USA > Connecticut > A history of Connecticut, its people and institutions, pt 1 > Part 18
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21
provided that one-third be paid by the town in general, and the other two-thirds "by them who have benefite there- of." In 1677, a new step was taken when it was ordered that the teacher should be paid by taxation, "except any town shall agree upon som other way to rayse the maynte- nance of him they shall imploy in the afoarsayd worke." The revision of 1700, ordered that a tax of forty shillings to a thousand pounds be levied on all property for schools, and if that proved insufficient, one half of the deficit should be made up "by the inhabitants of such town, and the other half by the parents or masters of the children that go to the school." This law remained in force until 1820. In 1754, the rate was cut from forty to ten shillings on the thousand pounds. In 1766, it was raised to twenty shillings, then to forty shillings, and after fifty years it was abolished. In 1837, Connecticut received from the United States Treasury $763,661, its share of the Town Deposit Fund.
There are special invested funds as sources of income, and the first of these was the gift of Edward Hopkins to Hartford and New Haven, and of Robert Bartlett of New London, funds used for schools of a high order. A large part of the funds belonging to towns and societies was de- rived from the Western Lands so called, in the northwestern corner of the state. When Sir Edmund Andros was endeav- oring to obtain control of the colony, a special session of the legislature was held January 26, 1687, to take measures to defeat Sir Edmund's purposes, and the public lands, that had not been previously sold or granted, were disposed of at that session, and more than half of what is now Litchfield County was given to Hartford and Windsor. After the Andros trouble was over, those towns proceeded to sell the lands, and of course a controversy arose between them and the colony, and this contest continued until 1731, when it was decided to divide the land into two parts, and have the colony take the western half and the towns the eastern. In 1733, the colony ordered that the seven towns, into which
212
A History of Connecticut
the western territory was divided, be sold, and the money received for them be given to the towns already settled, according to the polls and ratable estates, to be set apart by each town as a permanent fund. It is not known how much was realized by the sale, but Salisbury was sold for nearly seven thousand pounds, and Kent for more than twelve hundred. Another source of school funds was from an act passed in 1766, granting the arrears of excise on liquors, tea, and other goods, but the main school fund was gained by the sale of lands in Ohio. As stated elsewhere the charter of Charles II., in 1662, conveyed a tract extending from Narragansett Bay on the east to the South Sea on the west. In 1681, Charles II. gave to William Penn the charter of Pennsylvania, the northern part of which had been given to Connecticut. After emigration had made the territory valuable, Connecticut asserted her claim; in 1774, and for eight years after, the settlers on the Susquehanna sent representatives to the Connecticut legislature, established schools, and paid taxes like other citizens of the state. The controversy over that region was decided in 1782, in favor of Pennsylvania. Though the title of Connecticut to lands west of Pennsylvania had never been questioned, and it was not practicable to attempt to control a slender strip of land, only seventy miles wide and extending nearly one eighth of the circumference of the globe, in 1786, the General Assembly authorized the delegates in Congress to convey to the United States all lands belonging to Connecticut, lying west of a line parallel to, and one hundred and twenty miles west of, Pennsylvania. The offer was accepted, and the lands within one hundred and twenty miles of Pennsyl- vania became known as the Western Reserve and sometimes as the New Connecticut.
In 1792, the General Assembly granted a tract of five hundred thousand acres, extending across the western end of the reservation as a compensation for the losses inflicted by the British army in the Revolution on the towns along
. 213
Education
the Sound, from Greenwich to Groton. The tract thus given was afterwards called the Fire Lands or the Sufferers' Lands. In 1793, a committee of one from every county was appointed to sell those lands, and then came a warm discussion as to what should be done with the proceeds. In 1795, it was voted to put the money into a permanent fund for the use of schools, and under the control of the people in the different school societies; a few months later, the land was sold for one million two hundred thousand dollars, payable in five years. Interest was allowed to accumulate until 1799, when sixty thousand dollars was distributed on the basis of polls and ratable estates. In 1800, the care of the fund was assigned to a commission of four, whose unfitness threatened the fund, and James Hillhouse was appointed commissioner of it. In fifteen years it rose to one million seven hundred and nineteen thousand dollars, and more than three-quarters of a million had been divided among the school societies. The effect of this annual distribution of fifty or sixty thou- sand dollars was injurious in most towns, for it led to a decreasing taxation for the schools and a decrease of interest in education, and since High Schools were no longer obliga- tory, they were seldom organized. The state allowance of two dollars on every thousand raised by the towns was a feeble spur; in many towns the stipend from the School Fund was doled out at a starvation rate, giving a few weeks in winter and a short term in summer, and when the money was gone the door of the schoolhouse was locked. A short- sighted economy possessed the state, and since the schools cost little they were slightly esteemed and rapidly de- clined. They had been the pride of the state and the wonder of the land, and for a time after they waned, some who looked at them from afar applauded. A Kentucky legislator declared in 1822, "The Connecticut system has become an example for other states, and the admiration of the Union." The schools grew poorer; schoolhouses more di- lapidated; the earlier method of having six months' and even
.
