USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Farmington > An historical address delivered at the opening of the village library of Farmington, Conn., September 30th, 1890 > Part 4
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The first schoolhouse in Farmington of which we have any mention was ordered in 1688, when the town voted "that they would have a town house to keep school in, built this year, of eighteen-foot square, besides the chimney space, with a suitable height for that service, which house is to be built by the town's charge." The clause relating to the chimney is significant.
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Chimneys were at first built on the outside of the houses. They
were not built of bricks, for there were no bricks in the country except those brought by the Dutchmen from Holland. They were not built of stone, because they had no lime for mortar but the little they could obtain from the burning of oyster shells. So they built their chimneys of wood, laid up log-house fashion, and lined with clay. Of course the clay was continually coming off, and the houses taking fire. The town, therefore, every year elected, along with its other officers, a set of men called chimney viewers, whose business it was to inspect these chimneys once in six weeks in winter, and once a quarter in summer, and who were to be fined ten shillings for any neglect of duty. This old plan of paying no salaries, but of imposing fines for every neglect of duty, did not tend to make offices the spoils of political victory.
after they added to their committee for this purpose. The The vote to build this year was not carried out. Two years
fourth and fifth years find them voting about finishing the house. We do not know where it stood, but probably near the church on the
voted that they would not build a new schoolhouse but repair building, continued in use but twenty-five years, when the town land reserved for public uses. This house, which was five years in
the old one, and then, before the meeting adjourned, voted not to repair. The next year, in 1717, the Ecclesiastical Society took the matter in hand and voted "to erect a new school- house with all convenient speed," and this time, that there should forever be no doubt as to its site, they voted that it should be "on ye meeting house green and near where the old chestnut society voted to sell the schoolhouse in the meeting-house yard tree stood." This house was in use until May, 1756, when the
to the highest bidder. Five months before they had voted to build two houses sixteen feet square, or as much larger as the committee should judge needful, one at the North end of the town and one at the South end. From this time on school- houses rapidly multiplied. A division of the town into twelve school districts was adopted June 16, 1773, and the inhabitants Were empowered "to erect schoolhouses in their respective districts where and when they please." Gov. Treadwell reports about the year 1800 that "each of these districts is accommo- dated with a schoolhouse convenient and in good repair, excepting the Middle and North schoolhouses, which are too small for the number of scholars. What the interior arrange-
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ment of the Middle District schoolhouse was which seemed a model of convenience to the Governor, has been described to me by one who remembers it as long ago as 1820. The arrange- ment was the one that I remember at a much later period in the - Waterville district. Around the wall on all sides ran a wide board nailed up at a convenient angle. In front, for a seat, was a rough slab, sawed side upward, supported on legs driven into augur holes and often projecting above them to the no small discomfort of the occupants. The whole arrangement was exceedingly simple. Was a class called on to recite,- there was no complex marching out to music, but each child, swinging his feet over the seat, dropped thein down on the other side, and the class at once sat facing the teacher ready for recitation. Recita- tion over, they swung their feet back again and studies went on as before.
In regard to the support of the public schools of the town, it would be interesting to trace the gradual change in the law from year to year, but time will not suffice. Those who desire this knowledge will find it most fully set down in the report of the Hon. Henry Barnard to the legislature of 1853. In the year 1685 it was voted to establish "a free school in this town " with the limitation only, that if the appropriation proved insufficient the balance should be made up by the inhabitants whose tax- list amounted to one hundred pounds. To all others the school was to be absolutely free. The plan was, however, soon given up, and the former plan was renewed, of voting about ten pounds a year, and leaving the parents of the scholars to make up the rest. Each family was also to provide a load of wood in the winter. This plan, with little variation (the provision about wood only excepted), continued until the State, in 1868, made all the public schools free. I well remember, while committee of the North District, making out year after year the rate-bills under which the parents, usually the poorer ones, paid a large part of the school expenses. This may have done some little good in making them value what cost them heavily, but on the whole, the plan was oppressive and unwise. As time went on and our ancestors, by patient toil and frugal habits, earned for them- selves a more generous life, their first thought was to build up certain funds which would, they fondly thought, give their descendants a free school for all time. These funds were five in number. In the years 1737 and 1738 the land forming the town-
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ships Canaan, Cornwall, Goshen, Kent, Norfolk, Salisbury, and Sharon were sold by the Colony of Connecticut and the money distributed among the towns of the colony in proportion to their tax-lists of the year 1733, the interest to be used for the support of their respective schools forever. Treasurers of this school fund were appointed in Farmington as early as 1741. To this fund in 1766 was added any sums still due the colony under the excise Act of 1758 on tea and other merchandise which the towns could collect.
