USA > Connecticut > New London County > Old Lyme > The educational history of Old Lyme, Connecticut, 1635-1935 > Part 9
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Some years later Major Samuel Holden Parsons, son of the Rev. Jonathan Parsons and Phoebe Griswold Parsons, born in Lyme in 1734, carried this family name into another field of distinguished public service. He appears in all Con- necticut annals as one of the honored sons of the state.46
Baptists came early into Lyme in small numbers; and their increase so troubled the Rev. Moses Noyes that Cotton Mather came to Lyme from Boston in 1727 to consider the gravity of the situation. That his efforts were ineffectual seems evident from a general act of 1738 through which Baptists were freed from all taxation for the support of the churches. 47
The first Roman Catholics also came into the colony at this time. Under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, signed by France and England on May 12, 1713, Acadia, part of the modern Nova Scotia, passed from France to England and the industrious Roman Catholic population was granted a year of grace to decide whether to go or stay. France sent them no vessels and England refused them passage on English ships. By both powers they were forced to remain. Not until 1755 were they dispossessed and then seven thousand were distrib- uted throughout the colonies of the Atlantic seaboard. They were entered on the books as "Popish Recusants."48 Connecti- cut received four hundred of these exiles and fifty towns were asked to welcome them. New Haven and Norwich each took nineteen; Middletown sixteen; Hartford and Windsor thir- teen; Saybrook, Lyme and East Haddam also accepted their share; and these Acadians, though living without the serv-
45. "Lyme January 14, 1744/5-By these presents I the subscriber having received Ls, 286: 11 : 6 old Tenor Bills, Discharge the first Society of Lyme from all Due and Demands upon the Society for my Salary in the Gospel Min- istry from Nov. 20th, 1743 to Nov. 20th 1744. Jonathan Parsons." Lyme Rec- ords, Town Meeting Book, 1733-1876, January 14, 1744/5.
46. Hurd, History of New London County, p. 549.
47. Ibid., p. 558.
48. Osborn, History of Connecticut, III, 432-437.
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ice of the priesthood until 1781, were the first Roman Catho- lics to enter this Congregational stronghold. No mention of them appears, however, in the contemporaneous records of Lyme.
In this manner the Baptists, Adventists, Rogerines, Quak- ers, Anglicans and Roman Catholics made their gradual entry into the colony and into the town. They disturbed the ortho- dox thinking and the dominant control of the people. They slowly modified all aspects of group life, religious, economic, political and educational. By the end of the century they not only influenced but directed general legislation.
In 1746 the Rev. Stephen Johnson, a resident of Newark, New Jersey, and a graduate of Yale in the class of 1743, be- came the fourth minister of Lyme, first society, and served there for forty years. His great personal service during the French and Indian War, not only to men of Lyme but to men of Connecticut, led Bancroft to call him "the incomparable Stephen Johnson."
At home, however, his pastorate was not without serious difficulty, the real nature of which does not appear. Sufficiently convincing, nevertheless, are the records of February 2, 1759, when a protest against proceeding in connection with certain accusations against the Rev. Stephen Johnson was presented by Richard Lord, Joseph Mather, James Marvin, Isaac Hall, Moses Dudly, John Beckwith, Robert Miller, John Sill and John McCurdy, and that of June 28, 1760, when a commit- tee composed of Captain Mathew Griswold, Captain Richard Wait and Dr. Eleazer Mather was chosen to consider with the Rev. Mr. Johnson, "whether it be not more likely to pro- mote the interest of Religion that the said Mr. Johnson should be dismissed from his pastoral charge." His long-continued pastorate after this date is the only record to be found of their conclusions.