214
A History of Connecticut
eleven months' schooling in a year gave way to the limit of the elasticity of the meager public money, which for forty years was distributed on no other condition than that it should be used for schools. There was a spasm of awakening interest now and then; a bill was passed in 1810, which provided that the expense of the district schools, above that received from the School Fund, should be met by a tax on each proprietor according to the number of days his pupil or pupils attended school. In 1813, a bill passed the legisla- ture to compel proprietors of factories to have all working for them trained to read, write, and cipher, with a glance at their morals, in which the selectmen were to help.
Fervid imagination and Yankee pride have combined to halo the Little Red Schoolhouse with a glory mingled with sentimental pathos; and there have been in some of them teachers of power and inspiration, who would have taught just as well had they been paid according to their deserts, and if the schoolhouses had been less meagerly furnished. At length, public sentiment awoke, and in 1830, a convention of teachers complained of the indifference of parents; in 1836, Governor Edwards deplored the quality of the teach- ers, and in 1838, school conditions were investigated, with the result that the citizens were declared to be lacking in interest, school visitors neglectful, and teachers inefficient. Wage of men teachers was fourteen and a half dollars per month, and of women five and three-quarters. More than six thousand children of school ages were not in attendance. Changes for the better rapidly followed the report: a bill for the better supervision was passed; the Connecticut Common School Journal was founded; in 1849, a state normal school was established in New Britain under the auspices of Henry Barnard, who was aided by the cooperation of Mrs. Emma Hart Willard. In 1855, a vote was passed to enable a town to have a school of a higher grade; in 1865, the state board of education was organized, and in 1868, the town tax was increased enough to make schools free. The
215
Education
length of school required as the condition for obtaining the public money was fixed at four months in 1841, six months in 1855, and in 1870, it was voted that public schools be maintained for at least thirty weeks in a year in every school district in which the number of pupils between four and sixteen was twenty-four or more, and for twenty-four weeks in all others, but that there should be no schools in districts in which the number of children fell below eight pupils.
In 1839, the powers of the school districts were greatly enlarged, and they were declared bodies corporate, so far as to be able to purchase, receive, hold, and convey property, and make all lawful arrangements for the management of schools such as taxation, providing rooms, and employing teachers. In 1866-67, it was voted that any town might abolish all school districts and maintain a central school- an entering wedge for the act of 1909, which declared that after July of that year, every town must be a school district, with a committee having the power of district committee and school visitors, except in a few towns organized under special acts of the legislature. Thus there was a return to the early town management. In 1897, it was voted that any town in which a High School was not maintained, should pay the whole or part of the tuition fee of any child residing with his parents in said town, and should have the written consent of the school visitors or committee to attend a High School in another town. In 1905, a law was passed requiring a committee or visitors, discovering any child over fourteen and under sixteen with insufficient schooling, to notify the parents or guardians, who should cause him to attend school. In 1907, it was voted by the Assembly that any town may direct the visitors, committee, or board of education to pur- chase, at the expense of the town, text-books and other supplies used in the public schools, to be loaned to the pupils free of charge. Ten years before, it was voted that towns should supply pupils incapable of buying books. Of late years much attention has been given to the subject of
216
A History of Connecticut
libraries in the schools, and the state appropriates certain sums of money to them, on condition that the towns do their part. There are also loan libraries in circulation. It was voted in 1909, that a town shall insist, by transportation or otherwise, on schooling for every child over seven and under sixteen. Provision has also been made of late for the medical examination of children, and it has been ordered that hygiene, including the effect of alcohol on health and character, shall be taught as a regular branch of study.
