USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884, Vol. I > Part 76
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Hartford began early to deviate from the original town system of school organization, supervision, and management, and in spite of more strenuous efforts and liberal expenditures than any other town in the State has put forth to improve and perfect public schools, has not reaped the legitimate fruits of such efforts, in consequence of the hindrances and inequalities of the district system. Prior to 1760 the town had parted with all supervision over the public schools of East and West Divisions ; in consequence of which the older children of these divisions (afterward incorporated as the towns of East and West Hartford) lost the advantages of a Town Grammar School, which were in part supplied to the wealthier families by incorporated academies and select or private schools. But in 1760, after repeated failures to locate a single house so as to accommodate all the families in the first and second societies which had no territorial boundaries, and together practically constituted the town, the two Societies memorialized the General Assembly to be divided into two independent districts, with all the powers relating to schools already extended to school societies. They were so divided in June, 1761, by the Little River, - all lying northerly constituting the North District, and all south of it the South District. It was not long before the North District was again divided into the Middle and the North Middle, and the last into the Northwest and Arsenal, and later by the West Middle, districts. The same disintegration went on in the South; first by setting off the Rocky Hill, then the Washington, and finally the Southwest, - giving the town ten districts, all working to great disadvantage, with inequalities of school privileges and of taxation.
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In the absence of official reports of school visitors, and written or printed records of any kind, we must resort to the reminiscences of pupils and teachers for the condition of these schools as they were years ago. Fortunately we have several communications of this kind in response to our request for information as to teachers, books, studies, and discipline when the writers were pupils.
In 1840 the venerable Noah Webster, whose early education was in the common and grammar schools of Hartford before the Revolution, and who was himself a teacher of a district school for a short period before leaving college, wrote as follows : -
" When I was young (b. 1759), the books used were chiefly or wholly Dil- worth's Spelling Book, the Psalter, Testament, and Bible. No geography was studied before the publication of Dr. Morse's small book on that subject in 1789. No history was read, as far as my knowledge extends, for there was no abridged history of the United States. Except the books above mentioned, no book for reading was used before the publication of the Third Part of my Institute, in 1785. In some of the early editions of that book, I introduced short notices of the geography and history of the United States, and these led to more enlarged descriptions of the country. In 1788, at the request of Dr. Morse, I wrote an account of the transactions in the United States after the Revolution, which ac- count fills nearly twenty pages in the first edition of his American Geography.
" Before the Revolution, and for some years after, no slates were used in com- mon schools : all writing and the operations in arithmetic were on paper. The teacher wrote the copies and gave the sums in arithmetic; few or none of the pupils having any books as a guide. Such was the condition of the schools in which I received my early education.
" The introduction of my Spelling Book, first published in 1783, produced a great change in the department of spelling ; and from the information I can gain, spelling was tanght with more care and accuracy for twenty years or more after that period than it has been since the introduction of multiplied books and studies.
" No English grammar was generally taught in common schools when I was young, except that in Dilworth, and that to no good purpose. In short, the in- struction in schools was very imperfect in every branch ; and if I am not misin- formed, it is so to this day in many branches. Indeed there is danger of running from one extreme to another, and instead of having too few books in our schools, we may have too many."
The North District, or, as it has been variously designated since its first creation in 1761, the Middle, the Centre, the First District, has been the scene of much diversified pedagogical experience, of which the pupils have lively reminiscences.
Mrs. David F. Robinson (now - 1886 -in her eighty-third year) writes to the "Hartford Courant" respecting the Common School in Rocky Hill District as it was when she (as Anne Seymour) was a pupil, from 1807 to 1817, as follows : -
" The small brick school-house with its one large room and a recess for hats, coats, and wood, is not, like Whittier's, 'still sitting by the road' known as the New Britain Avenue, near a quarter of a mile west of the Retreat. It was taken away long ago, and one far more commodious erected a short distance east of the old site on the same avenue, when Dr. Barnard was superintendent of our com- mon schools [and secured a better plan by promising the district a school library if the building was erected and fitted up after plans submitted by him. Although
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his plans were not fully followed, the district in 1842 came into possession of a library of over three hundred volumes]. In this district, seventy years ago, we had a master in the winter and a mistress in the summer terms. A candidate for the winter term, the master, was subjected to an examination by a board of three, Mr. Calvin Seymour being chief examiner. This occurred at the school- room in the evening, and we were allowed with our knitting-work to attend the trial. This was very amusing to us, especially when the aspiring master missed in spelling.
