History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 147

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1464

USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II > Part 147

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and, meanwhile, the formerly effective remedy of pre- sentment by the grand jury was again tried, but for a somewhat different reason. In 1736 the town was presented for not maintaining a grammar school, and in 1738 the prosecution was still continuing. We do not learn how many pounds, shillings and pence the neglect cost the town this time, but apparently the honest tax-payers were much stirred up, for they voted May 15th of the last-named year that a school- house be erected " as soon as may be," at a place in- dicated on John Chandler's land. This little democ- racy had, however, like all democracies the world over, the custom of often changing its mind; accord- ingly, a month later, it was voted that the school- house be built at another spot, viz. : between the court-house and the bridge below the fulling-mill. Here, at last, at a point east of the old court-house, in what is now Main Street, the much-desired school- house was erected.

With the advance of the town in material prosper- ity, the desire to improve the schools went along apace. The sums appropriated seem of course petty to us, who are accustomed to the lavish expenditure of these days. In 1745 the sum allowed seems to have been one hundred and ten pounds, which, in purchas- ing power of the necessaries of life-for the luxuries had not yet reached the colonies-might be said to equal five times that sum at the present day. In a com- munity of one hundred and fifty households such a sum, i. e., £550, or $2750 would not now be thoughit a mean appropriation for public education. In this year also a somewhat complete scheme of operatiou for all the schools was reported by a committee, con- sisting of Jonas Rice, Daniel Heywood, Benjamin Flagg and Ephraim Curtis, whose plan was of such public-spirited sort as to warrant the giving here of their names. Their proposition was that the families living in the outskirts should have the use of their own school money as paid by them, and that the fam- ilies in the centre should make up, by subscription or in some other way, a sum which, with their share of the tax, should be sufficient to maintain a grammar school (what we now call a High School) in the cen- tre. It was proposed also that the families remote from the centre might send any of their children to the grammar school without paying therefor, and the outlying families were divided into rows, quarters or skirts, as they were indifferently called. No action in the way of approval was taken upon this report. It was doubtless too liberal in its scope to meet the favor of men who, in order to live at all, must live with a degree of economy that closely approaches penury. Yet it had an effect, for we find the town two years later voting to allow the quarters that shall keep schools their proportionate share of the tax, and two years later yet, in 1749, a committee, raised for the purpose, reported several localities in the out- skirts where school-houses might be suitably buillt.

Thus things went on in the new settlement with

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slow but manifest improvement. We may imagine the situation, if we will. In a valley not far from a mile wide, and on a ridge of land lying parallel therewith, was scattered the new and straggling town. It was as nearly as may be a homogeneous commun- ity, there being little intermixture of other strains with the original English type. As early, indeed, as 1718, some families of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians had come to settle in the new town-a class of people whose characteristics were not unlike those of the previous settlers, though their traditions and point of view were distinctly different. It would seem that these two sets of people should have readily assimi- lated; and indeed, after a few of the more strenuous Presbyterian families had moved away to New Hampshire, being provoked thereto by the destruc- tion, under cover of night, of their partly-built meet- ing-house, the remainder grew together with the rest of the settlers, and were among the most useful of the citizens. With the exception of this admixture, the town of Worcester was as purely English as any in old England, and so continued well into the pres- ent century. That it was a community deeply relig- ious is true ; it but it was a religion not of the Puritan type, however harsh was its exterior. To be indus- trious, orderly, decently religious, with education enough, seems to have been their notion of a good life, as different from our modern freedom as from the too close-fitting habits of the Puritan days. The forest that topped the hills was primitive, the intervales were virgin to the plough, the world was far away, whether of fashion or governmental authority. Labor and thoughts of peace made up the daily round, ex- cept as occasionally some straying Indian, begging for a bit of food, led to a recital of the dangerous times of old. So the village throve, its peaceful an- nals unbroken by any greater disturbance than the petty differences of the town-meeting.

