USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Lexington > History of the town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, from its first settlement to 1868, Volume I > Part 40
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"But it is hardly probable that there had been no school within our borders up to this date, when there must have been at least thirty families living in Lexington. The place had been settled more than sixty years, a parish had been organized twenty-two years, and a church, with its minister, maintained for eighteen years. It is improbable that the children, during this period, were growing up to manhood and womanhood without schools giving them some sort of education. But they must have been private schools, kept in private houses, and maintained by subscription or charges for tuition; though, not unlikely, the older children may have attended school at Cambridge, of which our territory had formed & part. . . .
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But as generally happens in such cases, the people in the re- moter parts of the town complained that the benefits of the school were not equally enjoyed by all the families in the
"Where was the first school-house located? I have no hesitation in saying on the Common, on the spot where the old monument now stands. Of this I think there is indubitable proof in the fact that, when the monument was to be erected, the town voted that it should be placed on 'School-house Hill.' Probably the elevation on which it stands was, originally, much larger and higher than now, and graded down to its present proportions when the monument was built in 1799. The school-house was a humble frame building, with a huge stone chimney and fire-place at one end, and a turret at the other end, built in 1733, to hang the meeting-house bell in. Near the school-house was the well, dug and stoned up in 1732, with curb and sweep, as the record says, 'for the school and town people on Sundays to drink at.' On the other side of the school- house, in front of Hancock Church, stood the stocks, built the year before the school-house, a terror to Sabbath breakers, and other evil-doers. The school-house appears to have been finished in 1715, but the school was not opened until the autumn of the next year, though the town had voted, in August, to have a school this year, and chose a committee 'to procure a school-master that will answer the law.' In May, 1716, the town votes £15 for the school, and also that 'each scholar that comes to it shall pay two pens per week for Reading and three pens for righting and siphering, and, what that amounts to at the end of the year, to be deducted from the £15, and kept in the town treasury for next year.' The 'righting' was, evidently, the perpendicular hand now so much talked of, a most difficult kind to teach. The selectmen resolve to pay Capt. Joseph Estabrook, our first school-master, £15 for five months' teaching, extending from Nov. 1st, 1716, to April 1st, 1717.
. In 1717 the selectmen resolve to establish two female schools, one at the north, and the other at the south end of the town. These were schools taught by women for the younger children and for 'gairls,' and kept in private houses. So well did the experiment succeed that the next year the town voted to have five women schools, 'to be set up, one at the Center, and the others convenient.' That at the Center was taught by Mrs. Clapp, in the school-house, probably during the spring and summer, while Capt. Estabrook followed in the autumn and winter, mak- ing eight or ten months of school during the year. But in 1719 there was a spasm of economical reform in the town, and it was voted to give up the women schools and 'have a moving school, to be kept a quarter of a year in each of four places.' This vote was finally rescinded, and it was voted to have it kept the whole year at the school-house. It was a triumph of the Center over the 'outskirts,' as they are called, the beginning of a jealousy and strife between village and country, which continued with varying results for more than twenty years, or until the district school-houses were built in 1795-'96.
"During all this period, there was but one school-house in Lexington, that at the Center. When the outskirts were strong enough in town meeting to vote down the Center, they had a 'moving' or a 'running' school, as they sometimes called it. The school was taken from the center, and carried around from one quarter to another, staying two months, or sometimes but one month in a place, and so making the circuit of the town two, three or four times in the year. But when the Center out-voted the outskirts, then the school was kept in the school-house, and the outskirts had women schools. It was a continual contest over the whereabouts of the schools. There are about twenty of these changes from a stationary to a 'running school,' and back again, recorded in our annals. In 1719 'Sir' John Hancock was employed to teach the school for a year, at £40. He was the minister of Lexington and grandfather of President John Hancock of the Continental Congress. This is the only instance of his being called Sir John. .
"In 1724 the town was complained of for not keeping a Grammar School. Probably it had been voted down by the outskirts, but it was soon re-opened, with Capt. Estabrook for teacher, who remained in charge until he had completed eight years of service. Joseph Estabrook was the son of Rev. Joseph, of Concord, and brother of Rev. Benjamin, the first minister of Lexington. He is spoken of as a man of more than ordinary education for that period, a land surveyor, deacon of the church, captain of the military company, assessor, town clerk, selectman, representative to the General Court, and school-master. . . .
"In 1725-'26, the Grammar School was taught by Jonathan Bowman, who had graduated the year before from Harvard, and who took the school, it is not unlikely, that he might take the minister's fair daughter, Elizabeth Hancock, whom he subsequently married. The school opened on the first of August each year, and continued until the middle of March, seven and a half months, for which he received £26. .
