History of Milton, Part 9

Author: Hamilton, Edward Pierce
Publication date: 1957
Publisher: Milton, Mass. Milton Historical Society
Number of Pages: 356


USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Milton > History of Milton > Part 9


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History of Milton


"THE OLD ACADEMY BUILDING"


years nothing at all happened, while the Maine land was being surveyed and a purchaser sought. This was at last accomplished by 1806, when the school building was started, and in the following year the "Old Academy" opened, with an entering class of twenty-three boys-later enlarged to twenty-eight -drawn from Milton and the surrounding towns. The boys from out of town boarded in some house in the vicinity or with the master in the "Aca- demy House", which stood on the corner of Canton Avenue and Thatcher Street, and later became a convalescent home run by the Unitarian Church.


When Robert Bennet Forbes was a very small boy, he was a student at Milton Academy and boarded with Deacon Isaac Gulliver in the old house which is still standing at 651 Canton Avenue. The Commodore, as Mr. Forbes was later known, recalled that the food was extremely simple, with much Indian pudding, many pans of baked beans, and some salt fish, but very little meat. This diet may have lacked much that we today believe to be essential, but the boy went to sea at thirteen, was a mate at sixteen, and mas- ter before he was twenty. He lived to be eighty-five.


For the next fifty-nine years the Academy operated as a local high school,


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The Schools


with the addition of some boarding scholars from out of town. After about 1816 girls were admitted, but the school never grew very large; an attend- ance of about twenty-eight pupils was the average. The Academy had no endowment, all of its funds having been used up in buying the land and put- ting up the building, and it thus led a hand-to-mouth existence with the tuition fees the only source of income. Over the years it had its ups and downs, and a considerable turnover of teachers, but it served a most useful purpose and offered a practical secondary education on the one hand, or a college preparation on the other for those who desired it. The Academy ceased operations in 1866, leasing its school building to the Town, and put- ting its corporate charter into mothballs. Eventually the building was sold to the Town, torn down and a new High School building was erected in 1885, which in turn was incorporated into the Vose School structure of 1896, torn down in 1956.


There had been various private schools established in Milton in the early years of the last century, but most of them lasted but a very few years. There was a private school on Adams Street on the north side about halfway be- tween Churchill's and Dudley Lanes, which was started by the Forbes fam- ily in about 1844. In 1884 the Academy charter was taken out of the limbo in which it had slumbered for eighteen years, and the trustees took this lit- tle school under their control as the beginnings of the new Academy. John M. Forbes secured part of what is now the Academy's land in 1884, and in the next year the school moved to Warren Hall, the building still standing at the corner of Randolph Avenue and Center Street.9 The Academy was continued for a few years more as a local private school, and then in 1888 started operations as a boarding school under the headmastership of Harri- son Otis Apthorp. Its later growth into what it is today has been excellently covered by Dr. Hale,10 and there is no need to attempt to mention the Acad- emy further in this history.


9. In recent years part of the Adams Street school building was moved up to the Unitarian Church to become the Children's Church. After 1884 one of the Adams Street school buildings was used for some years as a private school for small children, while the other was moved to East Milton, where it became a Baptist chapel.


