USA > Washington DC > The chronicles of Georgetown, D.C., from 1751-1878 > Part 16
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out unnecessary delay, fill the same; so that the num- ber of trustees of said school fund shall never be less than five; and that, in order to perpetuate this trust, the said trustees shall, as soon as may be, cause them- selves to be legally incorporated for the purposes here- of, under a suitable name and with all needful powers and immunities. And it is my wish, finally, that my adopted son, Edward Linthicum Dent, should he at- tain to manhood, shall be elected to fill the first va- cancy thereafter existing in said board of trustees.'
" And, by a final provision of his will, Mr. Linthi- cum contingently dedicated the entire residue of his estate, after payment of a few small legacies, to the same beneficent uses.
"In obedience to the injunction of the testator, the trustees, without delay, applied for an act of incor- poration to the Congress of the United States, in the winter of 1870; and a bill for that purpose passed the House of Representatives without objection, but, under adverse influences, failed in the Senate. The trustees then applied to the legislative assembly of the District of Columbia for a similar grant, which was duly ac- corded to them. Under this charter. the board of trustees of the Linthicum Institute of Georgetown was formerly organized on the 7th of September, 1872, and at once proceeded to arrange for active operations.
" On the 19th of November, 1872, however, the trustees received from the board of trustees of the public schools of Georgetown, through J. Ormond Wil- son, Esq., superintendent, the following overtures for the location of the institute in the new school build-
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ing, the erection of which, on corner of Second and Potomac Streets, was then under consideration :
" TO JOSIAH DENT, Doctor JOSHUA RILEY, W. L. DUNLOP,
W. LAIRD, Jr., and WILLIAM A. GORDON, Jr.,
Trustees of the Linthicum Institute.
" GENTLEMEN : I am directed, by the board of school trustees of the city of Georgetown, to submit for your consideration the following : .
" You are already aware, through informal confer- ences with the board, of their design to build a large and imposing school-house on the premises opposite St. John's Church, said premises being situated be- tween High and Market Streets, with a width of about one hundred and twenty-five feet, extending from Sec- ond to Third Streets; the house to cost about sixty thousand, and the ground not less than thirteen thou- sand.
" To increase the usefulness of this enterprise, it is proposed to set apart, free from rent, a room on the ground floor of the main front of said building, for the use and purposes of the Linthicum Institute, and also one for the establishment of the Peabody Library, so arranged as to have each institution under the exclu- sive control of the respective boards of trustees, with the right to manage their own affairs in their own way, and to withdraw therefrom at pleasure.
" In the department devoted to the purpose of the Linthicum Institute, there will be added a laboratory and other conveniences for scientific lectures and for such school purposes as it is understood the trustees design to establish and maintain.
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"It is proposed to combine under one roof the three institutions, each preserving its independency of the other, and each, under separate and distinct control, believing that the usefulness and efficacy of each will thereby be greatly enhanced.
" To aid in carrying out the proposed plan, the board of trustees of the Georgetown schools propose to bor- row of the trustees of the Linthicum Institute, the sum of fifty thousand dollars, at the rate of eight per cent. per annum, payable semi-annually ; the principal to be refunded at the pleasure of the board, at any time after five years, in sums not less than five thousand dol- lars; said payments to be secured on the property to be improved, and the money borrowed to be expended thereon ; the funds to be placed in the hands of a third party, to be expended as needed for the building, and to bear interest from the date of delivery, or to be taken by the board of school trustees as needed; and the amount so taken to bear interest from the date of delivery. It is understood that the fund belonging to the Linthicum Institute is in certain bonds (as stated at the informal meeting), and that they are to be re- ceived at par by the school authorities.
"It is important that the board of school trustees be informed, at your earliest convenience, of your ac- tion in reference to the proposition herein stated.
"I am, gentlemen, very respectfully,
your obedient servant, W. W. CURTIS, Secretary.
" By order of the Board of School Trustees of Georgetown.