When the summer of 1755 came on, the minister, the Rev. Thaddeus Maccarty, bethought him, as usual no doubt, to go to the Commencement at Harvard College. This annual pilgrimage, as to a Mecca, every good minister, especially if a son of Harvard, made as a matter of course. Beside his errand of pious reverence to the shrine of culture, the reverend minister had another commission of particular mo- ment. The grammar school at Worcester needed a teacher, and Mr. Maccarty was given authority to find a suitable person. Among the graduates of that summer was one, who seems to have attracted the ap- proving notice of the Worcester clergyman, for he forthwith engaged him for the post. This youth of twenty was no other than John Adams, afterward President of the United States, and the first of a fam . ily distinguished for essential greatness. What Mr. Maccarty thought of the young man whom he had employed, and whom he had frequent opportunities afterward to observe, would be interesting to know ; what young John Adams thought of the Reverend Mac-

carty, as well as of several of his chief parishioners, may be read at length in the diary and letters that form part of the second volume of his works, edited by his grandson, Charles Francis Adams. It is not amiss to delay in the course of our sketch, in order to speak briefly of these things. Mr. Adams says of himself that he was "somewhat remarked as a re- spondent " at the Commencement, and that he was not twenty years of age when he set out for Worces- ter to be a Latin master. He was sent by the select- men to board with Major Nathaniel Greene, iu whose house he found a book on moral philosophy. He soon learned that the principles of deism had made some progress in this vicinity, and was gratified thereat, for he himself had grown in a liberal soil. However dull the town may have been, he seems to have found men to his taste among the inhabitants. Major Greene told him-in a prosy way-that the matters of the divinity and resurrection of Jesus Christ are very mysterious. Doubtless, Adams was too polite to do more than yield assent to his elder, but he entered in his diary that "mystery is a cover for absurdity." At Major Chandler's they talked of religious things also, and seemed to be agreed that liberal thoughts and good men are the world's need. When he took tea with the eminent lawyer, Attor- ney-General James Putnam, the talk turned again on such things, and Mr. Putnam remarked that the early Christians seemed to him enthusiasts,-an opinion upon which the diarist makes no comment. The oc- cupation of teacher, no doubt, drew upon the spirits of the future great man. Writing to his friend Cranch in Boston, he speaks of the dreadful solem- nity of the pedagogue on his throne, of the cringing multitude before him, and declares himself glad when he can escape from the scene to smoke his pipe in quiet. The trade was not to his mind, and it is no surprise to find that he shortly began the study of the law with Mr. Putnam. It appears that he continued to be the schoolmaster for three years, when, having been admitted to the practice of the law, he removed from Worcester to Boston.

During several years following the mastership of John Adams things pertaining to schools in Worces- ter went on, as we may suppose, in a somewhat hum- drum fashion. There was a committee for the Centre, and another for the quarters, and what was necessary got itself done in some way. In Novem- ber, 1759, the inhabitants of Baggachoage (Packa- choag) petitioned for the privilege of hiring a school- master, to be approved hy the selectmen, so that they might have school kept all the year. It does not appear whether the petitioners proposed to tax themselves an additional sum for this purpose. If they did, so reasonable a request could hardly be negatived. It is, however, not unlikely that the town was fearful of allowing what might be a pre- cedent for all the other quarters, and preferred to snub the over-topping Baggachoage people. At all

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events the proposition did not meet favor. The time was approaching, however, when private enterprise was to come to the assistance of the public in matters of education. Such a period is inevitable as a com - munity grows prosperons. Certain of the more con- spicuous citizens, men of cultivation, according to the standard of the day, desiring, no doubt, better advantages for their families, as well as the common good, asked and received, in the year 1763, permission to erect a school-house on the town land where the selectmen might approve. Among the petitioners were James Putnam, referred to above, and the dis- tinguished Judge John Chandler. A building was accordingly set up on a part of the land held for min- isterial uses, eastward from Main Street, and not far southerly from what is now Foster Street. It was a modest building, having but two rooms in its single story. It is difficult to think that, as a specimen of educational architecture, it was any great improve- ment on the little school-house between the court- house and the bridge. Such as it was, it was, doubt- less, sufficient, and by the judicious control which its proprietors exercised, the confidence of the towns- people was gained. We find the evidence of that in the following record :