During the same period or, more exactly, the years from 1740 to 1766, Lyme witnessed the rapid expansion of her district school system. We have previously recorded the val- iant efforts of the townspeople to devise ways by which two schools might be made to serve the increasing population of
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the first society. The force of the law on the one hand and the demands of the isolated groups on the other challenged the ingenuity of the thrifty members of her school committee. From 1725 to 1740 they maneuvered, changing their plans annually from 1735 to 1740. Finally, during the latter year a third school was opened in the society between the Four Mile River and the Three Mile River. This led to an arrangement for 1741 by which school was kept for four months in each of the three schoolhouses and for the remainder of the year by five school dames "to be plact at the descretion of the com- mittee." Directly after, during the years 1744 and 1745, the society rate for schools was raised to five pence on the grand levy with the added significant stipulation "that no person shall be obliged to pay anything to the charge of the school in the Society that does not send children to school." In this manner the opposition to a general levy or local tax for the support of schools was very clearly stated. The following year "The Interest Money and Country Money were to be expended for the maintenance of the school, eleven months . . . and the Remainder of the school charge was to be raised on the heads of the children who attended." The inhabitants on the north side of the line were to have their share of the money and those on the south side their share. School was thereby provided, for five and a half months, on each side of the line and in this way the practice of the time is discovered. There was a demand for tax money gathered within the dis- trict, a temporary discontinuance of dame schools within the society and an underlying trend toward more schooling. This was followed by an even more considerable change in 1746. The schoolhouse built in 1725 on Lyme Street, near the pres- ent site of the Mueller home, was sold and provision was made for four schools to be kept for four months in that year by schoolmasters.49 One of these was to be near the dwelling
49. "On August 29th 1746, Mr. Benjamin Peck was appointed to sell and dispose of the old School House standing near Joseph Marvin's to the best ad- vantage for the Use of this Society and take proper security for the money of some persons that will remove it from the highway." Lyme Records, Meetings of the Ecclesiastical Society, 1721-1876, p. 44.
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house of Captain Samuel Southworth, one near the dwell- ing house of the Rev. Jonathan Parsons, one near the dwelling house of Amos Tinker and one near the dwelling house of George Chadwick. Translated into current locations these four schools were in Laysville, in the Center near Miss Luding- ton's home, at Black Hall and at Three Mile River. It was further voted that the cost of supporting these four schools, in excess of the country money and the interest on sequestered money, be again provided by a society rate on the grand levy. From this it seems apparent that the parents of children in at- tendance at the schools could not adequately meet the costs of education. This led to an investigation of the provisions avail- able for the support of schools, with a special effort to dis- cover possible records of the receipt of money from the per- manent school fund.50
This fund had been made available through the sale of western lands in Connecticut. In 1687, during the Andros ad- ministration, this land was assigned to the towns of Hartford and Windsor. Two years later Connecticut resumed her char- ter government and set about to reclaim the lands so gener- ously granted. In the end the colony received the western half. In 1733 the colony provided that the seven western townships should be sold and the proceeds granted to the maintenance of schools. The money thus received was to be divided among the fifty settled towns and ninety-seven par- ishes then in existence in Connecticut, in proportion to the lists of polls and ratable estates of 1732. Any money not em- ployed by the several towns for the support of schools was to be forfeited to the colony.51
In 1741 the bonds and money which had been received from the sale of these towns were ordered to be distributed to the several ecclesiastical societies in trust, for the use of schools. The state stipulated that the money be kept as a per-
50. Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, III, 224-225.
51. Ibid., VII, 40. Also, Steiner, The History of Education in Connecticut, p. 30; Deming, The Settlement of Litchfield County, Tercentenary Commis- sion of the State of Connecticut.
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manent school fund.52 It is probable that these funds were re- ceived in Lyme and added to the other funds already seques- tered for the use of schools, but no record appears regarding them and the amount of interest received from sequestered money is not given. Current local funds in some towns are known to include these original funds, but such is not the case in the local funds of Old Lyme.53
It is possible that this may have been the question in point on January 6, 1747, when the society met to consider an act entitled: "Section on Investment of School Moneys at Inter- est." It was then voted "that the Society committee should let out the Societies' Money upon some stable footing whereby the value of said money might be kept good according to their best instructions for the Societies' benefit and also that the said committee let out the said money for the term of three years with power to exchange securities but making them payable at the same time.">54
Other extensions of the district system were projected in 1746. The inhabitants that lived east of Captain Champion's and Joseph Minor's, believed to be in the Mile Creek district, were granted their portion of all school money on condition that they keep a school for four months and procure a con- venient house to keep school in. Again, on March 13, 1749, these inhabitants on the east side of Black Hall River were granted the privilege of building a comfortable schoolhouse at their own cost provided it be built within the year and that school be kept there for four months out of each year. Failing this, the inhabitants on the east side of the river in the section known as "Between the Rivers" were to have a similar privi- lege.