10. Richard W. Hale, Jr., Milton Academy, 1798-1948 (Milton, 1948).


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In recent years some writers have stated that the early Massachusetts schools were the tools of the Puritan clergy, and that they were established and maintained solely for religious purposes. Nothing can be further from the truth. The early founders realized that an intelligent citizenry was nec- essary to a successful state. The fact that they were a homogeneous group who wished to reform the established Anglican Church would naturally re- sult in schooling which would take their religious beliefs for granted, but the purpose of the elementary schools was purely preparation for good citi- zenship. In the case of the grammar schools the matter was somewhat differ- ent. The purpose of the early Massachusetts grammar school was to prepare for the college at Cambridge, and in the earliest days Harvard existed essen- tially for the purpose of training the clergy. The growth and prosperity of the colony, however, soon altered this, and a Harvard education was sought by many who had neither the desire nor the intention of entering the minis- try. By 1700, when we get our first glimpse of Milton schools, the days of the old Puritan theocracy were over, and any religious dictatorship would have been impossible. Milton, as will be noted in the chapter on the churches, ap- pears to have enjoyed during the Provincial and Federalist periods a uniform- ity of religious belief, or at least an absence of dissenting opinions, rather un- usual for a New England town. This might have been to some extent reflect- ed in the local schools, but any religious teaching would have been merely a tacit acceptance of the status quo rather than a proselyting operation. The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 decisively ended the possibility of any denominational religious education in the public schools, even if the Town should have desired it.


The first formal report of the School Committee that I can find was made in March of 1839 as the result of a state law passed the previous year. From this time on a report was made every year, although some of the earlier ones were never printed and exist only in manuscript form. At this date we find that the schools were kept summer and winter in all five districts, some with men and some with women teachers. A few notes from some other of the ear- liest Committee reports are of interest. In 1841 the members believed that there was room for considerable improvement, particularly in the Pruden-


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tial Committees, and they objected to the pupils "lounging in one after an- other" after school exercises had commenced. They also were pained to learn that some teachers were receiving "threats of personal chastisement" from irate parents. Another complaint, and one that we perhaps have felt existed only in our generation, was that "the crying sin of the times [this, mind you, was in 1844] was the laxity of parental authority"! An interesting description of one of our Town schools is given in the 1843 report, "a bad location, a miserable house, ill constructed seats on the benches of which are written the roguery of ages, a bad ventilated room, a room made gloomy by dust and smoke and adorned with youthful specimens in the fine arts of sculpture and printing". Another fact of interest is that, generally speaking, women teachers were found more satisfactory than men-perhaps, I fear, because they came much cheaper.


These were the dark days of the Town's schools. The Prudential Com- mittees were often not well chosen, and they in turn failed in some cases to hire competent teachers. There was divided authority and no effective co- ordination. It is interesting to note, however, that Milton never let its schools get entirely out of hand, the appropriations of money to be spent by the Prudential Committees were voted by the Town, and not, as in many other places, raised by a tax assessed by the School District itself. This meant that it was not too difficult for the Town to reassume control over the entire school operation, and by 1848 conditions had become such that the Prudential Committees were abolished, and management of the schools was turned over to the School Committee, in whose hands it has ever since remained.


In the 1840's Massachusetts education was entering a new era which was introduced, led, and directed by Horace Mann. This great educator became the first Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and in 1837 is- sued his first report on the general conditions in Massachusetts schools. By 1840 he was preaching the iniquities of the district school system-a subject he took up again in his 1846 report. He was responsible for the establish- ment of the first normal schools11 and thus for the first qualified professional


11. John G. Carter had promoted the establishment of such schools at a somewhat earlier date, but without success.


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teachers. The times were ripe for a complete readjustment of the Milton school system, which for almost two generations had remained static, or perhaps even gone backwards. It was due to the educational work of Horace Mann that the School Committee was able to persuade the Town to give them complete control of the schools.


In the fall of 1846 the old North School on Hutchinson's Field was burned by a pupil who thought vacation should be longer, and a hall in the Village was hired as a temporary measure. John M. Forbes gave the Town land for a new school, and laid out School Street (then called Glover Street) on which a new two-story building was erected. This was reported to be "very com- modious" even though the upper story was not finished, and in 1849 it was referred to as a model schoolhouse.


At this period we first hear mention of a high school, and an arrangement was made with the Academy-then in one of its several periods of near col- lapse-to take Town high school pupils, but Town Meeting later changed its mind and the deal fell through.


