is wrong to suppose that there was none. The parish institutions
introduced from England included educational beginnings; every minister
had a school, and it was the duty of the vestry to see that all poor
children could read and write. The county courts supervised the
vestries, and held a yearly 'orphans court,' which looked after the
material and educational welfare of all orphans."[54]

Indeed the interest in education during the seventeenth century, in
Virginia at least, seems to have been general. Repeatedly in examining
wills of the period we may find this interest expressed and explicit
directions given for educating not only the boys, but the girls. Bruce
in his valuable work, _Institutional History of Virginia in the
Seventeenth Century_, cites a number of such cases in which provisions
were made for the training of daughters of other female relatives.

"In 1657, Clement Thresh, of Rappahannock, in his will declared that all
his estate should be responsible for the outlay made necessary in
providing, during three years, instruction for his step-daughter, who,
being then thirteen years of age, had, no doubt, already been going to
school for some length of time. The manner of completing her education
(which, it seems, was to be prolonged to her sixteenth year) was perhaps
the usual one for girls at this period:--she was to be taught at a Mrs.
Peacock's, very probably by Mrs. Peacock herself, who may have been the
mistress of a small school; for it was ordered in the will, that if she
died, the step-daughter was to attend the same school as Thomas
Goodrich's children."[55] "Robert Gascoigne provided that his wife
should ... keep their daughter Bridget in school, until she could both
read and sew with an equal degree of skill."[56] "The indentures of Ann
Andrewes, who lived in Surry ... required her master to teach her, not
only how to sew and 'such things as were fitt for women to know,' but