debt of gratitude for his able and persevering advocacy of the benefits to both sexes, of coëducation. The university at Syracuse, in which Lima College was incorporated, is also open alike to boys and girls. Rochester University,[1] Brown, Columbia, Union, Hamilton, and Hobart College at Geneva, still keep their doors barred against the daughters of the State, and the three last, in the small number of their students, and their gradual decline, show the need of the very influence they exclude. Could all the girls desiring an education in and around Rochester, Geneva,[2]Clinton and Schenectady, enter these institutions, the added funds and enthusiasm they would thus receive would soon bring them renewed life and vigor.
Peter Cooper and Catharine Beecher's efforts for the working classes of women were equally praiseworthy. Miss Beecher formed "The American Woman's Educational Association," for the purpose of establishing schools all over the country for training girls in the rudiments of learning and practical work. The Cooper Institute, founded in 1854, by Peter Cooper, has been invaluable in its benefits to the poorer classes of girls, in giving them advantages in the arts and sciences, in evening as well as day classes. Here both boys and girls have free admission into all departments, including its valuable reading-room and library. It had long been a cherished desire of Mr. Cooper to found an institution to be devoted forever to the union of art and science in their application to the useful purposes of life. The School of Design is specially for women. The Ladies Art Association of New York was founded in 1867, now numbering over one hundred members. One of the most important things accomplished by this society has been the preparation of thoroughly educated teachers, many of whom are now filling positions in Southern and Western colleges.
New York, June 3, 1869.
Editors of the Revolution: Inclosed please find the report of a meeting of New York ladies to consider the important subject of woman's education. The within slip will show that this is a movement quite as
- ↑ Dr. Lewis H. Morgan, who died in 1882, famed in both hemispheres as an ethnologist, left a considerable estate to be devoted at the death of his wife (which has since occurred) and of his son without issue, to the establishment, in connection with the University of Rochester, of a collegiate institution for women. This makes it very probable that Rochester will ultimately offer equal opportunities to both sexes.
- ↑ At one time it was said that Hobart College had more professors than students, and one year had arrived at such a point of exhaustion as to graduate but one young man. When the proposition to incorporate Geneva Medical College with the Syracuse University was made, Hon. George F. Comstock, a trustee of the latter institution, vigorously opposed it unless equal advantages were pledged to women.
