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Gc 974.401 Es7f v.II 1140284
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GENEALOGYY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01101 6521
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF CLAUDE M. FUESS, PH. D., LITT. D. Headmaster, Phillips Academy, Andover
COMPILED BY SCOTT H. PARADISE, M. A., OXON.
Instructor in English, Phillips Academy, Andover
VOLUME II
THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, INC. NEW YORK
Copyright THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, INC. 1935
new England $5.00 (4 vols.)
Education
1140284
Essex -- 35
CHAPTER XIV
Education
By Scott H. Paradise
In Massachusetts Bay Colony it is recorded that everybody could read, a condition of literacy which no other Colony in America could equal. The Commonwealth has justly received much praise as the first to establish free, universal education at public expense. If we put ourselves, by an exercise of imagination, in the position of those early settlers, it is easy to see why education should have held a foremost place in their thoughts, living as they did under conditions extremely primitive, three thousand miles in distance and three months in time from the nearest source of mental stimulation. Their children were growing up, and without education, without contact through books with the great minds of the past, what was to pre- vent them from lapsing into a condition of barbarism as low as that of the red men about them? Moreover, the clergy were the leaders of the community, the backbone of the social structure, and without schools how could new clergymen be trained ?
We find the colonists' fears quaintly expressed in "New England's First Fruits":1
"After God had carried us safe to New England and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our liveli- hood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministry shall be in the dust."
I. Old South Leaflet, No. 51.
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As more colonists arrived of the uneducated classes, who had not the ability to teach their own children, the problem became acute, and the old methods of instruction in the home and by the village clergy- man broke down. As a result the General Court was obliged at an early date to make some provision for the establishment of public schools, and from this necessity came the famous law of 1647, the foundation of Massachusetts and Essex County schools :
"It being one chief proiect of yt ould deluder Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of ye Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these lat- ter times, by persuading from ye use of tongues, yt so at least ye true sense and meaning of ye original might be clouded by false glasses of saint-seeming deceivers, yt learning may not be buried in ye grave of our fathers in ye church and common- wealth, ye Lord assisting our endeavors: It is therefore ordered yt every tounship in this jurisdiction after ye Lord hath increased them to ye number of 50 householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their towne to teach all such children as shall resort to him, to write and reade," "And it is further ordered, yt where any towne shall increase to ye number of 100 families, or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, ye master thereof being able to instruct youth so farr as they may be fitted for ye university, provided yt if any towne neglect ye performance hereof above one yeare, then every such toune shall pay £5 to ye next schoole till they shall perform this order."
According to this epoch-making law the towns were not required to have a school building until they contained a hundred households. Until that time merely a teacher sufficed, and we find our first teachers men like Ezekiel Collins, who taught at Gloucester in 1644, Thomas Nasse at Haverhill in 1660, Captain Thomas Fiske in Wenham in 1700, Anthony Somerby at Newbury in 1639, and Abraham Nor- manton at Lynn in 1696, going from house to house or keeping school wherever a room could be found to accommodate the pupils.
