USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Brookline > History of the town of Brookline, Massachusetts > Part 8
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Tithingmen, who maintained order in meeting, were elected by the town. Their duties were presumably not very onerous; they were provided with long wands to awaken those made drowsy by hour-long sermons, and to threaten children whose conduct was indecorous.
Probably these officers had almost nothing to do in the win- ter, when one suspects that the congregation must have been reduced to a kind of gelid lethargy in the unheated building. In 1818 the town gave permission for the erection of stoves in the meeting-house, but for a century things must have been uncomfortable indeed, and a hot brick or soapstone little solace.
Nevertheless, the sermons were as long as ever, and custom dictated that children should be baptized on the first Sunday following their birth. Judge Sewall's diary records a winter Sunday thus: 'Extraordinary Cold Storm of Wind and Snow. Bread was frozen at Lord's Table. Though 'twas so cold John Tuckerman was baptized. At six o'clock my ink freezing so that I can hardly write by a good fire.' Stories of christenings when the ice had to be broken in the font are not mere fiction, after all.
CHOOSING A GOSPEL MINISTER
It was such a church that the Reverend James Allen had served thirty years for a salary of some four hundred dollars (worth perhaps twice as much now), ten cords of firewood, and varying additional contributions. Upon his death, there was a long examination of potentially suitable young men, and at length his daughter's fiancé, Cotton Brown of Haverhill, was chosen by the church. The proceedings of the church meeting find a place among the town records, and are followed by the account of the town meeting of February 29, 1748, which concurred with the choice of the church, and voted 'To Give Mr. Cotton Brown five hundred pounds a year old Tenour
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according to Indian Corn att Twenty Shillings pr. Bushel and Rye att twenty five shillings pr. Bushel and Pork att two shil- lings pr. pound and Beefe att one shilling and Six pence pr. pound.' He was also to be offered six hundred pounds 'old Tenour towards his Settlement.'
The matter of 'old tenor' money comes up so frequently that some explanation of its nature is due. The colony had issued notes to meet emergency expenditures late in the sixteen- hundreds and had redeemed them promptly through taxa- tion. This method of raising funds seemed so easy that it be- came highly popular, and the determination of the General Court to emit such bills as freely as they wanted to, without making adequate provision for their redemption, was a source of great distress to the royal governors.
Paper money consequently became much depreciated in value. In 1704 a royal proclamation had fixed the worth of an ounce of silver at seven shillings. In 1712 it cost eight shillings in Massachusetts bills; in 1720, twelve shillings; in 1725, sixteen shillings; and in 1735, twenty-seven shillings. Food costs rose approximately five-fold between 1712 and 1740, but the in- crease in wages was only about half that much, and persons dependent on salaries or money at interest suffered severely.
An effort to remedy the situation was made with the passage of legislation providing for the issuance of twenty-shilling notes, of the value of three ounces of coined silver. These were new tenor bills, which it was ordered should circulate at the rate of one for three of the old tenor. The remedy was far from effectual, but it established the term 'old tenor' as applied to the earlier unredeemed bills.
Thus it was neither greed nor an excessive notion of the value of his services that induced Cotton Brown to tell the town's committee that he would like four hundred pounds more for his settlement. This was at first refused, but upon reconsidera- tion allowed, and the assessors were to be a committee with Mr. Brown 'Annually To Determine the Rise and fall of his Sallary.'
Cotton Brown, however, died in 1751, and the town meet- ing again went about the business of appropriating money and appointing a committee to supply the pulpit. In December of
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that year Samuel Haven was approved, and an offer made him, but it was evidently not sufficiently attractive to him. The selectmen kept providing preachers, and in January of 1753 a proposal was made to Stephen Badger, which also went unaccepted. Then in October, Roger Rogerson was promised £133 6s. 8d. for his settlement, and £80 a year (in 'lawful money,' of course, as distinguished from the inflated 'old tenor'), and came for a little more than one year.
William Henry Lyon says Rogerson was the victim of idle gossip which intimated that, because he had been born abroad, his early life was too little known. He subsequently served forty successful years in Reheboth as minister.
