [1819] when the brawny Scotch nurse carried me to see the little stranger, whose advent was a matter of intense interest to me for many weeks after. The large, pleasant room with the white curtains and bright wood fire on the hearth...was the center of attention for the older children. I heard to many friends remark, "What a pity it is she's a girl!" that I felt a kind of compassion for the little baby. True, our family consisted of five girls and only one boy but I did not understand at the time that girls were considered an inferior order of being.

Elizabeth's brother died when she was eleven:

A young man of great talent and promise, he was the pride of my father's heart.

Her father said to her: "I wish you were a boy."

She replied: "I will try to be as my brother was."

Ednah Dow Littlehale to Caroline Wells Healy, 1838

What do I mean by the rights of women!!! mean, I mean what I say--we have as good a right to rule men as they have to rule us.

15 year old Caroline to Ednah:

I do not deny that women may have the right to vote; the righ to legislation...but what lady would claim the right?

Francis Willard, 1856

Mother insists that at last I must have my hair 'done up woman-fashion.' She says she can hardly forgive herself for letting me 'run wild' so long. We've had a great time over it all.... My 'back' hair is twisted up like a corkscrew: I carry eighteen hair pins; my head aches mierably; my feet are entangled in the skirt of my hateful new gown. I can never jump over a fence again, so long as I live. As for cfhasing the sheep, down in the shady pasture, it's out of the question.

Louisa May Alcott

I always thought I must have been a deer or a horse in a former state, because it was such a joy to run. No boy could be my friend till I had beaten him in a race, and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences, and be a tomboy.

Emmeline Wells, 1868

I am determined to train my girls to habits of independence so that they have sufficient energy of purpose to carry out plans for their own welfare and happiness.

Anna Howard Shaw

After moving to the Michigan frontier:

It was late in the afternoon.... My mother...crossed the threshold and, standing very still, looked slowly around her. Then something within her seemed to give way, and she sank upon the floor. She could not realize even then, I think, that this was really the place father had prepared for us, that here he expected us to live. When she finally took it in she buried her face in her hands and in that way she sat for hours, without speaking or moving.

We took an ax, chopped up the sod, put the seed under it, and let the seed grow.

We had no hook or lines, but he [her brother Henry] took wires from our hoop-skirs and made snares at the end of poles. My part of this work was to stand on a log and frighten fish out of their holes by making horrible sounds.... When the fish hurried to the surface...to investigate the appalling noises...they were easily snared.

At 15, she became a teacher:

I 'boarded round' with the families of my pupils, staying two weeks in each place, and often walking from three to six miles a day to and from my little log schoolhouse in every kind of weather. During the first year I had about fourteen pupils of varying ages, sizes, and temperaments, and there was hardly a book in the schoolroom except those I owned. One little girl, I remember, read from an almanac, while a second used a hymnbook.

Sharlot Hall, who visited the Hopi

The little girls have tiny ovens and bake mud piki [a thin bread] and play 'keep house,' and often use the younger children as their dolls and babies. They have plenty of real dolls made of carved sticks dressed in gay scraps and...they ahve very quaint dolls modeled of clay and decorated with stripes of paint and tufts of feathers.