In one respect our ancestors were like their descendants of the present day : they resisted the compulsion of laws even when made by men wiser than themselves and for their own advantage. The
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towns were poor, they were occupied with the struggle for existence, the Indians were a much more pressing problem than educational needs. Consequently, and to our surprise, for we have always thought of the early Essex County settlers as holding education in the high- est esteem, several towns neglected to enforce the law and were "presented" to the General Court for their negligence. In 1658 Newbury was admonished for not maintaining a "lattin scule," and fined £5, to be paid to the Ipswich Latin School, "if by the next courte they do not provyde a lattin scule master according to law." Salisbury and Amesbury, through indifference or negligence, were frequently "presented" as delinquent in obeying the school law. In 1701 and again in 1707 Gloucester was remiss in providing a school- master, and by this time the penalty had been increased, becoming £10 in 1692 and £20 in 1701. Wenham was found guilty of evading the law in 1700, and Haverhill, where as late as 1816 a distinguished citizen wrote, "This town has never been remarkable for its liberal support of schools. . . No other provision has ever been made for schools than is required by law," was continually in hot water. In 1687 the Ipswich Court in speaking of Haverhill said, "judging that what is now done and provided by them does not answer the law, nor is convenient to be rested in, doe order that the town, before the next court at Ipswich provide an able and meet schoolmaster." At a town meeting in 1701, "The question being moved by some of the inhabitants whether the town is obliged by the Law to be pro- vided with a Grammar schoolmaster-Yea or no; the Town answers in the negative and therefore do not proceed to do it, because they do not find they have the number of one hundred families or house- holders which the law mentions." But the very next year we find the selectmen of Haverhill ordered to get a schoolmaster for this year, "with all the speed they possibly can," and we find them offering Mr. Tufts the munificent sum of thirty-four pounds for his services. But their haste and their liberality is explained when we learn that the town had once more been charged with being without a school. In spite of its generosity to the fortunate Mr. Tufts it was required to pay the fine. On July 21, 1703, a meeting was held at Haverhill to see about a schoolmaster, which was adjourned to August 18, and then to September 15, when, "After much discussion about getting a schoolmaster, the town, in consideration of their troubles with the
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Indians, resolved to do nothing in the premises." Apparently there was some justification in Haverhill's excuse at this time, for in Novem- ber, 1705, the General Court made an order exempting all towns of less than two hundred families from keeping a grammar school for three years on account of the general impoverishment caused by the Indian wars. Throughout this period it is evident that Haverhill looked upon the need for schooling as no more important, or perhaps secondary to the other needs of the community. In 1670 it was voted to erect a schoolhouse "as near the meeting-house that now is as may be, which may be convenient for the keeping of a public school in & for the service of a watch-house, & for the entertainment of such persons on the sabbath days at noon as may desire to repair thither, & shall not repair between the forenoon and afternoon exercises to their own dwellings." Again, in 1700, a building was ordered to be erected for a watchhouse, schoolhouse, and for any other use to which it might be appropriated.
But in spite of reluctance here and there to comply with the law, schoolhouses inevitably were built, and the old itinerant teacher was replaced by a more permanent incumbent. Salem, as in so many other respects, claims priority. In 1637, nine years after the coming of Endicott, John Fiske opened a public school in Salem, which has some claim to being the oldest free school in America.2 It is true that Virginia established a school in 1621, but in 1671 we find the Governor of Virginia crying that he "thanked God there were no free schools, nor printing, and hoped they would not have any these hundred years," and for a long time afterwards the Old Dominion taxed schoolmasters twenty shillings a head. Salem's Latin School has enjoyed an uninterrupted existence to the present day. A vote passed September 30, 1644, said: "If any poor body hath children or a childe to be put to school, and not able to pay for their schooling, that the town will pay it by a rate." In 1677, Daniel Epes, the third master, agreed with the selectmen to teach English, Latin, and Greek (Latin and Greek had been taught by Edward Norris, his predeces- sor) to fit pupils for the university; also to teach them good manners and instruct them in the principles of the Christian religion. A second school was established in 1712 when Nathaniel Higginson founded a "school for reading, writing, and cyphering, in the north end of the
2. The date generally accepted for the establishment of the Boston Latin School is the "13th of the 2nd month, of 1635."
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town-house." The first of these schools was the prototype of the Latin or grammar school, and the second of the English school.
By a natural development the Latin school became in time the present high school, the school for "reading, writing, and cyphering" became the present grammar school, and a school kept by Mrs. Gill, where from April 10, 1773, she taught "the poorest people's children at Women's School," became the present primary school.