In 1755 Nathaniel Potter was brought from Elizabeth, New Jersey, on the same terms that had been offered Roger Rog- erson. His service, too, was brief - less than four years. The beloved Dr. Pierce, a later minister, wrote:
Mark now the inconsistencies into which short-sighted mortals sometimes fall. Those very people, who objected to the candidate just mentioned [Rogerson], proceeded suddenly to give a call to another [Potter], from a distance, without credentials, before they had even ascertained his christian name, whom they as abruptly settled, and who, though pro- fessedly orthodox in faith, was destined, during a short min- istry, to give woful emphasis to the apostle's monition, 'Lay hands suddently on no man.'
Mr. Potter did not prove satisfactory to the church, but the evidence is indirect. It appears rather in the refusal of the town meeting to increase his wood supply and give him addi- tional money compensation. He appeared before a town meeting, and stated his grievances, and when he failed to carry his point, asked to be discharged. To this the town agreed, taking precautions to secure repayment of a part at least of his settlement money.
Next came Joseph Jackson to begin in 1760 his ministry of thirty-six years, which included the troubled period of the Revolutionary War. For many years there was an appropri- ation to make up his excess of expenses over income and when, after his death in 1796, the town opened negotiations with John Pierce (who like Mr. Jackson at the time of his calling was a
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tutor at Cambridge), there was sound basis for the latter's confidence expressed in his reply:
From the kindness you as a town, have always discovered towards your ministers as well, as from the unanimity, which has marked all your proceedings respecting me, I trust you will ever make provision for my comfortable support so long as I shall continue to be your Minister.
That was to be for nearly fifty-three years, and John Pierce was consequently the last minister whose choice by the church was ratified by the town, for constitutional changes in 1833 separated the two.
There had been long discussions, and reconsiderations of votes, during Mr. Jackson's ministry, on the question of adding a steeple to the church, and on whether it should have a plain roof or a spire. In 1781 the town had assumed the additional responsibility of erecting a house for the minister, and a tax of two hundred pounds in silver was levied 'to be paid in Paper Money, Labour, Meterals, or any other Articles, Equal to Sil- ver Money, in the Judgment of a Committee hereafter to be chosen ... '
In sum, throughout the entire period covered by this chap- ter, the business of the established church in one ramification or another was far and away the principal business of the town meeting. But there were other matters scarcely less in im- portance, even if they consumed less time and public attention.
PROVISION FOR EDUCATION
Almost numberless resolutions were passed respecting schools, which at their best in the early years seem to have been haphazard institutions of doubtful value. There is no doubt, however, that the importance of elementary education was recognized from the beginning, for on March 29, 1686, the Boston town meeting read a communication from the inhab- itants of Muddy River, asking for 'a writinge school for theire children ... ' In December of the same year it was ordered that Muddy River should be relieved of payment of town rates to Boston, and should maintain its own highways, poor, and other public obligations, including a school to be erected
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within a year. The Boston town meeting was at pains to make it clear that this did not amount to setting Muddy River apart as a separate hamlet. Indeed, when they asked separation in 1700, Boston in apparent pique ordered the selectmen to rate the Muddy River inhabitants as before, but promised to 'pro- vide a schoolmaster for them, To teach their children to read, write & cypher & order his pay out of the Town Treasury.'
These preliminaries, however, antedate the proper period of this chapter. Despite the requirement of a meeting-house, schooling was in point of time ahead of religion in the new town of Brookline. Provision for education had been made as early as 1687 while the village was still Muddy River; and Brookline proper built its first school in 1713 on the Sherburne Road at what was then the center of the settlement. This was at the corner of the present Walnut and Warren Streets. The initial appropriation of Muddy River to maintain a school- master was twelve pounds a year; the infant town of Brookline had, in 1706, provided twelve pounds to repair the school house and support the school, and the following year it was twenty pounds.
But such levies were not expected to meet the whole cost of the school, which was partly imposed upon the parents of those children who attended. Thus the villagers in their vote of 1687 had provided 'that the Remainder necessary to sup- port the charges of the Master be laid equally upon the scholars heads save any persons that are poore to be abated in part or in whole ... ' In this way a public obligation was recognized while at the same time a special share of the burden was put upon those who would be most immediately benefited.