"The Rev. Mr. Flagg was our teacher one winter ; he was a Universalist min- ister, the first one I heard of in Hartford, excepting Elnathan Winchester, who was said also to be a Restorationist, an intimate friend of Dr. Strong and a devout Christian. I can recall very little about Mr. Flagg, for I was very young, except his long nose and the long switches which lay quietly on his desk. Mr. Flagg was obliged to leave school before the close of the term, and 'Captain Dan'l' was employed as his substitute, which made much amusement. The Captain was an experienced sailor, and he told the committee that he could teach navigation and keep the school in order, and he informed the scholars that if the boys behaved badly he should thrash them, - he could use a cat-o'-nine-tails if necessary, - but he never would punish a girl ; so if they broke the rules in any way he should make the boys pay the penalty ; so, said he, 'Boys, look out for yourselves ; and, girls, we shall know whether you care for the boys or not.'
" He was succeeded by Miss Mary Allen, a tall nice-looking spinster of lym- phatic temperament and quite too indolent to attempt discipline in the ordinary way. Every morning at recess one of us girls had the privilege of brushing her long, silky brown hair, while she paid a visit to the land of Nod. There was a big colored boy, whom common sense admitted for a time to attend district school. He was the only one in the district, and possibly it was common sense that suggested that he should have a whole bench to himself at the further side of the room. Miss Allen's mode of punishing the girls was to send them to this bench of Erastus Boston's, where they seated themselves very reluctantly, and on the very end of it, with their backs towards 'Rastus. Sometimes they shed abun- dant tears, and 'Rastus pitied them, believing they were penitent tears, and not on his account at all. At one time Miss Allen, like Mrs. Chick, 'made an effort.' A lad was lying upon his desk, with his head out of the open window, face down- ward. Miss Allen seized his feet, and to the horror of us all he went out of the window and to the ground, making a bad wound on the top of his forehead. It was not dangerous, but it caused a tumult. Poor Miss Allen was really sorry, and would have punished herself by sitting on 'Rastus Boston's bench all day, if it could have undone the mischief.
" The next summer, 1817, brought a blessed dispensation, with Miss Damie Lawrence for our teacher. A true woman, lady, and above all a worker for and a lover of Christ. Her method of teaching was fifty years before her time, and not at all in the ordinary routine. She needed no discipline, for we loved her so truly and she interested us so entirely, that whatever she wished us to do and learn was a pleasant thing for us. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were given in the usual way, except that our reading-lessons were made a text for some in- teresting instruction in connection with them, - the Testament lesson, history, poetry, and everything. Our Scripture lesson gave her occasion to tell us much about the Saviour.
" When our lesson was a tribute to the memory of Washington, she spent a little time in telling us about him, and in time we were told of the history of our country from the embarkation of the Pilgrims. When we read one of Cowper's fables in verse, she told all about the poet, his love for pets, animals, and birds, of the Rev. John Newton and the Olney hymns. To this oral instruction after the reading-lesson the whole school listened. One afternoon in each week the mothers and other interested ones came in to hear the speaking of short extracts
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from the Scriptures or elsewhere in poetry or prose. Sometimes an original piece in rhyme composed by Miss Lawrence was recited by the whole school together, full of instruction in good manners, for school and for home as well.