The next fund for schools was acquired on this wise. More than one hundred years before, in 1672, the town voted that a rectangular piece of land extending three miles north of Round Hill, two miles east of the meeting-house, three miles south of the house of Joseph Hecock and two miles west of Round Hill, should be reserved. All other land of the town should be divided among the eighty-four tax-payers of that year, in proportion, or nearly so, to the amount of their tax-list. This land was divided at different times between 1721 and 1764 into thirteen grand divisions, and these, for the most part, into tiers of lots one-fourth of a mile wide, separated by four-rod highways with much wider ones oc- casionally thrown in. These highways were for the most part located where no roads were needed or over precipices or through swamps where none could be made. The attempt to use one of them in the Pine Woods resulted in its being known ever since as Folly Road. So, on the 27th of December, 1874. the town voted to sell such highways, the avails to be a perpetual fund for the support of schools. To avoid any possible illegality, the General Assembly passed an Act on the 18th day of May. 1786, validating such sales. The last sale was made October 19, 1819, since which time the courts have held any further such sales illegal. Next came the famous School Fund of Con- necticut. The colony claimed under the charter of 1662 a strip of territory of the width of the present State, beginning at the west boundary of Pennsylvania, and extending due west to the South Sea, or later on to the Mississippi River. This the State ceded, in 1786, to the United States, reserving the small part long known as the Western Reserve, lying east of the west bounds of Erie and Huron counties in Ohio. From the sale of this Western Reserve arose the Connecticut School Fund. The next and last fund was derived from the surplus revenue in the treasury of the United States, which, by an Act of Congress passed June 23, 1836, was
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distributed among the several States in proportion to their repre- sentation in that body, and known as the Town Deposit Fund. Gov. Treadwell made an elaborate estimate of the-probable in- come from the funds existing in 1799, and rejoiced in the belief that it would pay the school expenses of Farmington, and leave annually the sum of $447.84 "to be applied to the support of the gospel ministry." On the 4th of March, 1799, therefore, the School Society appointed "Hon. Lt. Governor Treadwell, Timothy Pitkin, Jr., and John Mix Esquires " to petition the Gen- eral Assembly, in May of that year, for liberty to use the surplus income of the funds for the support of the ministry. The Gen- eral Assembly granted this request, but when, on the 5th of Decem- ber, 1803, the Ecclesiastical Society applied for the money, its request was flatly refused. The next year there was a com- promise in which the Ecclesiastical Society was allowed the money for "the instruction and practice of psalmody in said society ; provided nevertheless that all dissenters from the mode of worship practiced in said society shall be entitled to their rateable proportion of said monies." In 1805 and IS06 the "Gospel Ministry" secured the money, and also in ISOS when the surplus had fallen to "about 137 dollars." After this no farther attempt seems to have been made to divert the money from strictly educational uses. The schools were becoming more numerous and expensive. The parish of Northington claimed its share, and perhaps the distant muttering began to be heard of the storm which was soon to separate church and state forever.
The amount of the Town School Fund in 1826 was $9,090.41, and in 1881 it was $9,470.58, at which latter date the Town Deposit Fund amounted to $4,882.41.
But enough of funds and finances. Let us go back two cen- turies to the old log schoolhouse and consider what our forefathers studied in that little cabin. The same meeting that ordered it built voted twenty pounds for the instruction of the " male "children that are through their horning-book."