School teachers were meagerly rewarded, and the terms of school were short and irregular. A town meeting of May 14, I711:
Agreed with Wm Story to keep School 3 months He beginning January 7th 1711. Allowing 5:0:0 for his Services. Agreed with John Winchester jun'r For his man Ed Ruggles to keep School att the New School House 2 Months. He beginning January 23 Wednesday 1711. Allowing for his Service 4:0:0.
Throughout the century and more following this, the records
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of town meetings are replete with references to schools and education. There are almost annual provisions for the hiring of teachers, sometimes women, sometimes men. A numerous succession of programs for the construction of new school houses is to be found, the projects varying so from year to year that it is apparent most of them were abandoned before anything substantial was done.
While the town was still endeavoring to devise means of building a meeting-house, permission was given in 1713 to inhabitants of the south part of the town to erect a school house there at their own expense. Down to 1722 appropria- tions for school maintenance amounted to ten or fifteen pounds a year; then they rose to twenty-five pounds. And the follow- ing year the town was divided into three precincts, with two school trustees elected for each.
The town in 1727 'Voted two schoolmasters one at each school four months' and 'a dame for each school for eight months.' About this time there was a long confusion, and evi- dent conflict of opinion, on whether to have three schools, or two, or only one. A plan might be approved at one meeting, and an appropriation made, only to be 'reconsidered' and canceled when, presumably, construction was already under way. Evidently public opinion sometimes effected a tacit agreement of the appointed committee to hold off until the vote could be rescinded.
By 1739 the appropriation for schools had increased to eighty pounds, but it must be remembered that the effects of currency inflation were being felt by then. In later years the appropria- tions for schools seem to have been incorporated in the general levy for town expenses, and what was laid out for education is not easy to ascertain. When the pressure for economy was strong, school might not be kept in summer. Thus the town in 1746 'Voted That the Select Men provide A School Master the Ensuing Winter to keep in the new School House from the first of November to the last of March,' and nothing was said about a dame for the summer. A meeting of May 21, 1766, 'Voted Whether the Town will continue the Keeping of the Grammar School and it Past in the Negative.'
A common, though perhaps not rigid, distinction in country
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schools lay in the provision of men for the winter months and women for the summer as teachers. During the winter, the older boys and girls - almost exclusively boys in the early days - were comparatively free of duties at home. With a large room full of ungraded pupils before him, the teacher often faced a difficult dual problem of instruction and discipline, which a woman was thought ill-equipped to meet.
In the summer, however, the older boys were likely to be much needed as helpers on the farm, and only very small children could be spared for school. It was, therefore, a dif- ferent school body that the 'dame' had to deal with, and one more likely to require motherly kindness than physical mastery.
SCHOOL DAYS
Nathaniel Goddard recorded his impressions of attending school in Brookline just before the Revolution,' in terms de- serving quotation here:
I disliked the idea of going to a woman's school, and as one was kept in Brookline by a man we soon after left the woman's school and never went to one again. Our master proved to be but little better than our mistress, and we were obliged to walk about as far, the school being kept near the centre of the town. The distance was about a mile and a half, and we had to break the paths through the snow, for no public road came within half a mile of the house. Sometimes we had masters from Cambridge, and sometimes we were taught by a Brookline farmer named Stephen Sharp, a good, honest, old-fashioned man who could read in the Bible and write 'joining hand,' and made us repeat anything that was beyond his comprehension in the spelling-book. When the Bible was read the scholars were arranged in a line, and sometimes filled the outer seats around the room. Each one read in succession, and afterwards the words were put to us to spell from the spelling-book, and anyone who missed was obliged to go to the bottom of the class. The master would sometimes favor one more than the other, and if the favorite put all the letters belonging in, he would let it pass for right, however they might be transposed. We had not much to complain of,
I Nathaniel Goddard, A Boston Merchant; Anonymous; Boston, Privately Printed, 1906; pp. 54-56.
