Female Teachers.

In the 1840s Calvin Stowe was persuaded by his sister-in-law, the educator Catharine Beecher, to head an organization raising funds to send young women to the West to serve as missionary teachers. Trained by Beecher in Albany, New York, and Hartford, Connecticut, seventy young women traveled in 1847 to Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee to teach in local district or subscription schools, establish Sunday schools, and serve as moral influences in their new communities. Eventually this Central Committee for Promoting National Education, renamed the National Board of Popular Education in the 1850s, sent 450 teachers to the West. Educated in academies inspired by Revolutionary rhetoric, most of the young women were converted in the evangelical revivals of the Second Great Awakening. They also sought independence in the West; although some returned home, others married and raised families in their new communities. In...