Ipswich very nearly took precedence of Salem in establishing a grammar school, for a school was "set up" in 1636 by Lionel Chute, but unfortunately, though perhaps quite naturally, it did "not suc- ceed." However, the seed of this early attempt had taken root, and about 1649 Robert Paine offered to erect a school provided a tract of land was set aside for its endowment. The town, accordingly, on January II, 1650, granted to Robert Paine, William Paine, Major Denison, and Mr. Bartholomew in trust "for the use of schools all that neck beyond Chebacco River and the rest of the ground (up to Gloucester line) adjoining to it." Being thus endowed the Ipswich Grammar School was put in charge of nine, later ten, trustees known as the "feoffees," and consequently in the early records it is spoken of as the "Feoffees' Latin School." The first master was Ezekiel Cheever, who kept it for ten years and afterwards moved to Boston, where he became, as master of the Boston Latin School, the cele- brated schoolmaster of the day. Cheever's "Accidence" was the most famous and widely circulated of all early American Latin gram- mars, and the twentieth edition of this text was published as late as 1838.3
Haverhill, in 1670, permitted the erection of a schoolhouse with the conditions and reservations which we have already noticed. The early records of Lynn being lost it is not possible to say when the first school house was erected, but Mr. Lewis remarks, under date of 1687: "Mr. Shepard kept the school several months this win- ter," so there must then have been an established school. Gloucester's first schoolhouse was built in 1708 "on the easterly side of the meeting-house"; in 1701 the selectmen of Groveland were ordered to "provide a school according to their discretion" and to "assess the town for the expense of the same." The man instrumental in build- ing the first schoolhouse at Danvers was the Reverend Joseph
3. Old South Leaflet, No. 177, p. 35.
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Green. Certain passages of his diary, March, 1708, bear upon the subject :
"March II . . . . I spoke to several about building a schoolhouse and determined to do it, etc.
"18. I rode to ye neighbors about a schoolhouse and found them generally willing to help.
"22. Meeting of the Inhabitants. I spoke with several about building a schoolhouse. I went into ye Town Meeting (village meeting) and said to this effect: Neighbors I am about building a schoolhouse for the goood education of our children. . . . . Some replyed that it was a new thing to them and they desired to know where it should stand, and what the design of it was. To them I answered that Deacon Ingersoll would give land for it to stand on, at the upper end of the Training Field, and that I designed to have a good school-master to teach their children to read and write and cypher and everything that is good. Many commended the design and none objected to it.
"25. Began to get timber for schoolhouse."
These first schoolhouses were small and crude enough. At Gloucester the building measured twenty-four feet in length, sixteen feet in width, and six feet was the height of stud. The cost of the completed building was £24 15s. The first Bradford schoolhouse was twenty-two feet long, eighteen feet wide, had seven-foot posts, and cost £25. That at Methuen was similar in size, eighteen by twenty feet, and cost about £29. At Georgetown the inhabitants voted on March 20, 1737, to "Bould a Schoal House, & to set it between the Brook by Capt. Bradstreets, and Mr. ffrancis Brocklebank's Brook," and later determined "to allow seven shillings and a piney for Rhum, at the Raising of the School House." The little building was twenty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and eight feet high, and Ebenezer Burpee was paid for "meching forms and tables, for said school-house." The interior of the "old red school-house" at Nahant is described thus by one of the scholars : "Benches ran across both sides of the school-room, so that we faced each other; long benches for our seats ran behind these; and the teacher had a table at the end of the room, where she sat."
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The above description no doubt exhausts the entire equipment of the first schools. There were no blackboards, maps, or charts of any kind. The children were first taught the alphabet by a method that Pestalozzi was accustomed to call the "first torment of the young learner," the child being required to name the letters in all orders, day after day, until he could correctly designate any letter at which the teacher happened to point. The child might be aided in his studies by the Horn Book, a single leaf laid upon a thin piece of oak and covered with a transparent sheet of horn, secured by eight tacks driven through the border. Upon this leaf was printed at the begin- ning of the first line, a cross, to show that the end of training is piety. After the cross there followed the letters of the alphabet, the small letters and the capitals, the vowels, syllables of two letters, and the words: "In name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost -- Amen." Then came the Lord's Prayer. Or the young stu- dent might possess a copy of "The New England Primer," which contained an illustrated alphabet, each picture being accompanied by the familiar rhymes such as,
"In Adam's fall We sinned all." "Zaccheus he Did climb a tree Our Lord to see."
such moral precepts, according to one writer, having done more to form the New England character than the contents of any book, except the Bible.