"Up to this time the Grammar School of Lexington was supported partially by tuition fees and partially by town appropriation, varying in amount from year to year. But in May, 1727, it was voted that the school should be free; and the next year it was voted that it should be a 'running school' at the school-house, and in the four quarters of the town, the school to move once a month, £45 being appropriated for it. Ebenezer Hancock, who graduated the same year, 1728, from Harvard, now took charge of it, and continued to be the teacher until he became his father's colleague in 1734. He received £40 per annum, and had the Saturdays to himself, his father, the minister, making the contract with the town.
"It was now called the 'Grammar and English School,' which probably means that a classical
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place. To meet this objection, the grammar school was con- verted into what was denominated a "moving school," and was kept in different sections of the town in rotation. But
course was given fitting boys for college, in addition to the English branches. During this period it was a running school, and ran on this plan, viz .: '1st, thirty-one days in the Center; 2d, South Easterly; 3d, South Westerly; 4th, North Westerly; 5th, North Easterly, and so round twice,' giving ten months' schooling. Thus it continued running for six years, and with no men- tion of women schools. In 1737 the teacher, William Fessenden, has a salary of £45, and the town agrees to pay for his entertainment above ten shillings a week.
"The next year another plan for a running school was adopted. It was to be eight weeks at the school-house, then to move to the North West Corner for seven weeks, then to the South East Corner for seven weeks, then to the South West Corner for seven weeks, then to the East Corner for seven weeks. 'If any corner neglects to provide a place and board for the school-master, it is to be kept at the school-house.' This year, 1738, seems to have been an A. P. A. year, for it was voted to warn all the Irish to leave the town - five families. The salary is now advanced to £80, and Josiah Pearce keeps the school for three years, followed by Matthew Bridge. It was voted that 'he should have a contribution, by reason of his giving so unusually dear for his board.' In 1742 the salary had been advanced to £90 and the next year the running school was stopped at the school-house, and five women schools were opened in the outskirts. . . . While the Grammar School-master received £90 and board, the five women teachers received but £25 altogether, or, £5 apiece, the sum actually voted them by the town, and boarded them- selves! Each Grammar School pupil was, now, required to bring two feet of wood for the fire.
"Rev. Timothy Harrington was installed over the school in 1747-48, on these conditions, viz .: 'The school to be dismissed on public occasions, but, if the time is lost, it is to be taken out of his pay, five hours in winter and six hours in summer to be a school-day. Lecture days in town, half a day at funerals, raisings, ordinations in the neighborhood, and training days to be respected as holidays.'
. £16 for women schools or writing schools is appropriated in 1766, but no child living within 12 miles of the school-house may attend them.
"We come, now, to the end of the first school-house. It had been in use forty-five years and was so worn, hacked and battered that it was past being repaired, and was, accordingly, torn down and a new one erected on the same spot. (A much smaller and humbler building, but 20 ft. square and 63 ft. between joists, costing £43 13s. 6d.) This, the second school-house, remained thirty-five years and until 1796, when it was sold to Nathan Kelley for $48.50 and moved away. history does not inform us where, leaving the Center without a school-house for eight years, thereafter. This was, no doubt, a triumph for the outskirts. But, to give an idea of the per- sistency and fierceness of this contest between village and country, I will give you some of the changes in town votes during a few years. In 1762, voted that the Grammar School remain at the school-house and £16 be used for women schools. In 1764, voted to have a 'running school and decide by lot, where it should stop first, second and so on.' In 1765-66, voted not to move it, and have six women schools. But, in 1767, they set it going again, and had it kept eleven months. In 1768-69-70, voted not to move it and have women schools. In 1773, voted that the town be divided into ' 7 squadrons for women schools,' and in 1775, voted to have no Grammar School this year, on account of the heavy charges, but to have women schools in each quarter and that they be free, appropriating £20 for them. Thus, it would appear that, up to this time, the women schools had not been wholly free, but the new spirit awakened by the principles of Liberty, opened the school doors to every child in the town, never to be closed again.
"After the first year of the great Struggle for Independence, the Grammar School appears to have been continued until 1780, when the town was divided into five parts for women schools; but two years after the Grammar School was again opened for four months and the women schools kept open also. In 1784 and '85, Benjamin Green, another graduate of Harvard, was the teacher at $10 a month, probably with board, which was with Rev. Jonas Clarke, where he pursued his studies for the ministry. The compensation, $10 a month, seems miserably small for a college-bred man, but not when we remember that he won a wife at the same time, Lydia Clarke, the minister's daughter, said to have been the most beautiful and accomplished girl in the town.
