Music Teachers in the North Carolina Education Market, 1800-1840

Abstract

Social historians have demonstrated that although men comprised the majority of teachers in North Carolina schools and academies during the early national period, women predominated by the end of the nineteenth century. This study concludes that among the music teachers who taught in academies and venture schools, women gained a majority decades earlier. In an effort to understand some of the underlying social processes that contributed to this shift, the following discussion analyzes the changing proportion of men and women in a sample of 65 music teachers, tracks the tuition they charged in a free market, and compares this to the tuition charged by teachers of Latin and Greek. The shift to women among music teachers in North Carolina presents an intriguing case, because it does not fit well with some earlier theoretical models of feminization among nineteenth-century teachers. The data suggest that women came to predominate among music teachers because a changing market for music instruction in venture schools and academies triggered a process of occupational abandonment and succession.

A Means of Honorable Support: Art and Music in Women's Education in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

“…48 Still, music instruction opened occupational opportunities for women, even if not at the same rate of pay earned by men. 49 Women musicians could earn their living in other ways besides teaching. As Protestant churches expanded their music programs, they began to hire organists and soloists.…”