The horning-book, more commonly called the horn-book, con- sisted of a board about as big as one's hand on which was fastened a paper inscribed with the alphabet and usually below it the Lord's Prayer. Over all was nailed a thin sheet of trans- lucent horn through which the boy could see the characters beneath and with his dirty fingers point out great A, little a, and
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so on, without soiling the clean white paper below. Shenstone says :
"Lo! now with state she utters her command ; Eftsoons the urchins to their tasks repair,
Their books of stature small they take in hand, Which with pellucid horn secured are,
To save from finger wet the letters fair :"
Cowper describes it as : -
" Neatly secured from being soiled or torn Beneath a pane of thin translucent horn, A book (to please us at a tender age
'Tis called a book, though but a single page), Presents the prayer the Saviour deigned to teach, Which children use, and parsons, - when they preach."
The next book in course was a very small one, but was more universally read and left a more lasting impression on the New England mind than any other book whatever, the Bible alone ex- cepted. This was the New England Primer. Primers, formerly called prymers or primary books, are among the oldest writings in our language. The Vision of Piers Plowman, written about 1362, enumerates the prymer among priestly books. The Prioress, one of the Canterbury Pilgrims whom Chaucer sets forth from the old Tabard Inn about 1386, tells of a little child " as he sate in the scole at his primere."
Henry VIII, in 1545, directs that "every schoolmaster and bringer-up of young beginners in learning, next after the A. B. C. now by us also set forth, do teach this primer or book of or- dinary prayers."
These little books, containing first the doctrines and forms of the older church, then the modified forms of the Established Church of Henry and of Elizabeth became by slow changes the chief exponent of New England Calvinism.
In December, 1645. at a court holden at New Haven. Good- wife Stolion was complained of for selling " primers at od apiece " which cost but 4d here in New England." Nothing is certainly known of the contents of these early primers. Dr. Trumbull tells of one compiled by the Apostle Eliot in 1669 for the use of the Indians supposed to be substantially the same, the contents of which he discovers by translating from Algonkin back into Eng- lish. In an " Almanack Containing an Account of the Coolestial Motions, Aspects, &c. For the year of the Christian Empire, 1691." It is advertised that "There is now in the Press, and
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will suddenly be extant, a Second Impression of the New Eng- land Primer enlarged, to which is added, more Directions for Spelling : the Prayer of K. Edward the 6th, and Verses made by Mr. Rogers the Martyr, left as a Legacy to his Children. Sold by Benjamin Harris, at the London Coffee-House in Boston."
The earliest edition of which a complete copy is known to exist, is that of 1737. The first leaf is adorned with a wood-cut of the "Man of Sin," followed by one of King George the Second. Then come "The Great Capital Letters," "The Small Letters," the " Easie Sylables for Children," ab, eb, ib, etc., leading rapidly up to A-bom-i-na-ti-on and other words of six sylables. Then comes the Alphabet adorned with cuts, beginning with the Alpha of the Puritan's faith, -
" In Adam's Fall We sinned all."
with its representations of Adam, Eve, the Apple, and the Serpent coiled around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The succeeding illustrations are worth a moment's consideration as showing the gradual change of Puritan thought. Their early maxims of prudence and morality, after the great revivals which followed the preaching of Edwards and Bellamy, for a while gave place to solemn precepts of religion, and these were in turn modified by the taste of later times. Against the letter C stood the rhyme : -
" The Cat doth play And after slay,"
with a picture of a cat standing on her hind legs and playing on a pipe.
This was discarded for the solemn utterance - "Christ crucify'd For sinners Dy'd."
Subsequently the cat was reinstated, this time playing the fiddle and still later playing with an unlucky mouse after the manner of cats. Against the letter D the old rhyme
" A dog will bite A thief at night,"
was dropped, and we read
" The Deluge drown'd The world around ; "
but the picture of the thief with his bag of plunder and the dog
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hard after him taught too valuable a lesson to be lost, and the " Deluge " had at length to give place. The loyal utterance
" Our King the good No man of blood;"
became
" Proud Korah's Troop Was swallowed up,"
for which an edition of 1812 has
" 'Tis Youths' Delight To fly their Kite."
For the letter O the old version had
" The Royal Oak, it was the Tree That sav'd His Royal Majesty ; "
but the memory of Charles was not very dear to them and so they substituted a tribute in honor of three Old Testament worthies --
"Young Obadias, David, Josias, All were pious."