" She liked to have us commit to memory much of the Sermon on the Mount, and other sayings of Jesus, such passages from the Old Testament as 'Though the fig-tree shall not blossom,' from Habakkuk, and Ruth's pathetic appeal to her mother-in-law, the twenty-third and other Psalms ; for she said if we committed them to memory then, we should not forget them. Among the forty pupils there were a pair of twins of seven summers, one of each sex, and the girl was blind from birth and had been able to walk but one year. Every day the brother led her to school slowly and patiently, even cheerfully. One day Miss Lawrence sat by the window and watched them on their way to school, and, as it was before school-time, she composed some lines about them which she taught the little blind girl to repeat to her friends at home. She also composed a piece for her to speak on visitors' day, which drew tears from all eyes except the blind ones, although its sentiment far excelled its literary merit. Part of it ran thus : -
' Your happy eyes the sun can view, And Nature's beauteous works so fair, Your Bibles read - your friends behold ; And in their labors with them share. While my poor eyes, from light concealed, Can scarce distinguish night from day ; Like other children cannot see To labor, walk, - to read or play.'
But the little girl was so delighted to have a part in the performance that her heart had room for no other feeling. Her disposition was so cheering that her mother once remarked that she was the happiest of her nine children. Her mind was perceptive and her memory wonderfully retentive. She had learned the passage from the Sermon on the Mount, 'Enter into thy closet,' etc., and as she had no closet in her little bedroom she made an oratory of an old clock which had long ago closed its account with time, and whose hands had been idle and its pendulum motionless for years. This was large enough for her little frame, and at a certain hour her sweet voice was heard in her prayers and hymns and songs as well. Truly the advantages of this beautiful summer-time should have made good children of us all. But I sadly fear that it did not in every case. Dear Miss Lawrence ! seventy years of experience of life and study of character have not changed my childhood reverence and love for you.
" If this little sketch may seem to some of my younger readers a picture of many teachers whom they have known, they may be sure that such a person was a rare exception in the teacher's chair of seventy years ago. Her system of digression and object-teaching were perhaps prophetic of present methods. At the close of Miss Lawrence's last term a well-to-do farmer in Ohio received a favor- able answer to his offer of marriage, and the then far West acquired a blessing as great as the Board of Home Missions ever provided for it. Since that time we have heard little about her, and now - Ah, we know where she is now ! She is in that brighter world where she laid up her treasures and her hopes while on earth, and to which she strove by her wise and charming mode of instruction to guide her pupils, while by her lovely example she led the way."
Professor Thomas A. Thacher,1 LL.D., of Yale College, educated until he entered college in 1831, in the schools of Hartford, where he was born, wrote as follows: -
" If in complying with your request to give you some account of my school experiences before my admission to the grammar school, at the age of eleven, I
1 Died, April, 1886.
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"write chiefly of myself, my egotism must be charged to the nature of my task. But the years of my life which preceded May, 1826, are so remote, that in writ- ing of them I almost seem to myself to be calling to mind some other boy.
"Besides the instruction which I received at home, I attended no less than seven schools before I was eleven years old. The order of my attendance is not distinctly remembered, but, so far as I can tell, the first school was kept by the well-known and most excellent ladies, the daughters of Mrs. Ruth Patten. It was a girls' school, or, as it would now be called, a school for young ladies. Dur- ing the forty years which preceded my exceptional admission to it, it had gained great celebrity, and was resorted to by many scholars from various parts of the country, and even from foreign parts. When the school was closed in the year 1825, its teachers counted up nearly four thousand pupils in whose education they had shared. My own attendance there was, as I have said, exceptional, of course ; but I may have been permitted to accompany my elder sisters, who were pupils there, because of the partiality of good Mrs. Patten for children whose par- ents boasted, as she did, of Lebanon as their birthplace. It was in Lebanon that her father, the Rev. Dr. Wheelock, instituted and maintained the Indian School, which afterward became Dartmouth College. In this school 'the time was divided between study, painting, embroidery, and some needle-work.' The line of work to which I gave some attention was the last named. I practised needle- work, - at least so far as to learn to sew patches together, -and I succeeded in the praiseworthy task of knitting a pair of garters.