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however, as we were allowed but few days at school; one winter I kept count of the number - it amounted to sixty and a half. Some less favored boys did not visit the school ten times a year, and were never so fortunate as to learn the sound of the letters. The master classed them rather by their size than by their attainment. One boy, who probably did not know by sight a letter in the alphabet, was called upon to spell 'sugar'; he paused, not knowing what to say, but, be- ing threatened with punishment if he did not speak, cried out 'c-r-o'; he was then told to spell 'for,' to which he replied 'I-e.' Under a master of whose judgment we may form some slight opinion by this account, I tried to get forward.
Discipline appears to have been attained, such as it was, by a system of terrorization in the case of many a teacher. Isaac Adams, who came first to Brookline as schoolmaster about 1815, was remembered by his pupils chiefly for the special ingenuity of his torments - the 'clapper' used for indiscrim- inate spanking, the split tree branches in which the ears and noses of the disorderly were inserted, the one-legged stools upon which girls were compelled to balance for hours in retribution for some supposed misconduct.
The youngest children, occupying the front bench, had no lesson in those days but to recite the alphabet each morning and afternoon. Meanwhile, throughout the long day, these infants of four to six years were supposed to sit quietly and attentively by. When one of them fell asleep one hot afternoon, the master quietly fastened his feet with a handkerchief and then loudly ordered him to come forward. In his haste the youngster fell crying on his face; and his sister was reprimanded for her sympathy.
Miss Harriet F. Woods, in her Historical Sketches of Brookline, discourses at length upon the schools of early days, her infor- mation and her comments reflecting her own long and happy career as a teacher. She declares that in the first schools, the Bible, Psalter, spelling book, and arithmetic were the only texts, and that not all of these were used at once. In addition to their studies, the boys were expected to attend to the school fires in winter, splitting the wood, and carrying coals each morning from the nearest neighbor's. A reasonable quota of
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accidents and pranks were attendant upon this, naturally; and the incident is preserved of the lad who narrowly escaped dis- aster when he tried to split a green stump by blowing it up with gunpowder, as well as that of the altruistic youth who covered the chimney one night so that the stove smoked badly when a fire was kindled the next morning, and school had to be dismissed.
There is a story of a schoolmaster, too, that has not escaped repeated narration, but can hardly be omitted here. He is presumed to have been so addicted to his bottle that he carried it to school where he had occasional recourse to it. One day a pupil, lacking a proper sense of restraint, called out aloud to him in school that the bottle was sticking out of his pocket. This incident was too good not to be carried home by the others, and the selectmen, in their capacity as school com- . mittee, decided that they were called upon to speak to the master about his habits.
He was fortunate enough, however, to have a little warning of their arrival, and to be a reasonably quick-witted fellow. Accordingly he talked interestingly to them while a bowl of punch was prepared, contrived to treat each of them liberally to it, and then made it quite clear to them that they could scarcely criticize in him a habit which they were so ready to embrace themselves. They abandoned the original purpose of their visit, reminding one somehow of a certain bishop in one of Leonard Merrick's tales: 'To the Bishop of Westborough, any unpleasant truth was "one of those things that are better left undiscussed." It was a phrase that suggested much ear- nestness of thought, while it saved him the necessity of thinking at all.'
At their best, the teachers were often little more than literate themselves, and their aptitude for imparting knowledge was probably not considered at all in hiring them, or was in any event secondary to their power of ruling the school. Some modern writer has made pleasant reference to our ancestors who were not so unlettered 'as to be able to spell their names in only one way,' and a century or two ago there was, it is true, considerable latitude in spelling even among the literate. George Washington, for example, was fascinatingly incon-
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sistent. Still, one thinks a school teacher ought not to have perpetrated a bill which reads:
The Town of Brookline Depttor to Mary Bowen for Keeping School fore months from the seventh of June 1760, at twenty six shillings and Eaight pence per month. 5.6.8.
BETTER SCHOOLS
Two types of growth aided the infant school system: the growth in the size of the village, and an ever increasing belief in the importance of at least elementary education for all children. In 1768 the town voted to help the south district build a school house, and in 1771 a committee was ordered to determine whether the old school house (on the Sherburne road) could be moved, or rebuilt on another more convenient location.
