USA > Connecticut > New London County > Old Lyme > The educational history of Old Lyme, Connecticut, 1635-1935 > Part 6
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The specific task of formulating plans for the opening of this first school in Lyme was, neverless, a sober one. It ap- pears that the people were convinced that the issue could no longer be safely avoided. They knew the requirements of the law and were ready to abide by them. At the same time there was no general enthusiasm for a generous school tax. The problem was one of providing ways and means of fulfilling the minimum requirements of the new school law at the least possible cost. Several town meetings were necessary before these conditions were satisfactorily provided for. These pro- visions constitute the first acts in reference to schooling in the public records of Lyme. 58 Under them the school was to be kept
53. The first school laws of Lyme. "Mr. Measure was chosen ordinary Keeper for the year Ensuing. At the same meeting Mr. Wm. Measure was chosen and agreed with to keep A Schoole and to teach the children to Read Wright and Cast Accounts according to theire capascitys and doth farder In- gage to attend the sd work for the Space of nine months beginning his time on
54
Educational History of Old Lyme.
for nine months beginning on the sixth of February. Then, in the absence of a school building, it was arranged that the school be held in the home of William Measure, who was ap- pointed simultaneously teacher of the school and keeper of the ordinary. It was further provided that on May I the school should be removed to the meetinghouse for a period of four months. Special arrangements were also made for the supply of fuel. During the cold months each child who at- tended school at Mr. Measure's house was required to pro- vide one load of wood cut fit for the fire. Measure, in turn, was required to permit them to cut the wood from his home lot and to make his oxen and cart available for hauling the wood when it was ready. Under the contract the children were to receive instruction in reading, writing and casting ac- counts and the teacher was to receive eighteen pounds: ten pounds to be raised by a town rate and the remainder divided proportionally among the parents of the children whom the townsmen considered capable of receiving benefit.5
This act reflects the term requirement of the general law of 1677 and the salary arrangement provided in the law of 1680 while the method of pupil selection by the townsmen suggests a real regard for "individual differences" among those thrifty school administrators of long ago. The possible compatibility of education and liquor is also brought into bold relief by the dual appointment of William Measure.
The whole plan was, however, scarcely within the thinking of the people before they learned that it was entirely unneces- sary for the town to be so literal in its interpretation of the
the sixth of February next Ensuing and so to attend the sd service until the sd nine months be expired. The sd Measure doth farder engage to attend the for sd service foure foure months at the meeting house beginning on the first of Maye next. In consideration whereof the sd Measure is to Receive Eighteen Pounds. Ten Pounds by waye of Towne Rate, the Remainder to be pd propor- tionally by the parents of such children as the townsmen may consider capable of Receiving benefit." Lyme Records, Town Meeting Book, January 18, 1680, p. 43.
54. The method of supplying wood for this first school is also described. Ibid., p. 44.
The Beginnings of Public Schooling. 55
law. Another special meeting was called, therefore, and the carefully planned contract with William Measure was de- clared null and void. The new agreement provided for a three months' school at his house at a salary of six pounds five shillings. Three pounds five shillings were to come from the town and three pounds from the "scholars" that were ap- pointed.
At the same meeting it was agreed that two school dames should be in the town for teaching young children and maids to read, and to do whatever else they were capable of doing, either knitting or sewing.55 One of these dames, John Wal- low's wife, was to keep school near Duck River while the other, whom the townsmen should select, was to keep school "Between the Rivers." In each case the town was to pay forty shillings per year and every child three pence a week. These schools were at this period winter schools beginning in Febru- ary, as did Measure's school for older boys. This was the method used for fulfilling the technicalities of the law. It ap- parently gave a very adjustable and widespread service at a greatly reduced cost.