" Mrs. Patten did not engage in teaching at the time of which I speak. Even her daughters were well advanced in years. But I well remember their gentle- ness and gentility, and a certain combination of cheerfulness and sobriety which characterized them. Their long service in the trying profession of teaching had not soured them. From my own experience there, I should say that they were especially conscientious in their quiet endeavors to awaken. religious feeling in their pupils. They lived and taught in a plain mansion in Church Street, just west of the present site of Christ Church. The exterior of the house was not very inviting; but there is scarcely a more charming picture brought down in my memory from my childhood than the bright, cheerful apartment occupied as a sitting-room by the aged and still cheerful mother of this unique family. Her presence in it would have been enough to make it attractive to a child ; but the slanting rays of the sun, the pots of flowers, and the Franklin fire, all have their place in the picture.
" There was a brother in this family who was well known as a teacher for upwards of twenty years, during which period he had in all three thousand pupils. His school was known as a 'Literary Institution.' In its earlier years it was open to both sexes, but at the time when I attended it, -as I did for three months, -- the scholars were all boys, and only the ordinary branches of a boy's education were taught. Mr. Patten was educated at Dartmouth College, and fitted boys for college as well as for business during a part of his life in Hartford ; but when I attended his school he had lost the power of stimulating his scholars in their studies, and had the air and ways of one who had wearied of his profession. His school had no connection with that of his mother and sisters. It was kept in a spacious room in a building on the west side of Main Street, just above Asylum Street.
" At an earlier date than that at which Mr. Patten was my teacher, I attended for a short time a school kept by a middle-aged woman, in a room in the second story of a house which stood on a spot which is now covered, I think, by the west end of the South Congregational Church. She was, in her tones of voice, in her air and manner, and in her methods of government, as unlike the gentle ladies in Church Street as could well be imagined. I remember but little of her except her severity of appearance and the appalling penalties with which she threatened the boys whom she thought especially ill-deserving. As I was very
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young, you will easily believe that I was terrified when she threatened one boy with bleeding from the arm, and another with actual hanging by the neck. For both these punishments she made deliberate preparation, and gave every indica- tion which she could give that the time had come for their infliction. For the one, the bowl which should receive the blood was brought in, the sleeve was stripped up, and I believe the lancet was exhibited. For the other, a cord was slipped through a hook in the ceiling (such a hook as was often used in the old times for drying beef), and a box or chair was placed under it, on which the culprit was soon to be ordered to mount. Meanwhile the executioner was doing and saying what she could to heighten the fears of the offenders. This was, of course, all in terrorem only, while she appeared to intend to carry out her threats. So, after a show of very serious doubt as to what she should do, she concluded to give the boys one more trial. But you can imagine the terror of the younger children.
"I next attended the school for children, kept by Mrs. Benton, usually called 'Miss' Benton by the scholars. You must remember it distinctly. As I recall her, she now seems to have been about seventy years old when I went to her school. As things were then, she kept a good school. She was very ener- getic and business-like, and filled up her forenoon and afternoon sessions with spirited teaching. The children generally caught her spirit. I envied the very fervid way in which Emma Robbins and other older girls studied their spelling- lessons. The boy who sat next to me I remember very vividly, but I have not seen him, that I remember, since we attended that school; and now, after the long interval of sixty years, he seems to me more of a myth than a reality. And yet he may be living still-for I am. His name was Thornton Gannett, a nephew of the late Rev. Dr. Ezra S. Gannett, of Boston.