"These overtures were favorably received, and it
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was finally stipulated that, in consideration of a loan by the institute to the public school board of forty thou- sand dollars secured by lien or mortgage on the school property, suitable accommodations for the use of the institute should be provided in the projected school building.
" This arrangement, of course, was productive of delay in opening the institute, and also of important changes in its plan. It soon became apparent that the greater development and increased accommodations for common school education in Georgetown, which would be secured by the erection of this central and spacious school edifice, would satisfy present wants in respect to day schools for our children. But there is a class of boys and youths of more advanced years, to whose circumstances these schools are not suited- whose necessities require them to spend the day in work rather than in school. And to this class the trust- ees turned their attention as the most needy and wor- thy beneficiaries of Mr. Linthicum's benevolent pro- vision. They concluded to establish an evening school. to which, after the daily toil is ended, they may resort for such practical instructions as will qualify them for the active duties and business of life. So soon, there- fore, as the new edifice was ready for occupancy, a school was organized with three competent teachers, for the instruction of classes from seven to nine o'clock. every evening, except Saturday and Sunday, in the following studies, viz: Penmanship, Book-keeping, Drawing, Arithmetic, Geometry, Chemistry and Phy- sics, the two last being taught experimentally. The
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school was opened auspiciously on the 1st of October, 1875, in the rooms in the Curtis School Building pro- vided for the use of the institute, under the arrange- ment referred to above.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
The chronicler, availing himself of the admirable report of Samuel Yorke AtLee, Esq., made to the board of trustees in 1876, concerning the public schools of Georgetown, makes the following extracts in rela- tion to public education, showing how the system com- menced and gradually progressed in the town.
LANCASTERIAN SCHOOL.
" Georgetown had been settled sixty years before public attention was turned to the necessity of edu- cation, and it is especially worthy of notice that the movement originated amongst the people.
" About a hundred citizens, neither so rich or so poor as to be indifferent to the general welfare, formed themselves into a society for the purpose of imparting to the citizens of Georgetown ' the advantages of edu- cation according to the system devised by Joseph Lan- caster; " and for defraying the expenses thereof, they agreed to contribute annually about one thousand dol- lars. They no doubt considered that amount amply sufficient to sustain a school, after complete organiza- tion ; but they soon discovered that to begin such an undertaking, to purchase a lot, to build a house, and to supply the necessary furniture, would require addi- tional resources.
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" To obtain such additional resources, the Lancaster Society, through their trustees, memorialized the cor- poration. Some response must have been given to that memorial, but we have searched the municipal journal in vain to find it. The memorialists represented a large number of respectable and influential constit- uents of the corporate authorities, and it is not at all probable that their request was treated with indiffer- ence. Legislation, however, seems, by general con- sent, to have been suspended, and meanwhile ' a square of ground was conveyed by the Rev. Leonard Neale to certain persons (the Lancaster Society) for the pur- pose of carrying on a public system of education.' The Lancaster Society, under these circumstances, and will- ing to put off as long as possible recourse to the pub- lic treasury, may perhaps have withdrawn their me- morial and confined their efforts to the erection of a school-house.
" These efforts were successful, and in June, 1811, the mayor, recorder, aldermen, and common council- men, officially attended the procession of the Lancas- ter Society for the purpose of laying the corner-stone of the school-house. In five months the building was completed, and a school was begun November 18th, 1811, under Mr. Robert Ould, and contained, before the lapse of many weeks, three hundred and forty boys and girls under tuition. But the trustees disap- proved of this indiscriminate crowding of both sexes in one room, and to correct that irregularity, as well as to accommodate the throng daily seeking admis- sion, they renewed their application to the . Worship- 32
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ful Corporation.' The trustees congratulated the au- thorities on the success of 'a plan of education so plain, so unembarrassed, and so ready of execution,' which had been proved by the proficiency of the schol- ars, and the increasing reputation of the school; ex- pressed their serious objections to an intercourse of the sexes in an assemblage so large and so promiscu- ous; and as the school-house could not accommodate all the applicants for tuition, they asked the aid of the legal guardians and representatives of the town to- wards carrying into effect a plan already 'digested,' which would enlarge the accommodations for the boys and extend the facilities of instruction to the girls.