Quite evidently neither of these schoolhouses was built at this time because the records of March 13, 1750, refer to the
52. Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, VIII, 214.
53. Ibid., pp. 389-392. Also, Deming, The Settlement of Litchfield County, Tercentenary Commission of the State of Connecticut.
54. Lyme Records, Meetings of the Ecclesiastical Society, 1721-1876, Janu- ary 6, 1747.
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schools of the society as the two southern schools, Black Hall and Four Mile River, and the two northern schools, Center and Laysville. The school committee then contained four members, apparently selected from the four school areas.
The school law of 1750, requiring a school committee for the administration of schools, offered no new responsibility but served rather to reflect a practice of long standing in the town of Lyme, while the designation of inspection and super- visión required of school visitors under this law seemed to re- state the law of 1714 which constituted the civil authorities, the justices of peace and selectmen as a board of school visitors. The work of the school committee is regularly recorded but no reference appears to the work or findings of the school visitors. The requirement of a six- or eleven-month school term restated in this law from the law of 1700 seems to have received broad interpretations in Lyme, since the most preva- lent practice stipulated a four months' school, from Decem- ber I to April 1, with intermittent provisions for dame schools in the summer to fulfill the minimum statute requirements.
From 1750 forward to 1768 there were a great variety of provisions made for schools in sections not having school- houses. The location of schools in private houses was subject to great change, but the regulation of the school term within the society was uniform. Then for a considerable period no mention of teachers appears. The school committee was in- creased to seven members chosen to represent special areas and in 1762 the school term was increased to five months, ex- tending from the first of November to the last of March.
A further division of the school unit, resulting from the territorial expansion of towns, occurred in 1766 when the as- sembly granted to towns and parishes the right to divide into districts. These districts were without corporate powers but they were organized to meet the immediate needs of the ex- panding population and in general included the area of one school. Small localities provided schoolhouses and one school- master divided his time among them. As these districts grew they demanded their share of the school money for an inde-
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pendent school. The law, which further required that school be kept either six or eleven months in the year according to the size of the community, was passed in an effort to stimu- late greater local interest in education. 55
This law, like the one of 1750, tended to make legal a practice that had already proved expedient. In Lyme, for ex- ample, the district feeling was very definitely expressed as early as 1725 and after 1740 the school areas were regularly referred to as school districts. By 1766, eight district schools had been organized in the first society and five of these were in school buildings. These eight school districts are specifi- cally referred to in the records of January 22, 1768. These records are illuminating in that they very definitely locate the eight district schools in the town. Provision was made whereby
the Society this present year according to the Society's former votes will keep six weeks schooling in the following places; in the school house at Jno Mather's, in the School House at Nathaniel Peck's, at the place agreed on for keeping school by a later vote of the Society near Lt. Jno. Sill's, at the school house near Marshfield Parsons, at the School House near Wm. Lays, at the place voted by a later vote of the Society for keeping school near the foot of Mile Creek Hill, at the School House near Capt. Wait's and at the place where kept last year at Black Hall, allowing the Districts on the Neck and at Black Hall their former priveleges only.56
This special privilege in Black Hall is explained in the record of the following year when it was decided that the district at Black Hall should no longer have the privileges formerly allowed them of drawing their proportion of public money to
55. Walker, Development of State Support and Control of Education in Connecticut, p. 15.
56. "Provisions for the Neck School: Voted that the inhabitants that Liveth northward of Capt. Joseph Higgins and Capt. Burnham's including both of them and easterly as far as the Lieut. River shall [have] liberty to have their part of the interest money and Country Money sequestered to the use of the School and have the School Rate paid by said inhabitants above mentioned pro- vided said inhabitants improve the money for a school." Lyme Records, Meet- ings of the Ecclesiastical Society, 1721-1876, January 17 and 22, 1758.
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support a private school. No explanation appears to cover the special conditions in the Neck district.