By these two acts the town fixed the term, the location, the curriculum and the teaching staff of its first schools. That separate schools were favored with a different curriculum for boys and girls is very clear. Then on March 1, 1680, was held the special town meeting required for the selection of students. This was unique and significant. Here the townsmen were
to appoynt and Judge who are needful and fitting to go to schoole and so may pay the half-pound ordered to the schoolmasters [and] having seriously considered the matter and do find all which are ca- pable of receiving benefit by the sd schoole and not sent accordingly . . . we do therefore appoynt that as well those who do not goe as they which do go shall pay and order as followeth:
55. This is the first record of school dames in the town of Lyme. In later years school dames taught in the regular summer sessions of the public schools. The first dame school in Lyme was opened by John Wallow's wife on Febru- ary 1, 1680. Lyme Records, Town Meeting Book, p. 46.
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Educational History of Old Lyme.
"Mr." Perigue shall pay for his son I
Peck
I
Wolfe
2
Sill
Laneth CC
CC Henry
I
I
Higgins
3 MNH 2 I
Briggs
Brockway
2
Thos Lee 2
I
Matt. Beckwith Jr. 2 Thos. Hungerford I
"Mr." Matt. Griswold for his son Jr. I
In all is 26.56
This is the only citation of this nature which appears in the records of Lyme. How long the boys were selected by the townsmen or how long girls and boys were schooled separately the records do not reveal. In fact eleven years were to pass before another reference was made to schools. In 1691 a com- mittee of three was appointed to consider what would be the most convenient way of teaching the children to read and write, whether by school dames or schoolmasters or both. They were faced with a basic problem in school administra- tion and public-school finance.
This sudden return to the problems of local schooling may have resulted indirectly from the passage by the colony in 1690 of several new educational laws. The law in favor of higher education was not pertinent to Lyme, yet it reflected the attitude still held by the court in regard to education in the colony. Another of these laws indicates that the court, having observed that there were many persons unable to read the English language and therefore unable to read either the word of God or the laws of the colony, ordered that all par- ents and masters require their children and servants to be
56. Lyme Records, Town Meeting Book, March 1, 1680, p. 47.
CC
4
57
The Beginnings of Public Schooling.
taught all they are capable of and, further, that all grand- jurymen in each town visit each family they suspect of neglect- ing this order. Education was thought of as the tool of the church and the government. As such it was to be nurtured with diligence.
Our next outstanding item in the Lyme school records ap- pears under the date of September 26, 1695, when Lyme elected a school committee of three members "to agree and covenant with a Schoolmaster."57 This is especially interesting since the colonial law creating a school committee in each town to administer schools was not passed until 1750. These first three local men were "Leftenant Brunsone, Mathew Gris- wold Junior and Sargent Lee." Whether or not they were chosen to represent different sections of the town is not indi- cated, but the school committee of four members, "Captain Ely, Mr. Crawford, Mr. Moses Noyes Junior and Leftenant Brunsone," named on January 12, 1704, was specifically chosen "out of each quarter of the town." Thereafter the number fluctuates, going to five members in 1708 and back to four in 1709 and still later to three. The matter of distribu- tion of representation is not again referred to. These are minor details, however, besides the very significant fact that thus early in the history of the town a school committee was chosen for this special service, which previously had been in the hands of the townsmen.
The town's provision for a three months' school in 1696 to be held in the outward room of Thomas Anderson's house be- tween February and May, at a salary of forty-eight shillings per month,68 and a later provision on March 25, 1700, for a two months' school engage our attention. In 1697 there was open discussion in the town meeting as to whether the towns- men might be freed from providing a school and it was voted not to free them.59 It is very evident that for a number of years the school provisions had fallen far short of the require- ments of the law and that owing to the grave financial condi-
57. Ibid., September 26, 1695, p. 116.
58. Ibid., January 5, 1696/7, p. 118.
59. Ibid., January 11, 1697/8, p. 122.
58 Educational History of Old Lyme.
tions in the colony and in the town there were those who were willing as a financial necessity to abandon schools altogether.