In no other state is there a more rigid enforcement of attendance and employment laws. Rural supervision is of decided service in country towns. The passing of the corporate districts into the town system is a long step in advance. There are manual training departments in some High Schools, and in 1907, fifty thousand dollars was appropriated for trade schools, committing the state to the policy of public instruction in trades. Among the New England states Connecticut is second to no other in liberal provision for education; the school fund of more than two millions, with an annual income of one hun- dred and ten thousand dollars, ceased long ago to pro- voke a false economy, and is a decided benefit. The Normal Schools at Danbury, New Britain, New Haven, and Willimantic have a total of nearly eight hundred pupils, and graduate annually nearly three hundred teachers, though this does not supply the waste. The purpose of the Trade Schools is to "equip that large number of children who must work in the skilled trades with the primary es- sentials and practical principles of their trades," and the demand for this education far exceeds the facilities of the schools now in operation in Bridgeport and in New Britain. There are classes both in the day and evening, and the subjects treated are : machine work, carpentry work, pattern making, sewing, including dressmaking, printing, plumbing, and drawing. Evening schools are conducted in forty towns,
217
Education
with a registration of over ten thousand pupils, and the number attending the one hundred and fifty-three kinder- gartens is over eleven thousand. In ninety-one towns children are conveyed to a central school with general satisfaction to all concerned. The elimination of the district system, referred to on an earlier page, is a return to the early town management of schools, and hastens the escape from the antiquated conservatism, the penurious extrava- gance of the district school system, which seemed necessary for the time, but is now as much out of date as are stage- coaches and spinning-wheels. An elaborate system of supervision has been organized by grouping towns, and thirty-four supervisors are at work, responsible to the state board of education; besides these many towns have their own supervisors. This tends to greater efficiency. It is coming to be recognized by the intelligent that local manage- ment in districts is apt to be attended by injustice and injury to pupils; that many do not receive adequate atten- tion, when several grades gather in a miserable room, with antiquated equipment, underpaid teachers, and an unscien- tific and haphazard course of studies. The movement from the condition in which the state lingered for years is slow. In a hundred towns there are over three hundred schools with an average attendance of less than twelve. Changes come gradually in the land of steady habits. The vigorous community life, so prominent in the towns, which in some ways have been little commonwealths, has fostered a con- servatism, if not a self-satisfaction, which sometimes fails to see that methods, which were the only ones available in the sparsely settled colony, have been outgrown, and that the schools need to be standardized in grades, studies, and books, for the sake of efficiency, economy, and the easy passage of pupils from school to school. The recent complete change of system, the valuable work of the state board of educa- tion and the deepening interest are putting Connecticut into the front ranks in public school education.
218
A History of Connecticut
We pass now to the history of the instruction in the public schools. In early times they were primitive, and were taught in the winter by men, and the larger boys attended, and sometimes matched their strength with the master's; the summer schools were attended only by the younger children, and were taught by women and girls. The seats were hard; the desks rude, but elaborately deco- rated by the versatile jackknife. Until the Revolution, about the only books in the hands of the pupils were the Bible, the New England Primer, with its doleful pictures, and the spelling-book. The younger children had the famous "horn-book," shaped somewhat like a fan; it was a thin board with a handle, and through the horn which covered the board there could be seen the alphabet and Lord's Prayer. Arithmetic to the "Rule of Three" was taught, and the one text-book was in the hands of the teacher, who dictated rules and examples from it. The first geography for schools was not published until 1784. There were no maps or charts or blackboards. English grammar received scanty attention, and it would seem that the spelling-book was neglected, judging from the ingenious literary samples that have come down to us, of which we may take as a fair specimen the indorsement on Governor Bradford's History of Plymouth Colony by his grandson, Samuel Bradford, which reads as follows:
This book was rit by goefner William Bradford, and gifen to his son mager John Bradford, rit by me Samuel Bradford, Mach. 20, 1705.
Teachers wrote copies for penmanship and mended the goose-quills. There is an interesting letter from President Humphrey to Henry Barnard concerning schools between 1790, and 1800, in which he says:
Our school books were the Bible and Webster's Spelling Book; one or two others were found in some schools for the reading
in Ea:
Words
da
'r
. r.
die
i %
I AMLE. VUIL.