Now that the School Committee had control, things were really starting to happen. The Centre School House, on Canton Avenue just north of Wen- dell Park, was repaired and improved (1847), and wells with pumps were built at the North (School Street), East (near Squantum Street), and West (Blue Hill Avenue at Atherton Street) Schools. In 1851 a new East School was voted, and consideration was given to a separate school for New State.12 The East School is one of the oldest of which we have a photograph. It was fifty by thirty-five feet, and two stories with rooms for primary, intermediate and grammar13 classes. The following year major repairs were made on the West School, a new thirty-eight by thirty foot two-story building was erect- ed at Scott's Woods14 and a single story building was put up on Pleasant


12. The area around Pleasant Street, Gunhill Street and today's Randolph Avenue achieved this name shortly after the Revolution because a number of its inhabitants had gained the repu- tation of being a crowd of lazy loafers. Daniel Vose's chief clerk, irate when some of them were hanging around the store, vehemently declared that they were not fit to be part of Massachu- setts, but should form a new state of their own with Moses Belcher as governor. The name stuck to the area, and Belcher was always thereafter known as the "Governor".


13. By this date, used in the modern meaning.


14. At this date spelled thus rather than the previous "Scotch". The new site was a little farther


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The Schools


Street to provide elementary schooling for the children of the New Staters.


As the result of the activities of these six years the school system of the Town had been thoroughly renovated physically and, knowing the feeling of the School Committees of this period, we may feel assured that there had also been a housecleaning of incompetent teachers, and that the pupils no longer "lounged in one after another" after school had started. Whether the reading, writing, and arithmetic were still taught to the tune of the hick- ory stick I cannot say for sure, but suspect that they were. Progressive edu- cation and self-expression were still many years ahead. School now kept for about forty-four weeks in the year, so there was a fairly reasonable amount of vacation allowed both pupils and teachers.


I now propose to take leave of further discussion of the elementary schools. They had at last become the Town's schools again, had been thoroughly modernized for their times, and were to continue much as they were for many years to come. Later history may be studied, by those interested, in the printed reports of the School Committee. By this time the schools were no longer the sole property of the Town, but were really a unit, although a very independent one, in the State school system. Horace Mann had done his great work, and education was established in essentially its modern form.


Milton Academy had lived a hand-to-mouth existence throughout its ear - ly days, and could offer its master little beyond the use of a house and what tuition fees were received from the pupils. On five occasions it was forced to suspend for periods up to a year or more, and the turnover of masters had been very considerable. By mid-century the public high school15 was com- ing in, and pressure for one was gradually building up here. By the end of the Civil War, Milton was the only Massachusetts town of its relative wealth that did not have a public high school. Finally in 1866 the Town decided to establish one, and succeeded in securing the services of the Academy prin- cipal, Sereno D. Hunt. This was the final blow to the Academy, which then


south along Hillside Street beyond Forrest Street, whereas the old school was opposite the end of Harland Street.


15. Boston's English High, 1821, was the first free high school in the world. In 1840 there were only eighteen high schools in the State, but the number grew to 102 by the start of the Civil War.


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threw up the sponge and rented its two buildings to the Town. At first Mr. Hunt may well have regretted his choice for he alone had to teach some for- ty pupils in at least five subjects, but in 1868 he was given an assistant, and probably was a much happier man.


Milton now had a complete school system, with six16 schoolhouses dis- tributed across the town, containing both elementary and grammar schools, and a high school. These schools were operated by their respective princi- pals under the general control of the School Committee, who made periodic visits and inspections. The Committee was not, however, composed of trained educators. As the schools grew, education broadened, and newer methods developed, it became increasingly obvious that more competent supervision was needed than could be given by the serious and hard-working School Committees, who were unfortunately mere amateurs in what had become a real profession. In 1862 a superintendent of schools was first proposed, but the idea got nowhere, and it was not until 1879 that the Town tried the experiment for a year and then dropped it. A year later a part-time super- intendent was hired in conjunction with Canton, and at a somewhat later period in partnership with Quincy. Finally in 1891 the Town employed its own superintendent, and the school system had developed into its final form, from which no really material change has since been made. It is interesting to note that during the 1880's the Town furnished transportation to and from school for some of the pupils. Horse-drawn barges were used, some- thing like small horse-drawn trolley cars with the entrance in the rear and bench seats along the two sides. The use of such barges lasted down until about the time of the First World War.