The general school law of 1700 seems to have been created to meet this general emergency. It aimed to raise the school requirements and to spread the financial burden. Numerous new provisions were included and one of peculiar interest provided for a twelve months' school in towns having more than seventy families and a six months' school for towns of less than seventy families. Lyme's tax list in 1688 included seventy families,6º so it seems certain that she found herself in I700 among the towns having "seventy families or more." A second provision creating a general tax of forty shillings on every thousand pounds of ratable property in the colony provided for a new source of funds later known as "Country Money." This tax was originally collected by the constables and given to the school committee or selectmen upon receipt of a certificate; but due "to a great backwardness and neglect in paying the tax" a later law, in 1711, required that the country money be collected by the constables, sent to the colo- nial treasurer and returned by him to the school committee. The management of schools remained in the hands of the towns to be administered "by the school committee or the se- lectmen.")61
In Lyme very definite changes were necessary in order to meet the conditions of this new law which required that school be kept continuously from year to year in towns of seventy families or over. Their plan was an ingenious one. They voted first to keep school "in fouer parts of the town, a quarter of a yeare in each place as the persons there inhabiting are agreed." Then they elected a committee "to proportion the inhabitants into four parts and to appoynt where the schools shall be kept and who shall go to them."62 Furthermore, in order that these three months' schools might meet the year requirement, a supplementary vote was taken permitting any of the inhabit-
60. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. 3, P. 381.
61. Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, IV, 331.
62. Lyme Records, Town Meeting Book, December 23, 1700, p. 130.
59
The Beginnings of Public Schooling.
ants to send their children to any or all of the schools for the whole year.
In spite of this economical method of serving all the chil- dren through a "moving school" taught by one schoolmaster, the town was faced with constant financial difficulties. The town tax of a halfpenny on the pound and the country money were collected and divided proportionally among the four quarters and in Nehantick a dame was engaged to meet the full requirements of the law. Any deficit in the school funds was met half by the town and half through a rate on the par- ents. Both country money and rates, however, proved increas- ingly difficult of collection and as a result in 1712 the town found itself one year in arrears on the schoolmaster's salary. Being unable to pay the schoolmaster, they reëngaged him for a period of three years at thirty pounds per year. Under these circumstances the town's indebtedness served to estab- lish an unprecedented tenure of office.
So it was that the town struggled in the early colonial pe- riod to meet the minimum requirements of the law and to provide for the school needs of the community. Town control of schools suffered under the changing interests of the people and the more secular trend of colonial affairs. For this reason town control of the schools of Connecticut was replaced in 1712 by ecclesiastical control and the schools became, for nearly a century, the stepchildren of the established church.
During the period of transition all school records were in- terrupted. The school records of Lyme between 1712 and 1720 are very meager and after 1720 the town records con- tain for a brief period only the most casual mention of schools. Under the new law the administration and maintenance of schools became the responsibility of the ecclesiastical society. Their supervision remained with the civil authority. In Lyme the ecclesiastical society inherited a school system without place or substance, but with definite beginning for a promising future.
The conditions in Lyme during this early colonial period reflect the conditions in the Connecticut colony generally.
60
Educational History of Old Lyme.
During the long period between the Pequot War in 1637 and King Philip's War in 1675 the colonists were constantly dis- turbed by local Indian uprisings. King Philip incited his sav- ages against the whites and with the Narragansetts as their allies they attacked the people of eastern Connecticut. Fami- lies were devastated and homes were burned over a wide area. Finally in the winter of 1675 King Philip was cornered on his island stronghold in a swamp near Pattyquamscot in Rhode Island. Here his dominance was ended and Indian disturb- ances were for the time being discontinued. Not until Queen Anne's War, between 1702 and 1713, did the Indians again ravage the New England frontier with a cost to Connecticut alone of seven thousand pounds.
Nearer at home the death of Uncas, in 1682 or 1683, made necessary some adequate settlement of the Indian deeds, in which Lyme was intimately interested. Also the controversy with the English in New York precipitated trouble. Saybrook Fort was regarrisoned and soon after repulsed the efforts of Andros and his men to make a landing there.