1769, March 17th. A Com. on Schools report : That they have pro- posed to the proprietors of the Grammar school that the town allow said proprietors £16 the current year, said proprietors engaging that the said Grammar school shall be free for all persons in said town desirous of learning the languages (who shall) he admitted by said proprietors to have the same privileges and upon the same terms in said school, as the children of said proprietors, which proposals the said proprietors have accepted-and your committee are of opinion that the method of keeping English school in said town (should be) each part of the town draw the money they pay toward the whole sum raised the current year, and each have their proportion of the interest money belonging to said school-to be kept in the several parts of the town in such season of the year as shall be agreed on by the major part of said quarter. Your com- mittee have divided the town into eight parts :

Centre of the town. Tatnick. Smith's Quarter. Bagachoage.

Stone's Quarter. Stowell's Quarter. Capt. Curtis' Quarter. Capt. Flaggs' Quarter.

This report was favorably received, and the division into parts or quarters was thereafter followed as pro- posed. The system thus inaugurated was the same, substantially, as was urged twenty-four years before, by the committee of Jonas Rice and others. From the terms used, we may infer that a Grammar School meant then the same as we now understand by High School. The "grammar" was that of Latin and Greek, referred to as " the languages," and the Eng- lish, or non-language-teaching schools, were distinct- ly set off from the Grammar School. This was, of course, the popular and ordinary use of the terms. The words "high school " were probably not then used, except in a pleasant derision ; and they are not found in the laws of the Commonwealth, in their present meaning, until a very recent time. Common usage has given them a special and accepted signific- ance ; and the term "grammar school " has been

degraded to its present use, and made to mean the same as English school in the records just quoted.

The troublous times of the War of the Revolu- tion being now not far distant, the signs of coming disturbance were only too apparent to reflective minds.

Life, however, went on with that calmness, which is so marked a characteristic of English-speaking communities. The farmer ploughed, the artisan wrought, the trader continued his trading. Town- meetings, often of a peppery sort, were held as usual, and in none of them was the care of the schools slighted. Moneys were appropriated, com- mittees named; the Grammar School and the rest were matters of concern; while all men talked of war and feared the worst. The customary annual appropriation for schools was, as it had been for a generation, about .. £ 100.

The student of the faded books of Town Records remarks, however, that in 1778 the sum of £200 was set apart for this purpose.

Before he has found himself a reason for this sud- den doubling of the amount, he is surprised to oh- serve that in the next year £600 are appropriated. In 1780 the amount increases, without comment, to £3000, and in 1781 the munificent sum of £4000 is appropriated. This extreme lavishness in a country village is inexplicable, until we remember that these sums were payable in the swiftly depreciating Con- tinental money. The appropriation, thus expanded forty times in volume with the years of war-time, suddenly hecomes again, in 1782, a plain £100.

Peace was at hand; the Continental money, instead of appreciating, had become entirely worthless, and presumably the £100 were made up of hard money that had been hidden away in stockings and corners by the thrifty villagers.

It is probable, nevertheless, that no little disor- ganization crept into the schools during these years of uncertainty and the critical times that followed. The town was presented once more by the grand jury, in 1785, for not maintaining a Grammar School. The semi-public Grammar School, erected on town land in 1763, was doubtless in operation ; but some unreasonable tax-payers would insist on the town giving them Latin and Greek in its own schools.

To meet the wishes of these complainants, or, more strictly speaking, to save the town further trouble, it was decided that the committee should agree with the proprietors of the Grammar School now keeping ; bargain with them, in fact, to instruct all who might come at the town's charge. No men- tion of further presentment of the town occurs; and we may infer that, henceforth, Worcester had always a public school at which any aspiring youth might fit himself for Harvard College, according to the requirements then made. These may be found in "The Laws, Liberties and Orders of Harvard Col- lege " as follows :

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"When any scholar is able to read Tully, or such like Latin author, extempore, and make and speak true Latin in verse or prose, suo, ut aiunt, Marte, and decline perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue, then he may be admitted into the College ; nor shall he claim admission before such qualification."