By 1892 there was a very complete body of Massachusetts laws regulating education. They were detailed and specific, and it is obvious that by this period effective State control-at least on a minimum requirement basis- had been established. These laws made attendance compulsory, provided high school education for those who wished it, specified the subjects to be taught, made permissible the conveyance of pupils to and from school, and


16. The Fairmount School, a seventh, on the far side of Brush Hill, was built in 1857, but was taken over by Hyde Park in 1868, when 400 acres were ceded by Milton to that new town.


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CHILDREN AT THE CENTER SCHOOL, 1885


The Schools


established standards of sanitation for schoolhouses. The State, moreover, employed a staff of agents to visit and to report on the manner in which the various cities and towns met the requirements of the laws. Since that time there has been no very material change; new subjects, new methods, and new equipment have been added from time to time, but the basic concept of a town-elected School Committee operating the entire school system in ac- cordance with State requirements, and primarily through the agency of a superintendent selected by them, has not been altered.


The financial relationship between the Town and its schools has changed over the years to a considerable degree. In the earliest days the Selectmen operated the schools as they saw fit, and charged the cost to the general tax levy. Town records show no vote limiting or authorizing a specific expendi- ture. For instance, as late as 1770 the Town voted that the Selectmen should have discretion as to how the schools should be kept. The year 1785 shows the first money vote for total operating costs, £81.5s. 10d. and five years later three school districts were established with £90 to be apportioned among them. From 1796 on, a definite sum was always specified, but it must be re- membered that this was spent by the various district committees who might, if they so wished, add further sums to it, either by donation or, after 1800, by a school district tax. I doubt, however, if this last was ever done in Mil- ton, except perhaps for building purposes. When the district schools were returned to the Town in 1846, and their control given to the School Com- mittee, Town Meeting appropriated the total school budget which was then expended solely by the School Committee. The Committee was limited by the appropriation and could not exceed it. In 1892 the Massachusetts law read that "the . . . towns shall ... raise such sums of money ... as they judge necessary". Today through a process of gradual evolution, assisted or per- haps made possible by various court rulings, the School Committee has achieved a very considerable degree of independence from the Town. While Milton has fortunately never had need to make a test of the matter, the School Committee has an appeal from the vote of Town Meeting to the Courts, and if it can convince the Courts of the reasonableness of its budget, the Town is forced to meet it as well as to pay certain penalties. This does


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not apply to erection of buildings or to incurring bonded debt. The School Committee thus enjoys a position in the Town government quite unlike that of any other board, and-in theory at least-the only real control the Town has over its schools lies in the intelligent selection of this powerful committee.


A very brief summary will now be made of the various physical changes that have taken place since the Civil War period. In 1859 the Centre School which stood on Canton Avenue near Wendell Park on land initially rented from the Unitarian Church was rebuilt. Its use was discontinued in 1890 when the Thacher School, now used for offices by the Town Engineer and the Water Department, was built in its place. In 1898 the old school build- ing furnished a Fourth of July conflagration which I suspect was assisted in getting started. In 1870 the "Old Brick" on Blue Hill Avenue at Atherton Street was replaced by a wooden building, and seven years later the first school was built to handle the growing load at Mattapan.17 The Pleasant Street School was replaced in 1879 by the Wadsworth School at Gun Hill and Pleasant Streets. The old Academy building was finally torn down in 1885 and a new home for the High School erected on almost the same loca- tion the following year. This building was added to quite extensively ten years later. A new Glover School on School Street was built in 1888; the old building is now the house at 147 Canton Avenue. The year 1894 saw the East School which stood near St. Agatha's rectory replaced by the Belcher School, the oldest public school building still in use in the Town.