Spelling was allowed to range loosely about the alphabet, there being no fixed standard. So long as the letters used gave the right sound to the word it was sufficient, a fact which no doubt accounts for the quaint spelling of the old documents. Arithmetic, or "cyphering" was taught by dictation, or the instructor wrote the sums on the pupil's slate. The first commercial arithmetic published in New Eng- land was written by Michael Walsh, of Salisbury, who was pre- eminent among the early teachers of the county.
Having learned to read the Psalter, and the Bible, the student was admitted to the grammar school, where he prepared to enjoy the classic tongues by memorizing verbatim Brinsley's "Accidence, or
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Directions for Young Latinists," or Cheever's celebrated "Acci- dence." He then was permitted to read the "Colloquies of Cor- derius," Eutropius, Ovid, Vergil, Cæsar, and Cicero. In the same way the Greek grammar was memorized word for word before the pupil might read the Greek Testament or Homer's "Iliad." Having graduated from the Latin or grammar school, the boy might enter the university, provided he could read Latin at sight, write and speak good Latin verse and prose, and was letter perfect in the declensions and conjugations of the Greek tongue.
At first boys alone were deemed worthy of education. Girls did not need "book-learning," and their services were required at home, where they might pick up all in the way of sewing and housekeeping that a wife and mother should know. But in 1793 Salem instructed its committee to "provide at the writing school, or elsewhere, for the tuition of girls in reading, writing and cyphering." At Lynn girl students are not mentioned in a school report until 1817. Women teachers were not at first employed in the schools. But as early as September 2, 1707, Thomas Ayer petitioned the commoners of Haverhill "for a small piece of land to set a house on near the meeting-house that so said Ayer's wife might be the better accom- modated to teach children to read." The selectmen were empowered to grant his petition, but Ruth Ayer was killed by the Indians, August 29, 1708. Katherine Doland is mentioned as teaching at Danvers in 1708 or before, and Bradford passed a vote on March 23, 1710: "The toun ded then Impoure the Selectmen to imply wemen to teach letel children to read." Wenham was perhaps the leader in employ- ing women teachers, because in 1702 it was "voted that the select- men have full power to agree with such school-dames as are necessary to learn children to read," but it was not until 1749 that Methuen voted to employ women and chose a committee "to agree with school- mistresses and appoint convenient places for them to be kept in."
There were interesting characters among the early schoolmasters like the Irishman, Michael Walsh, of Salisbury, whose "Commercial Arithmetic" has been mentioned, and who taught many of the New- buryport sea captains their navigation, and among whose pupils was that eminent jurist, Caleb Cushing. Walsh ran away from his home in Ireland and came to Salisbury, and being a good Latinist, an excel- lent Greek scholar, and qualified to teach the higher branches of
TRAINING SCHOOL-STATE TEACHERS' COLLEGE AT SALEM
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mathematics, he eventually established a school. Tradition paints him as one of the last in the village to wear knee breeches, shoes with buckles, velvet coat, and the tri-cornered hat of pre-Revolution- ary days. He was of short stature, agile as a cat, possessed fiery red hair, and a temper to match. Mr. Samuel Hoyt records that he had a long rope, "filled with hard knots. When he meditated a castigation, he would not suffer himself to inflict it until he had untied all these and tied them again, and by that time he had cooled off. When angry he would jump up and down like corn in a popper." At church, when the boys would misbehave, he would shout, "Boys, if I had my way with ye now, I'd flog ye within an inch of your lives."
At Bradford the first schoolmaster rejoiced in the name of Icha- bod, which makes us wonder whether Washington Irving patterned his famous schoolmaster after a living model.