The constant desire for proper means of education led to the building, some years before the close of the last century, of another and more pretentious school- house. That before referred to as owned by an asso- ciation of proprietors was of too small capacity, and, indeed, had now been put to other uses than it was meant for. A new undertaking was engaged in, not unlike the former. Elijah Dix, Joseph Allen, Levi Lincoln, John Green, Palmer Goulding and other citizens, having formed a stock company, erected a building, which contemporary writers describe with much appearance of pride. It stood on the west side of Main Street, at a point some two hundred feet north of what is now the head of Central Street, and on the spot covered by the Chadwick Building. The structure had two large rooms below, one for a grammar and the other for an English school ; while above was one large hall, intended for occasions of display and exhibition. In the great hall there was a fire-place at each end, and on the roof was placed a cupola and bell. This building, smaller than thirty that Worcester has to-day, became the boasted "cen- tre school-house." In 1801 the proprietors sold it to the inhabitants of the Centre District, by whom it was used for more than forty years.

During the first quarter of our century the affairs of the schools went on somewhat listlessly, yet with apparent increase of usefulness. The moneys appro- priated grew from thirteen hundred dollars in 1803 to twenty-five hundred dollars in 1824, but there was evidently need of the intelligent control of a special or expert committee. Such committees as were from · time to time raised were in earnest, but their sphere was limited and their advice held cheap. Thus the committees frequently advised that the grammar- school should be no longer a "moving" school, but fixed ; but so practical a suggestion was long disre- garded, and the peripatetic policy seems to have been followed until 1810 or later. In fact, the administra- tion of the schools was a part only of the general management of town affairs. The selectmen, or such special committee as might be named, directed all things. Under this system the schools were likely to and did receive the same attention as any other town matter required by the general laws. Some thought- ful persons must have seen the need of expert control of the schools, and must have often reflected that the democracy of the town-meeting were not likely to permit any interference with the domain of their se- lectmen. If A, B, C or X could order the matters of the town roads, the town pound, or the town pump, why could he not also direct the schools? To this

question silence was the easiest answer. A commu- nity usually escapes from a period of mediocrity by some seeming accident that puts the right persons in authority. So it happened in Worcester, and the oc- casion which led directly to a most important advance, arose at a school-meeting of the Centre District, held in 1823. A committee was constituted to report in general what the schools required. The membership of this committee was of an order much beyond the common. There were Samuel M. Burnside, a lawyer of distinction ; Rev. Aaron Bancroft, a learned minis- ter, father of the historian ; Levi Lincoln, also a lawyer and a man marked for greatness ; Otis Corbet and Samuel Jennison. These gentlemen were able to agree on a report of important character and to secure its adoption by the people of the district. The es- sence of their report lay in the third recommendation as follows :

In the third place, Your Committee recommend, that a board of twelve overseers be chosen annually by ballot, whose duty it shall be, in coojunction with the Selectmen, to determine upon the qualifications of instructors and to contract with them for their services; to deter- mine upon the attainments of scholars to be admitted into said schools respectively; to prescribe the course of instruction therein, and all necessary rules and regulations for the government thereof; to deter- mine upon all complaints of instructors, of parents or of scholars, which may arise in relation to said schools, or either of them ; to visit and examine said schools respectively, at stated periods during the year ; to encourage, in every suitable manner, both instructors and scholars in the performance of their relative duties ; and to make a report in writ- ing annually to the District, of the condition of said Schools during the perind of their office.

