Our focus then shifted to the Internet. Using the Historic American Newspapers database we found that the preceptress of the Charlestown Academy was Hannah Spofford during the years 1810 to 1812 when ads for the school had appeared in the Columbian Centinel, a Boston newspaper, and that she had previously opened a school in Worcester in 1804. Further online research led us to the American Antiquarian Society and the memoirs of Ephraim Abbott, a Harvard student who was an instructor (or preceptor) at the academy from 1806 through 1808. As we continued our research a more complete picture of Hannah emerged. Baptized in Andover, Massachusetts, on October 26, 1783, her birth certificate lists her name as Hannah Stevens, the daughter of Abigail Stevens, a dressmaker. At some point Hannah Stevens’ name changed to Hannah Spofford. Hannah was born out of wedlock and perhaps Spofford reflects her father’s surname (her mother never married), used perhaps to associate herself with a father in the eyes of society.¹ Nothing is known about Hannah’s early education, but in 1801, at age eighteen, she was enrolled in the Free School of the North Parish in Andover, where she remained for one or more years.

Hannah next comes to notice, at age twenty, in May 1804, in Worcester, Massachusetts. In newspaper ads announcing a new female academy operating under her name, “in a chamber over the Green Store.” In the ad she declares that she will be “happy in devoting her time to the arduous, but pleasing task of Female Education.”² There she taught reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, rhetoric and composition, as well as drawing and embroidery. Tuition ranged from $2 to $4 per quarter, depending on the subjects taught, and she also accommodated boarding students.

Perhaps things did not go well in Worcester as Hannah was succeeded as schoolmistress by a Mrs. Nugent in 1805. No needleworks are known from Hannah’s Worcester school.
Hannah next appears in Charlestown in 1806 as preceptress of the Charlestown Academy, located on Cordis Street. According to the memoirs of the preceptor, Ephraim Abbott, “It had two stories, and two school rooms, one in each story. The Institution was supported by a company, who held forty shares. The holders of half of which could send one scholar for each share to me in the lower room. Those who held the other twenty shares could send, for each share, one scholar who should recite to the Preceptress, or to me, as the studies pursued required, or two scholars to be instructed by the Preceptress only.”³

The key to the school’s founding may have been the Reverend Jedidiah Morse, the pastor of the First Church, Congregational in Charlestown and a trustee of the Charlestown Academy. Morse had been the schoolmaster of a female academy in Connecticut in his youth and it is quite possible that he had a role in the initial founding and financing of the academy. Reverend Morse was the author of the widely popular American Geography and was the father of Samuel F. B. Morse, who invented Morse code. Two of Jedidiah’s sons, Richard and Sidney, were students at the academy during Ehpraim Abbott’s tenure; his third son Samuel was privately tutored by Abbott.

The academy was coeducational, with the boys being taught reading, writing, English grammar and arithmetic. The girls were taught drawing and needlework. Ephraim taught Greek, mathematics, and Latin, and, according to his memoirs he accomplished all of this while studying at Harvard, three miles away, a distance he walked each morning and evening.

An example of an embroidery worked during this early period of the school’s existence has recently appeared at auction.⁴ The legend on the eglomisé mat identifies the work as “Wrought by Abigail F. Cunningham under the tuition of Hannah Spofford, Charlestown, 1808” (Fig. 3).

In 1808 Ephraim Abbott left the academy at the suggestion of Dr. Morse and became a member of the first graduating class of Andover Theological Seminary. An ad was placed in the Columbian Centinel  February 6, 1808 for a new preceptor to replace him. It appears that during the next two years there was a shift in the structure of the school for on December 12, 1810 a notice appeared in the Centinel announcing that a “Mr. Brown, by the desire of the late Trustees,” had taken charge of Charlestown Academy. Oliver Brown was an 1804 graduate of Harvard and likely attained the position from his association with Morse, who was the secretary of the Massachusetts Society of Christian Knowledge, of which Oliver Brown was a resident member.

In this same 1810 notice it was relayed that “Miss Spofford, who has been engaged as Preceptress more than four years successively, has renewed her engagement for another year.” Prior to this time there had been no promotion on behalf of the academy. This announcement may be the result of new governance and the new structure that, given the resignation of the trustees, apparently no longer relied on subscription but on enrollment fees. Another ad for the academy appeared in November 1811, again noting that Miss Spofford “has renewed her engagement for another year.” Tuition, at $9.50 per quarter, was significantly more expensive than in Worcester.

The bulk of the known needleworks appear to have been created starting at about the time of the 1810 notice. Thirteen works that can be attributed to the school are currently known.⁵ Of these, eight are memorials and five are genre scenes, the latter likely all copied from prints. The aesthetic associations among the group are based on visual characteristics and the similarity of the painted faces. The eight memorials are very similar, each displaying a printed epitaph on a plinth surmounted by an urn, with one or more elegant female figures in a display of mourning and an embroidered weeping willow behind the plinth. The inspiration for this mourning imagery seems also to be from a print source, in this instance an image in the February 1812 edition of The Portfolio (Fig. 4), which illustrates a woman swooning near an urn. Scholar Betty Ring was the one who located the Portfolio image when researching what we now associate as a Charlestown Academy mourning work in her collection. The piece was worked by Mary Frost and memorializes three family members (Fig. 5).

The names of most of the girls identified on the needleworks are known, but only one of the works is dated.⁶ Though the school is only identified, on two of the examples (figs. 2, 3), the girls who worked the images were all from Charlestown or Boston, and all were born between 1792 and 1798, making dates of creation for most of the works between 1810 and 1815 quite likely (Fig. 6). Two of the works, that of Abigail Cunningham (fig. 3) and Lucy Wyman were wrought between 1806 and 1810 based on the dated Abigail Cunningham work and the similarity of the rendering of the faces. It is possible that Hannah was the artist of these two early works and that a professional artist was hired to paint facial features for the larger, later group.

The final advertisement for the academy appeared in the Columbian Centinel, December 2, 1812. On October 9, 1813, Hannah Spofford and Oliver Brown were married at the First Church, Congregational in Charlestown, where Jedidiah Morse was pastor. By 1815/1816 they appear to have closed the academy, as by then the building was being used by another school. Oliver Brown went on to become a clergyman. Hannah died in 1827 in Kingston, Rhode Island, after a long illness. The couple had no children.

The story of Hannah reflects how a determined, resourceful woman could overcome social restrictions in early nineteenth-century New England. Her memorial is the amazing body of work created by her students.