The Migration Patterns of US Female Teachers, 1860–80

Abstract

Recently, a shared understanding has emerged concerning the migration patterns of US female teachers from 1860 to 1880, but the evidence is scattered in the literature and largely qualitative. This paper provides a unifying understanding of their migration patterns based on the US census. Our quantitative findings generally confirm the shared understanding. First, teachers more often migrated to urban than rural areas; higher wages and other forms of compensation in urban areas appear to be the reason. Second, teachers born in the Northeast migrated the most, and the majority went to the Midwest; the Southern movement was never widespread, even during Reconstruction. Third, teachers born in Massachusetts migrated most commonly among teachers born in the Northeast; the oversupply of teachers in the state seems to have been the influencing factor.