In 1713 this early colonial period in Connecticut history came to a close. The government of the colony was well estab- lished and functioned through the general court, the county courts and the militia. In all of these Lyme took an active part. Her early magistrates are outstanding in the annals of the colony. Connecticut's isolated churches, organized under the Saybrook Platform, continued to be recognized and nur- tured by the colonial government, while Separatists were allowed to organize unmolested. At the same time financial affairs were slowly responding to a growing trade with Great Britain and the West Indies. Sloops stopped at the river towns for goods for Boston and New York and returning brought general commodities and "bills of exchange." Lyme shipped horses, beef and lumber.
During this primitive period simple houses gave way to homes of greater permanence and more distinctive design. Titles of social significance, lost during the leveling years of settlement, came again into more general use. Public educa- tion functioned under the protection of the church and gov-
The Beginnings of Public Schooling. 61
ernment, while the learned professions found security in the growing homage to Yale College. Educated men of the ap- proved order filled the pulpit, the bench and the magistracy. With greater peace abroad and established institutions at home, Connecticut entered upon a new era of increasing pros- perity.
Lyme's part in this new growth was indeed the romance of another day. Her pioneer settlers and many of their sons and daughters had given their best years to the difficult task of rooting a plantation on her rugged wooded shores. Many were already among those at rest in the old Duck River ceme- tery. To their sons and daughters "of the third and fourth generations" they left the responsibility of continued achieve- ment in a more highly organized society.
III.
A Century of Expansion, Warfare and Internal Growth. Ecclesiastical Control of Church and School, 1713-1794.
M ANY new and significant forces operated to change the character of the social structure in the early years of the eighteenth century. These ushered in a long period of marked decline in the public concern for education. Many of the vigorous and learned clergy, who had planted the early church societies of highly homogeneous people, were dead. Their learnings and ideals had been transmitted in part to younger men, natives of Connecticut. The wealth of the settlers spent in the plantation years had not been replaced. Connecticut had scarcely recovered from the interference of Andros in 1687-1689 before she was drawn into the conflict between France and England, following the accession of William and Mary. Then between 1702 and 1713 England continued her demands for men and material aid to further the program of Queen Anne's War. With its close, land, tim- ber and raw materials-the sole assets of the time-fortified by an increased population and temporary peace, became the grist of a new prosperity.
With this trend toward more secular interests we have also a division in the control of community affairs. Through an in- creasing desire to possess land the settlers established them- selves farther from the original centers. Smaller and less definitely organized administrative units were formed. These new settlements contained less homogeneous groups, pre- eminently more concerned with commerce than with religion or education. Under these circumstances the civil gradually came to replace the religious form of government. Conse- quently, by a vote of the assembly in 1712, already referred to, the ecclesiastical societies became the custodians of church
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Ecclesiastical Control.
and school, while to the town meeting were reserved the civil responsibilities: the control of lands, highways, bridges, civil contracts, town officers and the public peace.1 Under this dual control we pass through decades of colonial prosperity and the distressing years of the Revolutionary War into the period of postwar expansion and early statehood.
The church, the backbone of the educational system, suf- fered greatly from the changing social conditions and educa- tion was seriously neglected. Few changes in school adminis- tration were made and these consisted of an effort on the part of the colony to adjust requirements to the ability of towns, giving them such encouragement and aid as was possible and holding them to these requirements by a system of increas- ingly severe penalties.
Lyme took a vigorous part in this pageant of growth and change. There was a condition of business revival and the people quickly cast off the wearisome depression of war and entered upon a period of expansion and very real prosperity. In the year 1713 numbers of highways, avenues of industry, were either improved or laid down. Important among these was the highway built by John Lee and Thomas Lee to Ne- hantick, beginning at Mile Creek and leading thence east- wardly between Ensign George Way's land and William Robins' land. This was in effect a trunk highway, a part of the present old road from Old Lyme to Nehantick. It passed the great estate of Thomas Lee and opened up a vast tract of un- settled land. In quite a different section a highway was voted to be built from the Eight Mile River, past William Rath- bon's land to William Brockway's; and William Comstock was allowed to build a road at his own expense from Daniel Stackling's sawmill to his meadow.2 These highways were extensive community enterprises. They created new entries into a dense timberland and revealed the business enterprise of these restless pioneers.