No material change then took place until 1910, when part of the present High School building was opened as the Vose School. A gymnasium and locker rooms were added in 1917 and the High School moved in, while the Vose School shifted to the building that the former had just vacated. Short- ly after the First World War, the Junior High school system was adopted, and in 1922 the Houghton (Scott's Woods) and Sumner (Blue Hill Avenue) Schools were closed. The following year saw a new Tucker School at Matta- pan, and two years later a third addition was made to the High School. In 1929 the Colicott School was built on Pleasant Street on land given to the


17. The 1857 map shows a schoolhouse on Brook Road a little west of St. Mary's Church. This was a small private school taught by Elizabeth R. Swift for a few years after 1850.


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Town by the Mary A. Cunningham Trustees, and the Wadsworth School was discontinued.


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MANEWACADEMY


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The Church


T is almost impossible for us today to appreciate the position of the New England Church in the life of the early days. Both the Puritans and their re- ligion have been subject to so much distortion, imagination, and just plain falsification that it is very difficult to sweep away the many misconceptions that have become prevalent. Let us start with the basic precept that, regard- less of all else, the Puritans were human men and women, subject to human ideals and human frailties. Also I am convinced that, despite the passage of many years, human nature has not really changed. The Puritans most cer- tainly did not go around dressed solely in drab clothes and with long faces. They were normal healthy people who enjoyed the good things of life, but who also had enough self control, at least in most cases, not to overindulge in them. The old records tell us that they wore bright colorful clothes,1 al- though not of course when at work in the fields or the kitchen, that the women often devoted too much attention to their dress, that the men some- times drank too much, and that families vied for the best pews in the church -one of the few outward marks of standing in a day when there were no motor cars and summer places with which to confound one's neighbors. In short, think of them as not really very different from most people living to- day, with one single exception, the place of religion in their lives.


In the early 1600's it was normal to consider the Church and the State as


1. Governor Bradford at his death in 1657 left a red waistcoat and a violet cloak (Miller & John- son, The Puritans, N. Y., 1938, p. 91). In 1682 in Boston we find reference to a satin coat with gold flowers, blue breeches, gold and silver buttons, and a scarlet petticoat with silver lace (Weeden, Soc. & Ec. Hist. of N. E., Boston, 1890, pp. 286-287).


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one. It might be the Roman Catholic Church as in Spain, the Anglican as in England, or the Calvinist as in Switzerland, but generally speaking it was normal for each state to have its single religion. There of course were excep- tions, as in France, where the Edict of Nantes, later to be revoked, granted material liberties to the Protestants. In England the Puritans were followers of the state religion who did not dissent from it, but believed that it should be purified and reformed.2 This could not be done in England, and this fact was the principal driving force that caused the Puritan exodus to New Eng- land. The people who made this migration to a very large extent were hom- ogeneous in their religious belief-that of a somewhat modified Church of England, free from the control of any Bishops, and simplified in its service and ritual. Accustomed as they had been at home to the thought of a state religion, it was but natural that they were intolerant of any religion other than the one for the sake of which they had left Old England. They had quitted a place where they could not worship as they chose, and came to New England where they could. What was more natural than that they should wish their belief to be the only one practiced? Religious tolerance was not practiced in the 1600's either in the Old World or in the New.3


Membership in the Church naturally became a prerequisite for the fran- chise, and this worked no hardship because the majority of the men making the migration, barring certain bound men and servants, were, or shortly be- came, members of one of the congregations.


The Dorchester Church was the second established in New England,4 and it was almost unique in that it was organized in the Old Country, com- ing over as an established congregation. The Church members settled the Dorchester area, and it was but natural that the result was a Town and a Church which were practically one. The Church had its ministers, elders




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