"Benjamin Green succeeded so well that another Harvard graduate, Thaddeus Fiske, followed him in 1786, who was equally successful, if not in school, at least in winning the hand of another of the minister's six daughters, Lucy Clarke. Then followed in succession, Pitt Clarke, John Piper, and Abiel Abbot, as teachers, and all college graduates. The last one at $9 a month. They were, also, studying for the ministry, but they did not succeed in capturing more of the Clarke girls, four having already been caught in the matrimonial net, and the others proving invulnerable to Cupid's shafts.
"In 1792, it was voted not to have the Grammar School at the Center, but to have a Grammar School in each of the divisions of the town, and this policy seems to have been carried out for three years, the village being left, apparently, without a school. Probably the children went to the North, West and East Schools. Thus the outskirts had gained complete ascendancy over the village and blotted out the school which had been maintained here for more than twenty years.
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this being attended with inconveniences, other expedients were adopted. At one time it was provided that all who lived within a certain distance of the school-house on the Common should furnish all the fuel necessary for the school free of expense; while those who lived more remote should be exempted altogether. But still there was a lurking disposi- tion to complain of inequality, - forgetting the fact that, though the inhabitants of the village enjoy greater privileges than those who live remote from the centre, they have to pay for those privileges. For one acre of land in a village is often valued in the assessment list ten times as high as an acre of the same intrinsic worth, situated remote from the centre.
The school-house in the centre becoming somewhat dilapi- dated, a new house was erected in its stead in 1761. It was twenty feet square, and six and a half feet between the floors, and cost £42. During the Revolution there was no particu- lar change in the schools. The grammar school in the school- house was kept nine or ten months each year, and was fur- nished with teachers competent to instruct in every branch necessary to be taught. At the same time schools, generally taught by females, were supported in the different sections of the town.
After a contest of one or two years on the subject, the town voted in 1795 to build three school-houses, and chose a committee to select sites. In 1796, it was "Voted, To
"We come, now, to the time when these out-lying schools were given a local habitation and a name. Up to 1795 they had been kept in private houses, each quarter furnishing a room for the school, at the expense of the people patronizing it. But in May, 1795, the town voted to build three school-houses, East, South and North, and they were completed and occupied the following year, viz .: 1796, one of these, probably the East, on the hill just beyond the Munroe Tavern, called Mason's Hill, built there, I suppose, with the idea of accommodating both villages. In the year 1800 it was voted that teachers must bring certificates of their qualifications. It does not say from whom, or what the qualifications should be. The Selectmen, also, are requested to visit the schools to see that they are properly conducted, the first action of the town looking to any oversight of them, though the minister was accustomed to visit them once a year and catechise the children in Bible history and religious doctrines.
"The Scotland district was denied a school-house by vote of the town in 1801, and was obliged to continue to use a private house. But three years later, in 1804, a vote was passed to build three more new school-houses, of which one should be in Scotland, one in Smith End, each eighteen feet by twenty-three, and one in the Center. Thus, after being eight years without a school-house in this village, the people secured one, probably by uniting with Scotland and Smith End, and so out-voting the opposition. The new school-house was located on the Com- mon, the third built there, and was placed forty feet beyond the Monument towards Elm Avenue, in range with the rear of the Monument. This house is remembered by some of our old- est people who went to school there. It had what is called a hip roof, and the seats were arranged in rows, one above the other on each side from an open space in the middle. This building was afterwards moved down Main Street, just across Vine Brook, where it was used for the school until a new house was built on the same site. The frame was taken down to the Tufts place, near Bloomfield Street, where it still holds duty as a stable. The one built in its stead was soon outgrown and moved up to Waltham Street, where it forms the house now occupied by Mr. Flood [19 Waltham Street. Ed.], and a new and larger one two stories in height was erected on the same spot. This was finally converted into a dwelling house by Mr. Horace Davis, and was succeeded by the old Hancock school-house on Waltham Street, destroyed by fire in 1890.".
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m raise $333.33.3 for Schooling the children the present year 0 voted, to take $100 out of the above sum for a womens schools." Some feeling was excited not favorable to the harmony of the schools by the inhabitants in the part of the town known as "Scotland " persistently demanding, as their share of the school grant, a sum in proportion to the tax they paid.
In 1799, the town appropriated $333.33.7 for the support of men's schools, and $166.66.3 for women's schools. In 1800, the school grant was raised to five hundred dollars, and the committee chosen to employ teachers were directed to em- ploy none unless qualified according to the provisions of law. In 1804, the town took a decided step towards improving the condition of their schools. They made the usual grant of five hundred dollars for schooling, and appropriated one thou- sand dollars to build three additional school-houses and to remove two others, so as to accommodate all parts of the town. Of the three new houses, one was to be located in the centre of the town, one in "Scotland," so called, and one in "Smith's End," so called.
