Rutgers Female Institute [College] Autograph Album of Harrie

Sale 2607 - Lot 154

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Estimate: $ 300 - $ 500

Rutgers Female Institute [College].
Autograph Album of Harriet St. John (1824-1862), Class of 1841.

New York: John C. Riker, 15 Ann Street, [circa 1833-1841].

Quarto-format album fulfilled mostly in the spring of 1841, with entries dated up to 1845; the blank album pages (pink, yellow, and white paper) are interspersed with steel-engraved views of New York City, the country slightly upstate, and genre scenes, with some decorative prints and mounted plant specimens inserted; dozens of manuscript inscriptions throughout, mostly kind laudatory verses, the majority signed with initials and first names only, although Rutgers graduates Catherine E. Burns, class of 1842; and Sarah S. Hoyt, class of 1842 are both identified; some album leaves loose, binding is fancy gilt-stamped dark green morocco, rubbed, spine panel becoming detached, 9 1/4 x 7 1/4 in.

Rutgers Female Institute was the first academic school of its kind in New York City, chartered in 1838, and opening its doors to students in the spring of 1839. Emma Willard pioneered "female education" with her Troy Female Seminary in the fall of 1821. Even moves like Willard's were couched in the idea that what we now consider a normal college experience was not appropriate or even necessary for young women. In its 1855 report, the Rutgers Female Institute states that the committee reviewing students "was struck with one peculiarity [...] that natural quickness which characterizes the operations of the female mind [...] was carried into the close and difficult reasoning which they were called upon to employ [while solving mathematical problems in algebra, geometry, & trigonometry] with remarkable effect." Also noting that the students, "demonstrated a truth which had often been called in question, that the female mind is, by nature, perfectly adapted to these severe and logical studies."

Harriet St. John was born and raised in Lambertville, New Jersey. Little is known of her life after her time at school. She married Princeton graduate, doctor, and later Civil War veteran Josiah Simpson (1815-1874) in 1849, together they had five children. She passed away while living in Baltimore, Maryland in 1862.

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