These eight schools constituted the culmination of district school expansion in the first society of Lyme. They served the minimum requirements of eight isolated agrarian groups and stood as a natural consequence of the system of land division and the peculiar topography of the situation. These schools in a number of instances were already firmly established and withstood the inroads of economic depression. Others not yet in permanent buildings seemed less fixed in character and suffered some irregularities. The records show no serious ef- fects upon these schools as a result of the French and Indian War, but beginning with 1771 a marked curtailment appears. Five schools replaced the eight schools previously mentioned and the school year was in some instances temporarily reduced to two months. The society rate for schools was simultane- ously increased.
In 1773 it was decided to divide the society into seven dis- tricts and a committee was selected for that purpose. In Feb- ruary the report was read and accepted, including a provision that the school rate raised in any district should be reserved for that district. There were to be seven districts, seven com- mitteemen and seven collectors. In practice the committee- men were the collectors. This joint service became a very regular practice according to the successive reports of the so- ciety.
The following year further retrenchments were made. The schools were returned to the four months' winter term with no mention of dames for a summer session. The school com- mittee of seven members was continued but the seven districts as set up by the committee in 1773 were discontinued. Under these general conditions the schools of the first society func- tioned during the years of the Revolution. Reports on school affairs are all but lacking, yet from those that remain it is evi- dent that a school tax was collected annually.57 The only other
57. The records for the years of the Revolution show a constantly increasing tax rate for schools, which fell rapidly with the close of the war.
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mention of schools between 1773 and 1783 required "that school be kept as usial in each school house for the year Insu- ing."58 Schooling gave way to the demands of war and chil- dren filled the ranks of departing men or supplemented the efforts of those at home in producing the urgent needs of the army. It was another period in which the major learnings of the children were gained through active participation in com- munity affairs.
The effect of the War for Independence on all types of schools was disastrous. Growing troubles with the mother country during the decade previous to the opening of hostili- ties tended to concentrate attention on other matters than schooling. Political discussion and agitation greatly monopo- lized the thinking of the time. Many rural schools were closed or continued a more or less intermittent existence. The entire period from 1770 to 1789 was one of increasing financial bur- den. It was a time of rapid decline in educational advantage with increasing illiteracy among the people. The close of the war found the country impoverished.59
Conditions in Lyme were typical of conditions in Connecti- cut as a whole. The active part played by the town in the prosecution of the war is revealed in the records of both the town and the state. First among these was a vote taken at the town meeting on June 20, 1774, when the following reso- lutions were prepared and forwarded to the committee on cor- respondence for the town of Boston. The position taken by the town of Lyme is here very specifically stated.
Resolved, that we sincerely profess ourselves to be true and Loyal Subjects of his sacred majesty King George the Third.
That we are heartily concerned for the Difficulties attending the Town of Boston in consequence of the late extraordinary measures taken with them by the British Parliament, that affairs appear to us with a threatening Aspect on the Liberty of all British America.
58. Lyme Records, Meetings of the Ecclesiastical Society, 1721-1876, De- cember 14, 1782.
59. Cubberley, Public Education in the United States, pp. 82-84.
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That we will to the utmost of our abilities assent and Defend the libertys and Immunities of British America and that we will cooperate with our brethren in this and the other Colonys in such Reasonable measure as shall in Generall Congress or otherwise be judged most proper to Relieve us and our brethren in Boston from the Burthens now felt, and secure us from the Evils we fear will follow, from the Principles adopted by the British Parliament Respecting the Town of Boston.
Eleazer Matson Esq., Mr. John McCurdy, John Lay, 2nd, Wil- liam Noyes Esq. and Mr. Samuel Mather Junior were chosen to be a standing committee for the purpose of keeping up correspondence with the Towns of this and neighboring Colony's.60
Subsequent events led to an emergency town meeting on August 7, at which a special tax was allowed for the raising of funds to be sent from the town of Lyme as "Relief to the In- habitants of Boston." Local defense was also anticipated in a provision for the building of a powder house of brick or stone on the hill near Nathaniel Matson's dwelling house. Then directly after, on December 7, Richard Wait Jr., Marshfield Parsons, Joseph Mather, Ezra Selden, James R-, Elijah Bingham, Aleaser Comstock, George Griswold and Moses Warren were chosen and appointed a committee of Inspection "agreeable to the Eleventh Article in the association of the late Continental Congress and the Resolve of the House of Representatives in the General Assembly of this Colony."61 An atmosphere of dignified formality characterizes the rec- ords of this simple rural town.
