Nineteenth-Century American Female Seminary Schools and Their Influence on American Music Education

This thesis focuses on women's music education and music-making in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century America through the accounts of female students and educators at female seminaries. The development of women's education and music education is traced using four case studies: Catherine Ackerly of the Bethlehem Female Seminary, Caroline Cowles Richards of the Ontario Female Seminary, Emma Hart Willard of the Troy Female Seminary, and Mary Lyon of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. The two students' lives are traced through personal documents, namely Ackerly's music book and Richard's diary. The educators' stories, Willard and Lyon, are told through institutional records and other accounts written and published within their lifetimes. Through an examination of primary source material, we gain an understanding of the musical experiences of these women from their own perspectives. This allows an exploration of how music education influenced their lives, as well as the lives of many other students who attended these schools and others like them. These institutions served as models for the educational programs that followed them, allowing the ideals of rigorous curricula and the accessibility of education to spread across the United States and abroad. The impact of these schools continuously resonates in music programs that still exist today. These revolutionary female seminaries created space for the inclusion of women in higher levels of education that had previously been inaccessible to them. The strength of the curricula at female seminaries influenced the development of strong music education programs across the country. The spread of the pedagogical visions and missions at these institutions contribute greatly to the landscape of higher education and higher music education as it exists today.