"Either from pride or diffidence, the trustees did not announce this digested plan, but endeavored to propitiate the good will of the city fathers by present- ing, as a subject of general regret and sorrowful re- flection, that females, the distinguished ornaments of creation, should experience that neglect of education, unhappily too prevalent towards them throughout the world. Following this eloquent appeal a petition was read, signed by ninety-five subscribers to the ‘ Lancas- ter School Fund,' all constituents, respectable, influen- tial, and legal voters. This petition frankly repre- sented that 'an addition to the Lancaster School, for the accommodation of the female scholars, would be a public good, and prayed for an appropriation of money sufficient to build such an addition as would accom- modate two hundred female scholars.'
" Neither of these papers bear any date, but the or- dinance of May 12th. 1812. is so perfectly responsive
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to both, that we need not hesitate to assign to them a date prior to the date thereof.
" That ordinance appropriated the sum of one thou- sand dollars, to be given to the trustees of the Lan- caster School, for the express purpose of enabling them to ereet an addition to their present school-house to accommodate the females of said school, and pre- scribed the materials and dimensions of the additional building, which was to be so constructed as to accom- modate two hundred and fifty scholars, at the least. A proviso attached to the ordinance betrayed the fear of censorious animadversion. The one thousand dol- lars was to be paid in annual instalments of two hund- red dollars, so that public indignation might be soothed by the long credit, for the last instalment would not be payable until May, 1816.
" But the result of this legislation relieved the cor- poration from all fears of censure, and the Lancaster School had, meanwhile, diffused its meliorative influ- ences so widely, that the councils felt authorized to manifest their good will in a more decided manner. Some months before the last instalment of two hund- red dollars was due, an ordinance, of October 6, 1815, provided that, instead of the trifling annuity thereto- fore allowed to the Lancaster School, there should thereafter be paid, yearly and every year, to the trust- ees thereof, the sum of one thousand dollars, for the purpose of assisting the said trustees in defraving the expenses of the school. The conditions annexed to the grant were, that the trustees should receive all des- titute children and cause them to be educated; that
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all children, on completing their education, should be bound out according to the laws in force in the coun- try ; that an annual report of the condition of the school be made by the trustees, and that the schools should be subject to occasional visits of four persons out of the councils, for the purpose of inspecting the operation thereof, and to see that order and morality were maintained, as well in as out of the school.
" For nine years the schools were carried on in har- mony and to the satisfaction of the community and of the corporate authorities. The annual reports must have been regularly made by the trustees, but, although the utmost freedom of search amongst the archives of Georgetown was allowed to me by their custodian, Mr. Surveyor Forsyth, with the assistance of Mr. J. J. Bogue, an intelligent and polite coadjutor, not one of them could be found. The Lancaster Society seems to have left everything relating to the schools to the discretion of the trustees, and those gentlemen did not, it seems, suppose that the monotonous routine of school-keeping could ever become a subject of inquiry. We are, therefore, left to infer or to conjecture the proceedings of the school trustees from the records of municipal legislation.
" During this period, the corporation was admon- ished of the danger of transgressing the line of secular policy in relation to schools. Application for aid in maintaining a free school was made by a religious so- ciety. An appropriation of two hundred dollars was granted ; and the lot on which the school-house stood was exempted from taxes. But these favors were soon
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afterwards withheld. The feelings of the American people are deeply and sincerely religious, but their theological opinions are not concordant. Conscience and worship are both equally free, and the increase and prosperity of each church are dependent, exclu- sively, on private liberality and enterprise.
" For thirty-two years the Lancasterian School had been sustained by private contribution and municipal aid. The list of subscribers to the Lancaster School Fund exhibited the names of few survivors, and those few could not, fairly, be expected to make good the deficiencies in the fund with their individual offerings. They had nobly volunteered to do a good work, and had done it well. They had broken up the fallow ground, ploughed the field, and sowed the seed, and the successive harvests had supplied an entire genera- tion with intellectual and moral nourishment. Their fellow-citizens appreciated their beneficent labors, and, prompted by public opinion, the municipality passed the ordinance of December 31, 1842.