No doubt these were sober, anxious days for the people of Lyme, since their immediate contact with the post-road travel kept them well informed with regard to the rising tide of rebellion. In this manner, their sympathies were fired so that on April 10, 1775, a second subscription of money was for- warded from Lyme for the relief of Boston, while later in the same month a large company of men left to join the Con- necticut troops in the defense of Boston. They were among
60. Lyme Records, Town Meeting Book, 1733-1876, June 20, 1744, P. 192. 61. Ibid., December 7, 1774.
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the three thousand Connecticut men gathered at Cambridge on May 27, 1775.62
Intimate town records of war events are here interrupted for nearly two years. Then a general appeal for soldiers was made in Lyme on March 31, 1777, "in order to promote and Encourage the filling up of the Battallions ordered by Con- gress for opposing the Army of the King." Specific measures were taken, at the same time, to provide maintenance for the families of the town during the absence of fathers and sons.
62. Records of Connecticut Men in the War of the Revolution, 1812, and War with Mexico, "Lyme men who marched to the relief of Boston in 1775," p. 16. List of men who marched from the Connecticut Towns "for the relief of Boston in the Lexington Alarm of 1775."
Men of Lyme:
Joseph Jewett Capt.
William Beckwith Corporal
David F. Sill Lieut.
Joseph Sterling
Stephen 66
Daniel Lord Ensign
John Saunders
Elisha Wade Serjeant
Ichabod Spencer Serjeant
Edward Dorr
John Anderson Jr.
Jot Tucker
Adriel Ely
Silas Marvin
Elijah Selden
Stephen DeWolf
Josiah Ely
Christopher Leach
Abraham Perkins
Martin Wade
Joseph Ely Corporal
Elisha Merron Jun.
Abraham Perkins Jr
George Rowland
Robert Denison
William R. Hyde
Isaac Sill Private
Samuel Dewolf
Adriel Huntly
Giles Gilbert
Joseph Miner
Simon Dewolf
Benjamin Role
Reynold Peck
Jonathan Miner
Joshua Saunders
Andrew Ely
Jacob Comstock
Micah Sill
Abner Brockway
Stephen Rausom
Lawrence Johnson 66
Daniel Havens
Thomas Way Jr. Lieut.
Elijah Phelps
John Johnson Ensign Samuel Griswold Sergeant
John Congdon
Thaddeus Phelps
Elisha Lee
Joseph Griffin
Andrew Griswold Corporal
Timothy Brainerd
Enoch Smith Private
Stephen Mosier
Stephen Sawyer
Samuel A. Dorr
Lee Lay
Ezra Sill Private
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Then on October I the selectmen of the town were ordered to procure immediately one shirt, either linen or flannel, one hunting shirt or frock, one pair of woolen overalls, one or two pairs of woolen stockings, and one pair of good shoes for each noncommissioned officer or soldier in the Continental Army belonging to the town of Lyme.68 At the same time Captain John Peck, Abner Griffing, James Huntley, Jonathan Warner and Edward Chapman were appointed a committee to make necessary provisions for the families of noncommissioned of- ficers and soldiers of Lyme in the Continental Army.64
Shortly after, on December 22, 1777, the town of Lyme voted on the acceptance of the Articles of Confederation. There were both desires and responsibilities to be considered and Lyme was not without her Tories. Members of numbers of the old families were faced with sober decisions since branches of the De Wolfe, Marvin, Denison and other fami- lies of Lyme had already gone to Nova Scotia rather than renounce British allegiance.65 Their withdrawal is also re- corded in the later coastwise trade of men of Lyme. The grav- ity of the decision, although made decisively, wrenched the very foundations of the social structure. The town voted to approve the Articles of Confederation and, in instructing their representatives to give their assent thereto, they further directed them to move that the yeas and nays on every ques- tion be entered on the journal without a special motion re- quiring it.66 Increasing demands for clothing, blankets, wheat, rye flour and Indian corn, with an additional request for more soldiers, came in 1779 and 1780. At this point "the command- ing officers of the several companies of the Town were di- rected and Impowered forthwith to hire fourteen able bodied and effective men to Inlist into the Continental Service until
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