In this paper, the author discusses the life of Jane Hay Brown, later Hamilton (1827-1898), who worked as a governess and schoolmistress from the late 1840s to the mid 1880s. She was a woman whose life would have remained largely unknown without emigration which resulted in a rich collection of family letters. Jane's letters provide insight into the life of a lower middle-class woman whose voice is usually only faintly heard. Jane remained outside the growing state sector of education in the late nineteenth century largely because she lacked a training certificate, but found that running her own small school better fitted her family circumstances and allowed her to combine employment with domestic responsibilities. Marjorie Theobald has noted that whereas Jane's establishment of a school for young ladies in Victoria in 1867 appears "the last throw of a desperate woman--an enduring stereotype of the lady school-keeper," her letters give another, more positive impression. The author also shows that Jane herself had benefited from the development of secondary education for middle-class girls in Scotland which had begun in the 1830s and which had been pioneered by men. Despite the patriarchal nature of the Scottish educational tradition, its democratic aspect meant that girls had access to academic (although generally not classical) learning. (Contains 88 footnotes.)