ALAKVIER come to a neighboring lawyer, espr. ring great concern for an accident which he ound had just happened. One of your thien, con- titucd he, has been ste i by an unlucky Bull of mine, and I should be glad to know how I am to make your reparation. 'There are a very honest fellow, replied the Lawyer, and wilt me that it unreasonable that I expect use of the Oxen in It. Daa. It ona more the justice, quoth the Farm- er, in Ir stwc . but what did I say ?- i mistate- it is your llull that han killed one of my Oxca Ind. elf ons the Lawyer, that alters the case ; ! must inquire into the affair ; and if-And af! said the Farmer-the bununss I bnd would have been concluded without an if, had you been a ready u do justre ta others as lo exactet fhoom thean
. with their com
.
't g is han Solote .
A Page of Webster's Speller. The Volume Is in the Watkinson Library
FAabcdefg hijklmnopg rIstetwxyz& aeiou ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ RSTUVWXYZ
caciou. a e 1 .6'1
ab eb lb ob ub ba be bi bo bul ac ec ic oc, uc |ca ceci co. cu
ad ed id od ud .da de di do du
"In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghoft. Amen.
UR Muther, which art in
Hearen, hallowed be thy
Mame; thy Kingdom come, thy'
WIN be done on Earth, asit is in . Heaven Give ;ns this day our
daily Bread ; and forgive us our
Tref paffes, as we forgive them that; trefpafs againft us : 'And
lead us not into Teniptation, but deliver us fruin Evil. . Amer
The Horn Book
Reproduced from The Connecticut Quarterly, vol. iv., No. I
1 ..
12
1 : [
lin gt
219
Education
classes-grammar was hardly taught at all in any of them, and that little was confined almost entirely to committing and reciting rules. Parsing was one of the occult sciences of my day ; we had some few lessons in geography by questions and answers, but no maps, no globes, and as for blackboards, such a thing was not thought of until long after. Children's reading and picturebooks we had none, the fables in Webster's Spelling Book came nearest to them. Arithmetic was hardly taught at all in the day schools; as a substitute, there were some evening schools in most of the districts. Spelling was one of the exer- cises in most of the districts.
A very early book was the Dilworth speller, an English work, with many terms not fitted to American life. It was an epoch in education when, in 1783, appeared the first of a series of three books by Noah Webster. He wrote:
In the year 1782, while the American army was lying on the banks of the Hudson, I kept a classical school in Goshen, N. Y. I there compiled two small elementary books for teaching the English language. The country was impoverished, intercourse with Great Britain was interrupted, school books were scarce and scarcely obtainable, and there was no certain prospect of peace.
The first of Webster's school-books to appear was the speller, through which the author gave to the country a uniform language. It sold in such numbers that, by 1847, twenty- four million copies had been disposed of, and by 1870, forty millions. In 1785, Webster issued a grammar, and in 1787, a reader. Another school-book by a Connecticut man was a geography published by Jedediah Morse of Woodstock in 1784-the first of its kind in America; in 1789, he issued a valuable work called the American Geography and, in 1812, there appeared an encyclopedia of knowledge by the same author. In one of his geographies Morse said of the trans-Mississippi region, "It has been supposed that all settlers who go beyond the Mississippi will be forever lost
220
A History of Connecticut
to the United States." In 1827, Jesse Olney of Union published his Atlas-Geography, which was popular through the country, with a circulation of eighty thousand copies. In 1796, Thomas Hubbard of Norwich published an intro- duction to arithmetic for use in the public schools, in the preface of which is a statement which must have cheered the young folks, for he said, "I have omitted fractions, not because I think them useless, but because they are not absolutely necessary." The most widely used arithmetic was by Daboll, who was born in Groton in 1750. This work, called The Schoolmaster's Assistant, stood for years in the front rank with Webster's Speller. A new era in the study of Latin was created by Ethan A. Andrews, a native of New Britain, by his Latin-English lexicon and his text-books; so complete and scholarly was his work that the lexicon be- came a standard, and the First Lessons in Latin reached thirty-four editions.