Four years later on February 4, 1717, two other important highways were provided for by the town meeting. In the first
I. Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, V, 353.
2. Lyme Records, Town Meeting Book, 1664-1724, January 4, 1713.
64 Educational History of Old Lyme.
instance Reinold Marvin and Thomas Lee were empowered to lay out the country road or main highway from Marvin's land to the New London bounds in Nehantick "running be- ten John Lees his land and Isaac Tubs his land-ten rods wide where it can be." The second highway was a crossroad between William Borden's and Richard Rolen's and so over Flat Rock Hill as to pass between Alger's land and Mile Creek Hill.3
Two bridges were also allowed at this time as a part of the improvement of transportation within the town. Samuel Peck was given liberty to build a cart-bridge from Marvin's Point to the meadow on the other side, if it were constructed in a manner that would hinder neither the watercourse nor the passing of boats with turns of hay. The other bridge across Beaver Brook connected Richard Lord's land and Jasper Griffin's land.
This very general interest in adequate highways was still further emphasized at the town meeting on February 6, 1720, when it was voted to have a general road survey of the town. Thomas Lee, Richard Lord and Samuel Marvin, represent- ing three major divisions of the town, were selected for this task and were further ordered to lay out two new highways, to repay men for land used by giving grants from the com- mon land and to review bounds of all roads to see if fences were anywhere too far out in the highways. All of their deci- sions were to be final.
That these highways were laid out from six to ten rods in width would make encroachment by the abutting property owners seem very easy. That general appropriation of the public highway was practiced appears evident from the pro- vision of April 27, 1725, when a special committee of three, Captain Reinold Marvin, Captain John Colt and James Beck- with, was elected to survey the town and pull up and remove all fences within the highway and to regulate the highways according to the town order.
The building of the Lieutenant River bridge in accordance with the town vote of November 12, 1722, was another link
3. Lyme Records, Town Meeting Book, 1664-1724, February 4, 1717.
65
Ecclesiastical Control.
in the program of expansion. This bridge was of signal im- portance in the development of the long neck of land which lay between the Lieutenant and the Connecticut rivers. Timo- thy Mather, a nephew of Cotton Mather and one of the prosperous newcomers to Lyme, had recently purchased this great neck of land and proposed to the town that he have liberty to build a bridge over the Lieutenant River at the common landing place near Mr. Tucker's house. The bridge was to be nine feet above the high-water mark and twenty feet wide in the watercourse. This bridge provided for a greatly increased road travel into Mather's Neck, facilitated connections with the Connecticut River ferry and in no way interfered with the considerable traffic of small boats on the Lieutenant River. In this manner bridges and highways re- placed or supplemented water transportation, aided in the development of diversified occupations and united the various population groups which were cut off in part by local topo- graphical barriers.
Returning to the records of the town meetings of 1713 and 1714, we find a suggestion of the undercurrent of misunder- standing between factions that influenced all the efforts of the townspeople in their general program of expansion and local development. Questions of citizenship within the town had quite evidently arisen. The requirements of citizenship were then restated and provisions were made for accepting new freemen before the town meetings rather than after. Then at the town meeting on March 8, 1713, appointed for the settling, confirming and quieting of the town commons, a request was made for "a report which shall say that the fourth division is completed." There was very real dissatisfaction over the final settlement of the land and this led promptly to the passage of a law prohibiting "all impropriation or se- questering of common land." All previous lot layers were dis- missed and a new group of five selected to lay out all such lands as shall be granted by the town and legally entered in the town books.4 So great was the split between factions that a group of the inhabitants met separately on town-meeting day
4. Ibid., March 8, 1713.
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Educational History of Old Lyme.
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