The Royal Oak was at length reinstated, and finally a Hartford edition is said to have improved it into
"The Charter Oak it was the Tree That saved to us our Liberty."
The solemn admonition
" Time cuts down all Both great and small,"
could not hold its place against the couplet -
" Young Timothy Learnt sin to fly."
with a picture of Sin which amply justifies Timothy's flight. But Time proved too strong for Timothy and at length reappears at the top of the page with his scythe and forelock. There was much other matter in the New England Primer which we have no the to consider, a very learned and entertaining account of which by Dr. Trumbull may be found in the numbers of the Sunday School Times for 1882. All this matter was designed to lead the youthful mind gradually up to the contemplation of the grand end and aim of the book. The Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, beginning with "What is the chief end of man,"
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and going on through the profoundest doctrines of Calvinism. Saturday was devoted to the study of this catechism, and the minister, at stated times, examined the children upon their knowledge of its contents. As if this were not enough, the code of 1650 enjoined upon " the Selectmen of every Town to see that all Masters of families do once a week at least catechise their children and servants in the grounds and principles of religion "
Not only was the catechism of the Westminster divines taught in the schools, but every church and town had some other favorite one adapted to their especial needs. That of the Rev. John Cotton, in very common use, was entitled "Spiritual Milk for BOSTON BABES in either England Drawn out of the Breasts of both Testaments for .their Souls Nourishment." The Rev. Mr. Stone of Hartford wrote one for his church, and another, in the most illegible penmanship I am acquainted with, is inscribed on the first record-book of the church in Farmington. It contains such questions as, "Is original sin an exorbitation of a man's whole nature from the whole law, and actual sin the exorbitation of the action from the law ?" The youthful mind having become familiar with the distinction between original sin and actual sin, was next asked "Was Adam's transgression carried on in his own person, or was it imputed to his seed ?" By which time he must have been ready to exclaim in the words of the next question, " What is this. original sin ?" However absurd these doctrines may seem to some or hateful to others, to the God-fearing men of old they were the most terrible of reali- ties. The remaining list of school books is a short one. The Bible was, no doubt, read, but it was not an age of Bible Societies and cheap Bibles. The word of God in every house- hold was a costly book handed down with reverence from father to son like that of the cotter of Burns. "The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride." Probably some cheaper edition of the New Testament supplied their needs. At a later day in 1815 the overseers of public schools in Farmington adopted the following rules concerning the use of the Bible and Catechism, interesting as showing the reverential and law-abiding spirit of a bygone time.
"The masters will select such lessons from the Bible for those who read therein, as they can best understand: and will fre- quently explain and inculcate such truths in the course of read-
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ing, as lie nearest the level of their capacities, by occasional remarks or a more solemn address ; particularly their obligations to honour and obey their parents ; to be subject to magistrates and all in authority ; to revere the ministers of the gospel ; to _ respect the aged and all their superiors; to reverence the sabbath, the word and worship of God ; also to remind them of their dependence on God, of their accountability to him, of their mortality, and of the importance of religion both as a prepara- tion for death, and the only means of true peace, comfort, and usefulness in the world. On Saturdays the masters will teach the children the catechism before mentioned ; and it is expected that all such as go through a course of ordinary school learning, will commit the whole to memory, so as to be able promptly to answer every question therein."
The Assembly's Catechism continued in use until 1846, when it was voted to use the " Catechisms of Religious Denominations among us."
The character of the teachers who were to give this religious instruction was carefully considered. By the rules of 1825, 1841, and 1846, each candidate must formally declare his belief in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures.
In 1825 Daboll's Arithmetic was formally introduced into the schools, having been in use for about ten years in the Farming- ton Academy. Probably it was the first text-book in Arithmetic ever used in our public schools.
In 1805, twenty years before, only " some useful arithmetical tables were ordered by the board of overseers." Previous to the Revolution, Arithmetic was no more taught in the common schools than Differential Calculus is now. It was one of the higher studies considered of no use outside of the counting-room. Slates and blackboards were unknown, and if the pedagogue could put a few columns of figures on paper for some youthful prodigy to foot, he was thought something uncommon, while to read his Bible in Latin and Greek was not an unusual accomplish- ment.