The recommendations of this committee, being once put into effect, made the schools and their manage- ment by overseers almost a co-ordinate branch of the government with all the other affairs of the town as ordered by the selectmen. Samuel M. Burnside, chairman of this committee, being sent a few years later to the General Court, laid before that body a scheme for the control of schools similar to this, em- bodying it in a general law. The Legislature passed the bill, and thus was established that imperium in imperio, which the school system of the Common- wealth is to-day.

The limits set for this sketch will not permit any detailed statement of the operations of the schools. The eminent men who constituted the committee of 1823 became forthwith, with one exception, mem- bers of the Board of Overseers. That abounding interest in the public weal which had inspired their recommendations equally animated them in the application of the system. From year to year their names appear in connection with school affairs, but more particularly those of Aaron Bancroft and Samuel M. Burnside. In 1825 the good minister, desirous no doubt of a little innocent pageantry, which should at once arouse the youth and please the eye of the elders, proposed that there should be an annual address be- fore the assembled schools, each with its teacher at. its head. It was to occur at the end of the scholastic year, was to be in some church, was to be on the im- portance of education, and should be followed by

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

prayer. The proposition was acceptable to the over- seers, and the first of a long series of addresses was made by Mr. Bancroft himself. The address in the following year was by Mr. Burnside. This agreeable mode of ending the year's work continued for some ten years, during which time several of the most eminent citizens of Worcester did duty as orators of the day. In the number were the Rev. Alonzo Hill, Isaac Davis, Alfred D. Foster, John S. C. Abbott, Stephen Salisbury, Ira M. Barton and William Lin- coln. A custom so innocent and profitable might well have been continued indefinitely, but it is prob- able that the increasing number of pupils made it inconvenient to assemble them in one place. At all events, the annual address seems to have been last given in 1836, at which time there were said to be twelve hundred pupils in the schools. The sum ex- pended for school uses in that year was about five thousand dollars, and the number of teachers was thirty.

The Centre School-house, in due time, was found too small for the uses required of it. It was decided, therefore, to erect a separate building for the grammar or Latin department. Accordingly a brick school- house, the first one in town, was built in 1832 on Thomas Street, at the corner of Summer Street. This was, specifically, the "Latin school for boys," the girls yet receiving their higher tuition, which did not in general include the languages, in the Centre School- house.

The pupils of the Latin school who yet remain have very tender recollections of Charles Thurber, who was the principal during several years ending in 1840. He was a true teacher of the type of fifty years ago, severe, exacting, learned, yet withal lovable. Elbridge Smith, a later principal, was also a revered teacher, and remained with the Latin school until, and after, it was merged with the coming High School.

It was a very important step in the history of the Worcester schools when, in 1844, it was decided at a towu-meeting to establish a "High School," in the modern sense, sufficient for the needs of one hundred and seventy-five pupils, and intended for the use of the whole town. Many persons had doubted the expediency of affording to girls the same advantages of a classical education as were given to boys. That doubt was laid aside by this time, and a building was projected on a liberal scale, to be styled the "Classical and English High School," and used for both sexes. Twelve thousand dollars were appropriated for the purpose, and a suitable structure was raised at the west corner of Walnut and Maple Streets. It was a brick building, with a basement for general uses, and two stories above, with three large rooms on each floor. Those on the first floor served for the English High School, those above for the classical department. This school met the wants of the growing city for almost a generation ; but in the years of unusual prosperity that followed the War of the Rebellion it

was found too small. The building was, therefore, moved, as it stood, across Walnut Street to the north side, where it yet remains in use as a grammar school. Many of the most cherished recollections of the men and women now of ripe age in the city are tied up with this old building. Elbridge Smith, coming from the Thomas Street Latin School, was the first prin- cipal. Of those who served as principals or assistants, mention may be made of several who afterward became distinguished. Such are Nelson Wheeler, later a professor of Greek in Brown University; George P. Fisher, now professor in Yale University ; James M. Whiton, eminent as a Greek scholar, and Daniel H. Chamberlain, Governor of South Carolina in the troublous times of reconstruction.

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History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 147

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) Publication date: 1889 Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1464

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1464