The education of girls was for years as scanty as that for boys, and in the second generation there were daughters of men in important positions who could not write their names, though in many towns the schoolmistress taught the children to behave, ply the needle through the mysteries of hemming, overhand, stitching, and darning, up to the sampler, and to read from spelling-book to the Psalter; laying emphasis on sitting up straight, conquering the spell- ing-book, never telling a lie, and being mannerly, especially to the minister, whose monthly round to catechize gave him an opportunity to chide the careless. Punishments were severe, and some fathers repeated at home the strokes given in school. A famous New London teacher had two strips of board, joined together by a hinge, in which the fingers of mischievous children were pinched, and the birch was a favorite form of torture,-a good training for torment- ing witches, and suggestive attendants of a stern theology.
The decadence of the public schools after the Revolution led to the forming of many private schools, usually called
Henry Barnard (1811-1900)
Noah Webster (1758-1843) Born in West Hartford. Cele- brated as Author of Dictionary and School Books
From a Steel Engraving
221
Education
academies, a name probably borrowed from an essay pub- lished by Franklin in 1749, and Franklin says that he was indebted to Defoe, who, in 1697, had urged the building of schools like the academies of France and Spain. The old academy at Lebanon was one of the earliest of the schools, which for half a century furnished the highest education that three-fourths of the young men received. .. One of the earliest and best of these was the school at Greenfield Hill, conducted by Timothy Dwight, 1783-96, and it was one of the earliest coeducational schools in the country. Acade- mies differed from the High School in that they were designed for all the young people in the neighborhood, gathering picked boys and girls from twenty towns and often at greatest sacrifice; going to school for study there was little difficulty in maintaining discipline. The grammar school in Fairfield was succeeded in 1781, by the Staples Acad- emy, and three years later the first academy in Windham County was chartered for Plainfield; in 1816, it had a fund of eight hundred and thirty-four dollars, with eighty pupils. Not to be outdone by her neighbor, an academy was char- tered for Woodstock in 1802, and built by the voluntary sub- scriptions and labor of neighbors; a fund of ten thousand dollars was secured, putting the school on a firm basis. In 1802, the Berlin Academy was incorporated, and eleven years later, the Bacon Academy at Colchester, thirty-six thousand dollars being raised and a "very beautiful building" of three stories erected. In 1816, it had two hundred pupils. In 1806, Noah Webster wrote:
Many academies are maintained by private funds. In these are taught primary branches and geography, grammar, languages, and higher mathematics. There are also academics for young ladies in which are taught the additional branches of needle- work, drawing and embroidery. Among the academies of the first reputation are one in Plainfield and the Bacon Academy. The most distinguished schools for young ladies are the Union School in New Haven and the school in Litchfield.
222
A History of Connecticut
In 1806, an academy was incorporated in Stratford; in 1816, Wallingford had one, teaching Latin, Greek, and English; in 1814, the Danbury Academy was incorporated; in 1821, the Fairfield; in 1823, the Goshen Academy; in 1825, the school at Madison, succeeded in 1886, by the Hand Academy. In 1817, there was formed an academy at Wilton, which became famous under the Olmsteads; in 1829, Greenwich and Tolland followed the fashion; Brooklyn in 1830, and Saybrook three years later.
A pioneer in academies for girls was the school taught by Sarah Pierce in Litchfield, which began in 1792, and during nearly forty years it trained over fifteen hundred pupils; the building is gone but it is claimed that this was the first school for girls in the United States. Hartford Female Seminary was incorporated in 1827, and so popular was it under Catharine Beecher that it had at times one hundred and fifty pupils from outside the state. We have spoken of academies for girls at Litchfield and New Haven; Norwich also formed one, and in 1799, an academy for girls was in- corporated in New London. Nathan Hale, a hero of the Revolution, taught in New London in a school incorporated in 1774, and he wrote his uncle that he had twenty young ladies in his school from five to seven in the morning, and thirty-two boys through the day. The Goodrich School in Norwich was popular for years. A school for girls was opened in Farmington in 1846, by Sarah Porter, who for more than half a century was a vital force for culture and philanthropy. The Golden Hill Seminary of Bridgeport, Grove Hall at New Haven, Windsor Female Seminary at Windsor, and St. Margaret's at Waterbury have had wide repute. Academies continued to form through the nine- teenth century-the Brainerd Academy at Haddam in 1839; one in Durham in 1842; the Parker in Woodbury in 1851; the famous Wauramaug at New Preston in 1852. In 1700, Norwich was indicted by the grand jury for "failing to maintain a school to instruct," though
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.