An educated woman!

A History of the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies At Bethlehem, PA

Jane Lee and her sister Eleanora (in other records spelled Eleanor) were educated at the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. This type of higher education for women was virutally non-existent at the end of the 18th century. My guess is that Jane Lee, born in 1781, attended this school in the mid 1790s.

I found this passage about a young girl leaving her home to receive her education at this school, which I believe may be reminiscent of Jane Lee's experience:

By 1800, Pittsburgh had a population of only 2,400. Consequently, educational opportunities for girls were still very limited, and some traveled east to boarding school:

[Eliza Leet Shields'] grandmother . . . in 1800 . . . was taken by her father, an officer of the revolution, from her home in Western Pennsylvania on a mule, over the Allegheny Mountains, her father riding beside her and two attendants following behind, with her wardrobe, packed in paniers, a blue satin pelisse being one of the articles, which I remember she never forgot to speak of as having been very much mussed by the close packing. She attended a school at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, kept by Moravian Sisters, where in addition to the usual branches of English, she was taught to cook, sweep, embroider beautifully, paint in oils and play on the piano.

Tracing its institutional history to 1742, Moravian is America’s sixth oldest college, after Harvard, William and Mary, St. John’s (Annapolis), Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania.