Literacy Instruction and Gender in Colonial New England

Abstract

HANNA NEWBERRY, THE MOST PROMINENT MORTGAGE-HOLDER IN WINDSOR, Connecticut, for most of second quarter of eighteenth century, was unable to sign many documents to which she affixed her name. Instead, she subscribed her mark, initials HN. Her case illustrates, according to Linda Auwers, the widespread fact of female illiteracy among women born in seventeenth century and difficulty in relating literacy to social class. I1 Literacy historians have used signatures and marks as indicators of, respectively, literacy and illiteracy of ordinary people in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in Europe and America.2 For colonial New England, best-known study remains that by Kenneth Lockridge, who tabulated signatures/marks made on over 3,000 wills. He found that proportion of males able to sign their own wills increased from 60 percent in 1660s to 85 percent by 1760, and almost 90 percent by 1790. Female signing rates were much lower throughout entire period. Some 31 percent of women signed their wills before 1670; this average increased, but only to 46 percent by 1790s.3 Three later studies have found a higher rate of signing than Lockridge did, in part by using deeds and other sources in addition to wills, so accessing a larger and/or less decrepit population.4 One of these is study by Auwers, who allocated her signers/markers into birth cohorts and found that proportion of women in Windsor who could sign their own names to deeds rose from 27 percent (for cohort born between 1650 and 1669) to 90 percent for 1740-49 cohort.5 The equation of literacy-possession with signing rests on assumption that signing ability is roughly equivalent to fluent reading. As reading was taught before writing, argument runs, ability to write (as indicated by