http://www.connerprairie.org/HistoryOnline/1880quak.html
Education was an issue of importance for Indiana Friends. Many coming from
the Carolinas in the early migration were poor and relatively uneducated.
Some, like David Hoover, the first Quaker in the state, were self-educated.
But all saw the value of education in spiritual, personal and business life.
In counties were Friends settled, Quaker schools were usually the first and
sometimes the only schools. In 1840, when the Federal Census reveled
illiteracy rates of 16% in some counties, Wayne County¹s literacy was almost
100%. Friends saw a religious responsibility to provide a "guarded
education" to their children. That same year, Yearly Meeting records show
that the Friends were operating 114 schools in the state. (Rudolph:206)
Children were to be taught by Friends to read, write, and cipher in order to
fulfill the work of the Society within the meeting and in their personal
life. The monthly meeting usually had oversight responsibility for schools,
hiring the teacher, choosing texts, and maintaining the building. Parents
paid tuition, with the meeting encouraged to pay for educating poorer
members. If a monthly meeting was not close by, or consensus could not be
reached, a Quaker subscription school was established by a group of parents.
They hired and paid for a teacher and regulated the school as the Monthly
Meeting did. Higher education came in the form of academies, Spiceland
Academy being the largest and most well-known. In 1845 a Friends Academy
opened in Westfield. A year earlier a manual labor school was opened by
Friends in Parke County. Through the 19th century, Friends operated nearly a
dozen of these secondary schools. (Indiana Friends:23-25) The Friends
Boarding School in Richmond was finally opened in 1847 and evolved into
Earlham College by 1859. ( See Hamm: Chapter 10 Quakers and Education)