"The First 100 Years of St. Mary's Hall on the Delaware" 1936

Helen Louise Shaw

Ephemera and pamphlets

Helen Louise Shaw, PhD. "The First 100 Years of St. Mary's Hall on the Delaware" (1936) A Century of Private School Education for Young Women under the American Episcopal Church; 1837-1937. Published on the centennial of St. Mary’s Hall, this extensive institutional history documents one of the earliest American Episcopal schools for young women. Founded in 1837 in Burlington, New Jersey, St. Mary’s Hall was conceived as a pioneering effort to provide rigorous private education for girls under the auspices of the Episcopal Church, at a time when secondary schooling for women was still rare. Shaw’s narrative traces the institution’s development over a full century, covering its founding ideals, administrative leadership, student body, curriculum, and campus expansion along the Delaware. Richly detailed, the volume situates St. Mary’s Hall within the broader history of women’s education in America, marking its role as an early experiment in combining religious instruction with academic rigor for girls.

The centennial publication underscores how Episcopal educators envisioned female schooling as both moral and intellectual formation, while also revealing tensions between progressive educational ideals and traditional gender roles in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For women’s history collections, this text offers a rare, primary account of one of the nation’s oldest girls’ boarding schools, situating it among a small group of pioneering institutions that helped to normalize advanced education for women well before the rise of coeducational universities. Light toning to endpapers, faint wear to extremities, otherwise clean and sound. Overall Very Good.. An extensive history of an early institution of female education in America.

Item #15597

Price: $150.00