The beginnings of the secondary education for girls throughout so large a territory as the entire South we have not room to trace here, and we shall confine ourselves chiefly to a description of the existing condition of things. But it may be mentioned that Mrs. Lincoln-Phelps (born Almira Hart), the sister of the Mrs. Emma Willard[17] who revolutionized the education of girls in the North, was one of the first to introduce a better state of things in the South. In 1841 she took charge of the Patapsco Institute, near Baltimore, and she transformed it at once into a school of the same grade as the Troy Female Seminary, where she had been for eight years teacher and vice-principal. She writes:[18] “The course of instruction, besides the preparatory studies, embraced three years: the class of rhetoric, the class of philosophy, and the class of mathematics and natural sciences; and distributed through each, with studies appropriate to the advancement of the members, were the ancient and modern languages.... Besides the twelve resident teachers, there were special teachers who came from Baltimore, in the Italian, Spanish, German and French languages and in elocution and general literature. To the regular classes should be added the class of normal pupils, varying from twelve to twenty, which contributed many accomplished governesses and teachers to the families and schools of the South.” The natural sciences she taught herself, using her own well-known text books in botany, geology, chemistry, and natural philosophy.[19] “It was not easy at first to render mathematics popular among girls, who were disposed to consider accomplishments as the great requisite in education; but by establishing a regular course of studies and by awarding diplomas to those only who had honorably completed this course, ambition was awakened which led to efforts that often surprised the pupils themselves no less than their friends. Thus the study of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, as well as mental and moral philosophy, up to this time deemed by many repulsive, by degrees became not only tolerable, but in some cases fascinating.”