By January of 1781 there is evidence of serious crowding, for the town records state:
Whereas upwards of Fifty Children belonging to this Town daily attend at School, and a Number of others from the ad- jacent Towns have also been admitted there this season as usual for Several Years past, whereby the whole Number of Scholars is become so great that it cannot be expected the Schoolmaster can teach them all with any Probable prospect of advantage to the Scholars - therefore Voted that Mr. Isaac Reed the present Schoolmaster be directed not to per- mit the Children from any adjacent Town to come to School, while the number of Scholars belonging to this Town con- tinues so large as to require all his attention to their In- struction.
Presumably it was pressure from within the town that led to an increase in facilities, for the March meeting of 1784 voted
that two Schools be kept by Suitable Masters, where they may best accommodate Each part of the Town, for the term of three Months in the Winter Season, and that a Suitable Master be Ingag'd to keep School the Other nine Months in the year in the School House in the middle of the Town, and that two Women Schools be kept where they will best Ac- commodate Each part of the Town for the Term of three Months in the Summer Season.
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Again in 1789 the order went out to exclude pupils from ad- joining towns, on the ground that the teacher in Brookline had all he could attend to. The next year Eleazer Baker, Major Moses White, and William Aspinwall were chosen a com- mittee to prepare a plan for a school house and estimate the cost of its construction. On January 4, 1793, the town grate- fully acknowledged a donation - the amount not stated - from William Hyslop toward construction of the new school. It was probably about midsummer of that year when the build- ing commonly called 'the brick school house' was completed, opposite the present First Parish Church.
Used for town meetings for a dozen years, the school house was turned over to carpenter Peter Banner for the summer of 1805, to be used as a kind of temporary headquarters for construction of the new meeting-house on the adjoining pro- perty.
HIGHER EDUCATION
In 1797 the town as a whole, and its inhabitants, were solic- ited for a subscription of three thousand dollars to induce the location in Brookline of 'the County Academy.' The town was not ready to vote the money, but agreed to petition the General Court for the academy, if any citizen wanted to come forward. William Aspinwall accordingly offered land and a house, with the provision that if they were appraised at less than three thousand dollars, he would make up the difference in money. This proposal seems to have been laid before the General Court, but without results.
The high school was not to come until later, but according to the Reverend John Pierce, in his discourse on the centennial of the town in 1805, no less than twenty-six residents of Brook- line had been educated at Harvard since the settlement of the community. Six of them had become ministers. The first was John White, of the class of 1698; and the second, also a min- ister, was Ebenezer Devotion, Harvard 1707.
THE HIGHWAYS
Another obvious need of the growing community was con- venient access among its parts. From each isolated farm house
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a track or lane would somehow find its way to the center of activity, and thence to every other isolated farm, but roads developed in such fashion by no means enjoyed the advan- tages of those laid out by public fiat. When the town acted as a whole, the property of individuals might be crossed as con- venience directed, and provision made for the maintenance of the route in passable condition for the accommodation of all at the general expense.
The earliest activity in this direction is recorded on March I, 1640, when 'William Colbron and Jacob Elyott are appointed to lay out the Highways at Muddy River towards Cambridge.' Eight months later the same individuals, with Peter Oliver, are directed to see to the building of a bridge at Muddy River. Then, on July 5, 1642, 'Wm. Tynge, Treasr. Wm. Colbron, and John Oliver are appointed to join with Dedham Cam- bridge and Watertown to lay out the highways from town to town through Boston lands at muddy river, as also to lay out more private wayes there with landing places or otherwise.'
How long the process of locating such highways took, does not appear, but it was probably in connection with this order that Robert Harris of Muddy River was allowed, in February, 1656, four acres 'outt of ye town waste land most convenient for him,' because two highways had been laid out across his property. That the project of 1642 was not fully carried out is hinted by a record of March 25, 1661, by which 'Peter Olliver & Peter Aspinwall are deputed to joyne with Cambridge men to lay outt a high way from muddy river to Cambridge.'
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