User:Ricknightcrawler/Sandbox/Mary Raymond

Mary Raymond
In 1851, living in Penfield, New York just outside Rochester, there was a seventeen year old girl named Mary Raymond. She lived with her mother and brother. In May of that year, Mary Raymond attended a female seminary school in Le Roy, New York. During her time at school, Mary wrote a series of letters to her mother describing her time at school. These letters are now in the archives at the Strong National Museum of Play.

Women at the time
The role of women during Mary Raymond’s time was simultaneously limited and influential. Women were beginning to be educated at this time, but this education was to better a woman in her role as a wife and mother. Women were seen as the vessels of piety and morality, whose goal was to reform her husband and instill good, Christian values in her children. Women were receiving more education than before. The ideals brought about by the Second Great Awakening, that a woman was a teacher and a cultivator of Christian values within her family, opened doors for women’s education. Female seminaries came about in 1791 with Sarah Pierce’s “respectable academy” in Litchfield, Connecticut and diversified from there. The seminaries taught subjects similar to those taught at men’s colleges, for example: botany, rhetoric, languages, and arithmetic. Co-education and women’s colleges were just coming to fruition with the opening of Oberlin College to women in 1833. Teaching was a respectable job for a woman, especially a woman with no husband or family (spinster). Yet still, education was viewed as a means for a woman to better deal with the roles in her family. Women had prominent roles in antislavery campaigns at this time, likely stemming from the belief that slavery was un-Christian. However, anti-slavery gatherings brought women and men together into a should-be level playing field. For example, female delegates at an anti-slavery convention in 1840 were not permitted to take their seats. This blatant injustice caused many women to question the logic behind the limitations (social and political) that went along with being a woman at that time. To put this movement into perspective with the time, the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention was held in 1848, in a town not too far from Mary Raymond. Though women were beginning to protest their roles, for the most part they embraced the opportunity to raise children with more care and warmth than in decades past. Though mortality rates were still high, women bore fewer children during their lifetime and put more effort into loving and disciplining them than mothers in the past. Overall, though women were joining reform movements, receiving education, and working (only as teachers, domestic workers, or factor laborers), the predominant view of a woman’s role in the 1850’s was “To give domestic life its sweetest charm/ With softness polish and with virtue warm/ With angel kindness should behold distress/ And meekly pity where she cant redress.”

House
Mary Raymond lived at the Samuel Rich House in Penfield, New York. The Samuel Rich House has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1987.

Le Roy Female Seminary
Mary Raymond attended the Leroy Female Seminary in Le Roy, New York, which is today called the Ingham University.

School Life
School life in the time around the 1850’s can easily be comparable to school today- minus a few technological advances. For example in Mary Raymond’s letter to her mother and sister she often complained about fashion, food and the courses she had to take. Mary Raymond always wanted better clothes- she had to keep up with the other girls at school- definitely something that is still apparent in today’s world. As for food, meals were very different because of the lack of resources they had available to them. Meals were very simple and day to day Mary Raymond complained of the lack of variety and flavor. Yet the most different aspect of school life had to be the courses- the purpose of the girl’s education. Today women are empowered; we choose which classes we want to take- and which career path we want to take. In the 1850’s, girls were sent away to school to learn how to become “proper young ladies”. One school for example was the Spingler Institute for Young Ladies which was located in New York City, this school’s mission was to educate girls "by methods of thorough mental development and discipline in elementary studies, by a systematic and progressive course of higher instruction, and suitable attention to physical education, to give the varied mental and moral powers appropriate and symmetrical culture.” Therefore girls had to attend a structured school life- focused around education and mental development, rather than a focus on fun and life experiences. 	The institutes were not strict all through the years though, once girls became upperclassmen they were given the ability to pick and choose different classes they wanted to take. At Spingler, older girls could choose between natural, mental, and moral philosophy, rhetoric, logic, aesthetics, algebra, geometry, and chemistry. Allowing choices pleased the girls, especially when they were allowed to take music classes. As far as recreation, extracurricular activities and fashion goes- girl enjoyed them in the 1850’s just as much as they do today. Mary Raymond and the Schermerhorn girls were frequently writing home asking permission to purchase new dresses and bonnets- it was important for them to keep up with their schoolmates. However the most interesting connection I see is the way the girls acted. They would leave school without permission, stay out past their curfews, beg to go on field trips, obsesses over cute boys and overall they really seemed to act like high school/college girls. Therefore I would have to say although technology advances and affects our lives, the true human nature shines through from 1850 to 2010.

Health
From Mary’s letters it was easy to see that health and hygiene in the 19th century wasn’t what it is today. Mary noted that her and many other girls had bed bugs infesting their beds, but this appeared to be common and so the boarding school did nothing of it. She also commented on the fact that she could wipe the dirt off the “clean” plates the school served dinner on. Another indicator of poor health was all the talk of family members or friends coming down with illnesses. Talk of remedies such as “the cold water cure” or wormwood tea gives an idea of why it was hard to help the sickly.

Death
Mary Ann Raymond died in 1853 due to complications from erysipelas which is an acute streptococcus bacterial infection of the skin. Areas of the skin, often on the face, become swollen, tender, and red. This is sometimes accompanied by high fever and feelings of general illness. When left untreated, blood poisoning could occur. Erysipelas was highly contagious and life threatening before the use of antibiotics.

These symptoms were described in a letter from Mary A. Wright, a staff member at the Le Roy Female Seminary, to Mary’s mother. The erysipelas had “appeared on her face” but was “evidently rebuked” and “on the decline." Mary had “complained of the head-ache” before visual symptoms were present. In the letter, Wright was optimistic about Mary’s recovery and believed she would “soon be in better health” than when she arrived at the school.

Mary was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Penfield, New York on March 24th, 1853. The plot number is 281 B.