"This ordinance declared that the schools then in operation, and supported by appropriations of the pub- lic money, be taken under the exclusive care of the corporate authority, and that guardians thereof be an- nually appointed, in joint meeting of the two boards, on the first Monday in January;
" That the guardians of the Georgetown school should consist of seven members, two, at least, of whom shall be members of the corporation, and were thereby invested with full powers to keep and manage said schools in such manner as they should deem best ;
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" And that, soon as the organization of the board of guardians shall have been reported to the mayor, the clerk of the corporation was anthorized and di- rected to transfer and pay the amounts appropriated for education to said guardians.
GEORGETOWN SCHOOL.
" Who constituted the first board of the George- town schools is not shown by the legislative record. The regular annual appropriation of one thousand dol- lars allowed by the ordinance of October 6, 1815, seems to have been enough to defray expenses; for, up to November, 1847, only two appropriations, amounting to three hundred and fifty dollars, were required. The guardians kept no journal of their meetings, neither was there found on file any copy of their periodical re- ports or other document.
" In 1848, however, that omission was supplied; and until the consolidation of 1874, there is a contin- uous narrative of twenty-six years. The board of guardians for 1848 met on the 5th of January, and were duly organized. The removal of the schools to other rooms was the only remarkable event in their administration until September, when they were served with a copy of a joint resolution, directing the guard- ians to charge and receive pay for all scholars whose parents or guardians are, in the opinion of a majority of the board, able to pay not exceeding one dollar a month for the general use of the schools. Whereupon, the board ordered, That the principals of the school furnish lists of their respective scholars from which the
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board may ascertain whose parents may be able to pay for the tuition of their children. These directions were not agreeable to the board; for no further men- tion of nor allusion to the subject appears on the min- utes. Inquisitorial duties were imposed on them which no American gentleman could possibly perform; and the councils, by their silence, seemed to attribute the adoption of the joint resolution to inadvertence.
" From 1848 to 1853 was an era of good feeling for the teachers, for their salaries were twice raised ; but the unfair discrimination shown against the 'ornaments of creation' in the gradation of salaries recalls the ' sorrowful reflection ' suggested by Mr. Robert Bev- erley. The principal teacher of the male school was allowed five hundred and fifty dollars, while the prin- cipal teacher of the female school was allowed only one-half that amount, two hundred and seventy-five dollars, which was, moreover, fifty dollars less than the salary of the assistant teacher of the male school.
" The corporation having been informed, in 1849, by the board, that the interests of the schools required more ample accommodations than those afforded by the hall of the Vigilant Fire Company, passed the ordinance of August 11th, 1849, appropriating twelve hundred dollars for the purchase of the Methodist Episcopal Church on Montgomery Street, and an ad- ditional amount, not exceeding eight hundred dollars, for adapting the same to the comfortable accommoda- tion of the schools. The purchase and alterations must have been promptly made. The day, however, when it was first occupied by the schools is not men-
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tioned, but the minutes of November 9, 1850, are dated 'at the new school house.' In the ordinance purchasing this building, there was a provision that the trustees were to pay interest, annually, on the two thousand dollars to the corporation; but this condi- tion does not appear to have been insisted on, and was formally repealed in 1852.
" In 1851 the councils appropriated, at the request of the board, seventy-five dollars for the purchase of premiums at the annual exhibition, but in 1852 they did not feel able to afford such an expenditure; and, but for the generosity of Mr. W. W. Corcoran, whose father, forty-three years before, made the first appeal to the corporate authorities on behalf of the public schools, the children would have been sorely disap- pointed. Mr. Corcoran sent one hundred dollars to the board for the purchase of premiums, and annually repeated his donation as long as it was needed.