' In 1796 the School Society ordered the introduction of "Web- ster's Institute in all its parts," and directed that the Bible should be read as the closing exercise of the afternoon. By Webster's Institute in all its parts, was meant : Part First, the famous Spell- ing Book ; Part Second, " A plain and comprehensive Grammar founded on the true principles and idioms of the language,"
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which, however, never came into general use; Part Third, “An American Selection of lessons in reading and speaking, calculated to improve the Minds and refine the Taste of Youth," etc., etc., more familiarly known simply as "The Third Part." Webster's Spelling Book held its place for seventy-eight years until it was voted out in 1874, and the school boy no longer reads of the Boy that stole Apples, or of the Milk-maid who prematurely counted her chickens, of Poor Tray, The Partial Judge, and all the other wholesome lessons in morality.
Webster's Third Part, coming after the war of Independence, was largely made up of the patriotic orations of Hancock, War- ren, Ames, Livingston, and other American orators, with the Fourth of July oration of Joel Barlow at the North Church in Hartford. It would hardly be read with much enthusiasm by the boy of to-day, but at the beginning of the century every boy was taught to consider himself a possible President of the United States, and school declamations were thought a useful prepara- tion for the future statesman.
The Columbian Orator was introduced in 1818, and Scott's Lessons in Elocution in 1825. Declamation led to dialogue, and soon the last half of the winter term was given up to prepa- ration for the closing exhibition. Moreover, the Hartford Thea- ter had just been opened in 1795, and the Connecticut Courant in a long editorial had held it up as a worthy school of morals. The theater was to the Puritan the most alluring portal to the bottomless pit, and all that fostered a love of the drama must be crushed out. Gov. Treadwell, about the year 1800, says of the school visitors, " They have discontinued all attempts at public speaking in declamations, dialogues, and theatrical representa- tions, as not suited to the years of the scholars, as calculated to foster pride, to raise them in their own view into men and women before their time, and like hot beds to force a premature growth for ignorance and folly to stare at." In place of the proscribed exhibitions, there were introduced annual examinations of the first classes of all public schools of the town which took place in the meeting-house until the year ISIS, when they began to be held in the " Union Hall," or upper room of the new Academy building. District vied with district in reading, spelling, and especially in saying the catechism, as they styled it. They were repeated annually until 1822. In IS41 an attempt was made to revive them, and they were held for five years. I remember attending one in
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the meeting-house, March 15, 1844, in which, with the exception of a fine display by the West District School under the instruc- tion of Mr. John N. Bartlett, now Superintendent of Schools in New Britain, the exercises were not especially interesting.
In 1816 the Farmington Academy was opened with Mr. Epaph- ras Goodman as principal, who was succeeded in 1823 by Simeon Hart, Jr., long known and honored by the more familiar name of Deacon Hart. Deacon Hart, who dearly loved to make boys happy, revived in that institution the old school exhibitions. An account of the entertainment concluding his first year in the Academy is preserved in the diary of a very lovely girl of sixteen. As this exhibition had some interesting peculiarities not now associated with dramatic performances, I give a few extracts. The exhibition took place November 13, 1823, in the meeting- house, where a part of the room was curtained off, and the cur- tains hung with festoons of roses by the young ladies of the school. She says "The scholars met at the schoolroom and walked over in procession. We had two flutes which supplied us with music between the scenes. We had plenty of cake and wine behind the curtains and all was mirth and happi- ness. Our dialogue was the last -' Not at Home.' - When that was through the scholars who had been engaged during the even- ing with speaking, formed a semi-circle on the stage and Mr. Porter stood in the center and made a prayer, which closed the exercises of the evening."
In 1826 another exhibition took place, but our youthful diarist was not among the number of the happy actors. For two years the grass had grown above her grave. Most of the actors were scholars from other towns, but a few have familiar names. One of the principal scenes was from the then very famous tragedy of Douglas, by John Home, a minister of the Kirk of Scotland. It was first represented in Edinburgh, when the delighted Scotch- men, wild with enthusiasmn, exclaimed with one accord " Where is Wully Shakespeare noo." In this scene, Edward L. Hart, after- wards a very successful and beloved teacher in this town, de- Maimed the words so familiar to the school boy ears of our fathers :
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