" There was another boy in the school, whose name I will not give, from whom I learned a more impressive lesson than any which Mrs. Benton taught me; and as our being in the same school was the occasion of it, I will report it to you : I had received from a little cousin in western New York a present of a small engraved picture, which was in my eyes very beautiful. One day I showed this to the boy referred to, and to him it seemed as beautiful as it did to me. So he expressed a desire to buy it, and offered me a price which seemed to me a full equivalent for the picture, and even more, - sticks of candy, peppermints, cakes, and other things, to a degree of profusion which astonished me, and overcame my scruples about selling a present. So the bargain was made, and it was agreed that we should meet on the way to school in the afternoon, I with my picture, and he with the parcel with which I was to be enriched. We met and exchanged possessions. He liked his bargain : mine seemed to me immense, for I could not refrain from looking within the wrapper, nor from nibbling a little at one or two of the nice things. So we hurried on together. As we were about to enter the school, my friendly companion suggested a danger which had not occurred to me, namely, that Mrs. Benton might confiscate my parcel if she should discover it in the school-room. So he proposed - and I thought how kind he was in doing so - that it should be concealed under one of the low beams of an unoccupied barn which stood near the sidewalk a little north of the school. This could be done the more securely because all the other children had gone in. So the parcel was hidden, and we hurried in and took our seats. I well remember how kind the boy seemed, and how much wiser for being two years older than I. The after- noon seemed very long. But it ended at last, and I hurried out to get quick possession of my unprecedented treasures. But alas for the crushing disappoint- ment of my unsuspecting hopes ; the awful perfidy of a trusted friend ; his deliberate robbery ! He had outrun me from the school, and before I reached the barn he had fled out of it, and was running up the street with all that he had given me for my precious picture in his hands. And my case was hopeless, for he was much too old and strong to be called to account by me personally ;
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and then I could say nothing about it at home, for I was conscious of having done wrong in selling my gift. So I had nothing to do but to think of the case. I need not trace out my varied reflections, either on the consequences of my own impropriety or on my discovery that such perfidy and crime could exist in the world as that from which I was suffering. The material involved in the case was trifling, but the lessons were as grave as any that I have ever learned. So far as I know, the boy from whom I suffered such unexpected wrong and anguish has lived an honest life ever since. Perhaps his own reflections on his petty crime against me awoke his soul to the enormity of such wrong-doing and established within him a purpose to sin no more. It may have been a graver event in his life than it was in mine. I have seen him repeatedly during this long interval of sixty years, but never without thinking of my suffering at his hands in those early days.
"I next went to a school kept by a lady in a house which stood just south of the late site of Washington College, - now Trinity. This was, for aught that I remember, a good school for instruction in reading, spelling, the multiplication table, and so on ; but the occurrence which I most vividly recall was the teach- er's sending me out one day to get her some apples. Now the only apples in that vicinity were growing in an orchard which belonged to Mr. John Russ, situated just behind the old botanical garden of the college, and between the lane and Little River. I was fully impressed with the fact that I had no right to the apples. But the order was plain, and I was too recent a scholar in the school and too young and timid to ask to be excused. So I started out in fear and trem- bling on my strange errand, - on the one hand, afraid to disobey my teacher, and on the other, in distressing fear because of the nature of the order which I was to execute. The first steps, however, were easy. I crept along down the lane and stepped up upon the bank to the high rail fence which separated me from the orchard. So far all was right and safe. But how was I to induce myself to climb that fence and steal the fruit which hung in full view on the trees ? I liesi- tated long, but finally concluded that I might be pardoned if I gathered a few apples from the ground, if I could find them. So I cautiously climbed the fence and commenced my search ; but it was rewarded with my finding only one little red windfall smaller than a butternut. I could do no more, but hurried back with a comparatively unwounded conscience and delivered my booty. You should have heard the laugh of ridicule with which my instructor in morals greeted me, and her taunting inquiry in the hearing of the school, ' Why did you not get a wheelbarrow to bring it in ?'
" During the year which preceded my admission to the grammar school I en- joyed excellent instruction from a Mr. S. H. Minor ; first for three months in the district school-house on the South Green, and afterward in a private school which he kept in the front room of a wooden house which was for several years occupied by Mr. Asa Francis. This house is, I think, still standing ; the school-house on the Green has long since disappeared. Whether Mr. Minor is still living or not I do not know ; but if he were living I should be glad to testify to my respect for him and to thank him for his great value to me as a teacher. I wish that all boys of ten years could be taught grammar as he taught it."
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