Did education drive Miss Yale crazy?

© 2012 Christy K Robinson

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When asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated, Aristotle answered, 

'As much as the living are to the dead.' 

~Diogenes Laetius

1645--Lady Mary Fairfax,
with her tutor. Her father, General Thomas Fairfax,
was third Baron Fairfax of Cameron.

Stunning statements about education have come to light in the last few election cycles. One presidential candidate said that America needs “a leader, not a reader.” Another said that the desire to educate more Americans is snobbery and "There are good, decent men and women … that aren't taught by some liberal college professor, trying to indoctrinate them. Oh I understand why he wants [you] to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image." A radio commentator who flunked out of college after two semesters said that a female “authorette” with a recent BA degree and a journalism award for her first book was "over-educated." 

At the state level, we see groups rewriting history to make it align with a rosy utopia that is itself taken out of context or simply invented. And state legislators and governors have slashed public education funding by the billions, and/or diverted public education money to for-profit charter schools.

In the 1600s, higher education was prized, and boys and young men were trained in science, mathematics, literature, history, religion, and liberal arts. After the home-schooled Anne Hutchinson defended herself so eloquently and bested the magistrates in debates at trial in November 1637 and March 1638, Massachusetts established Harvard College to train its teen boys to the ministry.

New England women guided the household, but remained subject to their fathers’ or husbands’ authority. Men believed women had the mental capacity to manage large households, many children and servants, and often a cottage industry like brewing beer, seamstressing, or cooking, but apparently not to be formally-educated women who discussed theology, as did Anne Hutchinson and later, Mary Dyer.  

1630--Old Woman Reading a Bible,
Gerrit Dou, Netherlands

A few women were well-educated from their early years in England, as a result of tutors or fathers guiding their learning. They were the exception, not the rule. Most Puritan women could read well enough to get through their Bibles, but that was all. In the first decades of colonial New England, schools were only for boys.

Ann Yale Hopkins, the wife of Governor Edward Hopkins of Connecticut, was believed to have gone insane not because she inherited madness or was driven to it by illness, injury, fear, or unbearable hardships of first-generation settlers, but because of her scholarship and the resulting mental exhaustion.

Massachusetts Bay Gov. John Winthrop wrote:  

“Mr. Hopkins, the governor of Hartford upon Connecticut, came to Boston, and brought his wife with him, (a godly young woman, and of special parts,) who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, which had been growing upon her divers years, by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing, and had written many books. Her husband, being very loving and tender of her, was loath to grieve her [about spending too much time in reading and writing]; but he saw his error, when it was too late. For if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set her.” ~John Winthrop's Journal

The Hopkins' house

Edward Hopkins (born 1600) and Ann Yale Hopkins (born 1615) were among the co-founders of New Haven, Connecticut in 1637, but after only two months, moved to Hartford and set up a 120-acre farm and merchant trade with Turkey. Edward was elected governor or deputy governor for many one-year terms. The house they lived in from 1640, still exists on Popieluszko Court in Hartford.

It was at that time seen as a judgment from God that a woman was barren. Ann had no children, which was a huge disappointment to Puritans. As Winthrop wrote, “such things as belong to women," and "the place God had set her.” Coming from an education-minded family, reading and writing may have been a consolation to her, just as people in our day sometimes bury themselves in a creative pursuit or work. Ann exhibited signs of insanity beginning at about age 32 in 1647. Because men disapproved of women exhausting their brains, it is highly probable that her books and writing materials were removed from her at that time.

Interestingly, her husband survived an Indian assassination attempt in 1646, the year before Ann’s illness was observed. It’s possible that fear helped push Ann past the threshold of reason.

Edward and Ann returned to England permanently in 1652, perhaps because of Ann’s condition. He was engaged by Parliament as a naval commissioner (at the same time Sir Henry Vane was on the ruling council), but died in 1657. Ann was cared for until her death by her Yale relatives in north Wales.

Edward's large bequests helped fund a New Haven, Connecticut school named in his honor. ‘Hopkins is the third oldest independent school in the country. The School has been operating since 1660, and has retained as its historic mission, ‘the breeding up of hopeful youths...for the publique service of the country in future tymes.’ Congressmen, doctors, lawyers, Yale Presidents, and civil activists all had their start at Hopkins and are the embodiment of Hopkins' mission,” says a fundraising site. Another generous bequest by Edward Hopkins benefited Harvard College in Boston.

In the next generation, Elihu Yale, born in Boston in 1649, was one of the major benefactors of Yale University. Elihu is entombed at Wrexham, Wales, where there’s a Yale College, founded in 1950. Both the Welsh college and Connecticut university were named after Elihu Yale, Ann’s nephew. Wrexham's Yale College changed its name to Coleg Cambria, after the university threatened to sue.

A French asylum

Other New England women suffered mental illness, which was sometimes charged as witchcraft or being possessed by Satan. Several women killed or attempted murder on their children, and were hanged. One woman flung her child into a pond, and when the toddler crawled out and returned to its mother, the mother threw her child back in the water. A witness saved the child and reported the mother, who said that she wanted to spare her child from “further misery.” Yet another delusional mother wanted to save her baby from going to hell, so she killed it. The magistrates granted latitude to people who committed lesser crimes but were known to be seriously disturbed, but when it came to murder, the insane were executed for that crime. There were no asylums, but family members or hired help became caretakers of the insane.

That Ann Yale Hopkins was the wife and then widow of a wealthy man who was a governor probably lent to her long life in the care of family members instead of an insane asylum. Anne lived until 1698, and died at age 83, near Wrexham, Wales. Knowing the love of learning in the Yale family, perhaps Ann was permitted to read during times of lucidity, or be read to.

We can thank our 17^th-century forefathers and foremothers for their deep commitment and personal sacrifices to improving their own minds and the minds of their children, and setting a tradition of pursuit of first-class education. Because they knew that with education comes prosperity in virtually every aspect of human life.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth. 

~Diogenes Laetius

*****

Christy K Robinson is author of these sites:  

• Discovering Love (inspiration)
• Rooting for Ancestors (history and genealogy)
• William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)

and of these books:

·          We Shall Be Changed (2010)
·          Mary Dyer Illuminated (2013)
·          Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (2014)
·          The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport (2014)
·          Effigy Hunter (2015)
·          Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)