The teacher's lot was far from a happy one. Theirs was an itinerant unsettled existence; school often kept only eight weeks; they moved from town to town, from district to district, and must have always held in their hearts a longing for a more stable, respected career. Mr. Lovewell, of Topsfield, must have had doubts of the dignity of learning when the town voted on March 6, 1694, "that Goodman Lovewell, Schoolmaster, shall live in ye Parsonage house this Yeare ensewing, to kepe Schole and swepe ye meeting house." There was always the problem of disciplining the big boys, and it must have terrified a bookish youth fresh from college to be con- fronted with a group of lads just off the farm, no doubt older and stronger than he, and itching for trouble. Master Dole, of George- town, was fortunate in that it was said one sweep of his muscular arm had sent his whole class ignominiously to the floor.
There was always the problem of poverty confronting our early teachers, and it is to be hoped that the estimation in which they were held was not measured by the wages paid them. Anthony Somerby was appointed schoolmaster in Newbury in 1639, receiving as an inducement to keep school for a year "four acres of land near the river Parker and some meadow land." In 1675 Henry Short was engaged by the same town and provided £5 for his first half year and 6d. a week from each scholar. Seth Shove was hired in 1687, fresh from Harvard, on the agreement that he teach "readers" free, Latin scholars at 6d. a week, and "cipherers" at 4d. a week. A step towards
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having the town pay for education in the fundamentals was taken in the case of Nicholas Webster, Harvard, 1695, who was given £30 in "country pay," 4d. a week for Latin scholars, but nothing more for "readers, writers, and cipherers."
Illustration of the small pay offered teachers is provided by the other Essex County towns. At Lynn, in 1702, the grammar master was allowed ten pounds and in addition two pence a week for each pupil in reading, three pence a week for each pupil in writing and ciphering, and six pence a week for each Latin scholar. Methuen paid Ebenezer Barker, Zebediah Barker, and Thomas Eaton each £2 Ios. for keeping school in 1733. Thomas Riggs, Sr., was chosen schoolmaster of Gloucester in 1698 and was allowed "one shilling and six pence a day during the town's pleasure, and the said Riggs likeing to carry it on." In 1672 Haverhill hired Thomas Nasse for schoolmaster "provided that they do not allow the said Thomas Nasse more than ten pounds by the year, he having the like liberty to agree with the parents or masters of those that came to him as for- merly." Next year the salary was "taken off, and no more to be allowed or voted for." It was perhaps thought that the amount received from parents and masters was sufficient for his compensa- tion, but Nasse apparently did not find it so and gave up his position. It was not until 1768 that schools were supported in this Common- wealth wholly by taxation.
To the teacher carrying on his exacting duties in the schoolhouse, often bearing half the responsibilities of the minister in addition to teaching, as Christopher Toppan did in Newbury; or like Richard Brown in Newbury, holding the position of town clerk, as well as teacher, there must have often come a feeling of bitterness and a sense of the thanklessness of his toil. Richard Brown, when he resigned to become minister at Reading in 1711, unburdened his soul with a frankness that is refreshing :
"I have served Newbury as school-master eleven years, and as Town Clerk five and a half years, and have been repaid with abuse, ingratitude and contempt. I have sent nigh as many to college as all the masters before since the Reverend and learned Parker. Those I bred think themselves better than their master (God make them better still), and yet they may remember the foundation of all their growing greatness
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was laid in the sweat of my brow. I pray that . . . . New- bury may get them that may serve them better and find thanks when they have done. If to find a house for the school two years when the town had none; if to take the scholars to my own fire when there was no wood at the school as frequently ; if to give records to the poor and record their births and deaths gratis deserves acknowledgement then it is my due, but hard to come by."
This is not the place to describe the development of educational theory and practice for the last two hundred years. Essex County has been among the first to adopt all the improved methods of teach- ing devised during that period-the district school, permitted by leg- islation in 1768, the emphasis upon civics rather than upon religion, the introduction of teacher training and graded schools, the discus- sion of educational problems among teachers (Essex County Teach- ers' Association, the first permanent county association, was formed in 1829), the enrichment of the curriculum by the study of history, the sciences, and the arts, and the attention to pupil health-all these were improvements welcomed by Essex County before 1860. Since that year Essex County has not been backward in adopting com- pulsory education for all, manual training, vocational education, the scientific attitude toward child psychology, improved organization of courses, and intelligence tests based on the work of Binet and Simon.
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