" In September, 1853, the board ordered that Mr. Craig, the principal teacher of the male school, be al- lowed five dollars to purchase instruments for pulling teeth. The extraction of teeth was not a punishment, but the toothache was such a common excuse for ne- glect of lessons and for non-attendance at school, that Mr. Craig came to the conclusion that the removal of the offending member was the best way of maintain- ing discipline. 'And it was astonishing,' said the trustee who explained this entry, 'it was astonishing to see the business he did ! Odontalgia became so contagious or fashionable that Mr. Craig soon filled a quart-cup, more or less, with trophies of his dentistry.'
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" The councils having been asked for one thousand dollars, responded by appropriating two thousand five hundred dollars for school expenses in 1855, and the board, having received it, set apart thereof enough to pay incidental expenses, and divided the rest pro rata, amongst the teachers. In May, 1856, there was some correspondence between the board and the corpora- tion, in the course of which it appeared that the board of trustees had never kept any account-book, and were, therefore, unable to submit to the council a state- ment of receipts and expenditures. They had de- pended entirely on the books kept by the clerk of the corporation, but ' they expected to present, if neces- sary,' at the end of the year, a full and accurate ex- hibit of the condition of the school fund. In regard to the personnel of the school, they reported one hund- red and fifty males enrolled, with an average attend- ance of one hundred and twelve ; and eighty females enrolled, with an average attendance of sixty. The report at the end of the year stated the number of males enrolled at one hundred and fifty-eight, with an average attendance of one hundred and nineteen ; and that during the year fifty had been admitted and fifty- two withdrawn. Of the females seventy-one were en- rolled, with an average attendance of fifty-six; and that during the year sixty-one had been admitted and fifty-three withdrawn.
"This irregular attendance was to be, no doubt, attributed in part to the crowded benches. The two school rooms had each been partitioned into two, and although the change at first conduced to order and 33
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good discipline, the wish of the board to admit as many as possibly could be seated, neutralized these ad- vantages. These inconveniences became so embar- rassing, that in March, 1857, the board communicated to the councils their desire to establish an additional school at an estimated expense of nine hundred and thirty-five dollars. But the proximate municipal elec- tion and the hope of aid from Congress induced the corporation to postpone legislation on the subject. Meanwhile, the board sought to obtain from the voters at the polls voluntary donations in behalf of the pub- lic schools. The attempt failed; but the board soon presented an argument that convinced everybody of the necessity of enlarging the scope of their adminis- tration.
" At the meeting in January, 1856, it was determ- ined to canvass the city, so as to ascertain what pro- portion of the children, between five and eighteen years of age, attended school. In April the canvasser reported the whole number of such children at two thousand two hundred and seventy-eight; six hundred and seventy-nine of whom were in private schools, and four hundred and sixty-one were in public, free, and parish schools; total, one thousand one hundred and forty ; leaving one thousand one hundred and thirty-eight, almost exactly half, of the juvenile popu- lation entirely without means of learning. The pub- lication of this census dispersed all objections. In one week afterwards, the board were informed that the remainder of the school fund was made subject to their order, for the purpose of building a new school-
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house, and a committee was at once instructed to se- lect a site. This was not done, however, until June, 1859, when the purchase of the lot on the corner of High and Market Streets was consummated. The plan of the new building was agreed on in April, 1860, and the contract was awarded in the following May, but it was not occupied before September, 1863, for this was a time of great political distress and per- plexity. The building cost about three thousand dol- lars; and the expenditure for lot, furniture, salaries, and other indispensable outlay, must have made up a total not less than five thousand dollars.
" The year 1864 lifted up on high the ' ornaments of creation ;" for every teacher elected was a ' female.' Even the senior and junior male classes were put under their control. But the board seemed still to be influ- enced by the traditionary undervaluation of woman's services, and reduced the salary of the teacher of the senior male school to seven hundred and fifty dollars -fifty dollars less than allowed to the male teacher ever since 1856. The seale adopted was, however, an evidence of progress, generally, and was fixed at a more equitable standard than theretofore.
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