Having supplied themselves with school-houses, the town wisely decided that a larger sum of money should be appro- priated to support these invaluable institutions. Accord- ingly, in 1806, the school appropriation was increased to eight hundred dollars, six hundred dollars of which was to be expended for schools taught by males, and two hundred dol- lars for schools taught by females. This arrangement rela- tive to the appropriation and the division of the money was continued for several years.
May 3, 1813, "Voted to grant $50 dollars to encourage Vocl Music in this town."
In 1819, the town appropriated nine hundred dollars for the support of their schools, being an increase of one hundred dollars over past appropriations.
At the May meeting in 1821, a Committee, consisting of Amos Muzzey, Jr., Ambrose Morrell, Isaac Reed, Joseph Underwood, Jr., John Hastings, and Charles Reed, who had been chosen at a previous meeting, submitted a detailed re- port to the town on the general subject of the schools, which the town accepted. The report was able and well considered; and to the honor of the Committee it should be stated that the changes they recommended in the school system were,
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six years after, substantially adopted by the Legislature, for the government of the schools in the Commonwealth.
In 1827, the Legislature passed a general law regulating the schools throughout the State, and requiring towns to choose a General Committee to superintend and manage them. This law made quite a change in the condition of the schools in some towns. But as Lexington had adopted the same system, substantially, several years before, the change here was not immediately perceptible. There was, however, an increased interest manifest on the subject of common- school education. Two school-houses were built in 1830, and the other houses were repaired. The school appropriation also was increased to one thousand dollars.
In 1837, the school appropriation was increased to four- teen hundred dollars; and the town voted to erect two new school-houses, - one in each village, - said houses to be two stories high, so as to accommodate two schools.
The subject of common-school education in Lexington, as in almost every other town in the Commonwealth, was in a manner neglected; or in other words, our district schools did not meet the wants of the people. There were men in every town who were in favor of bringing them to a higher standard. But the mass of the voters, mistaking their true in- terest, were unwilling to increase the appropriation for their support. One fatal error had been imbibed by a portion of the people, namely, that the common schools were designed for the common people alone; and that those who wished to give their children suitable advantages must send them to select schools. They also feared that their children would be corrupted in their manners and morals by associating with the children of the masses. Some of this class were willing to raise money for the support of the district schools; but they would not suffer their children to attend them, but sent them to private schools and academies. By this means they were able to give their children a better education than their neigh- bors could give theirs. But this was a mistaken and short- sighted policy. In the first place, it was contrary to the spirit of our free institutions, which open the door of improvement to all alike, that the poor man's son might have equal advan- tages with the son of his more wealthy neighbor.
This withdrawing children from the common schools tended to degrade and keep down the standard of education
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in them. Those wealthy or influential families, which patron- ized private schools and academies, would, as a matter of course, feel less interest in the common schools than they would have done if their own children had been in them; and their example would also have an influence upon others; and so tend to reduce in the community the estimate of these lit- tle democratic institutions, which should be the pride and boast of our country. Moreover, an injury rather than a benefit was done to the children educated in these select schools; for they came from them more ignorant of human nature than they would have been if they had mixed with the masses, and seen more of the rough side of that world in which they were destined to live. Their private education would naturally induce them to look down upon those who were educated in the town schools, with whom they must associate in after life, and upon whom they must in a great degree depend for support in almost any business in which they might be engaged.
This state of things did not apply particularly to Lexing- ton, but to the Commonwealth at large. But while these academies were increasing, and a comparatively small part of the rising generation were obtaining a better education than before, the common schools were either declining or suffered to remain stationary. This state of things created an alarm in the public mind, and the philanthropist and the statesman sought to call public attention to the importance of raising the standard of the town schools, so as to meet the wants of the people. And after years of effort, this impor- tant reform was commenced, and has so far progressed that academies have, to a great extent, been superseded by public schools open to all classes of our population.
In 1821, a number of Lexington gentlemen, feeling the want of a higher standard of education than the town schools afforded, established an academy within the town.1 A com- modious house was erected for the purpose, and a school was opened in 1822, under the charge of Mr. Caleb Stetson, who had just graduated from Cambridge. And though the school was small at its opening, under the successful instruction of Mr. Stetson it became a flourishing institution, numbering from seventy-five to eighty-five pupils. He remained as principal of the academy till the autumn of 1825, when he 1 See Lexington Academy, by A. E. Scott. Proc. Lex. Hist. Soc., Vol. I, p. 88.
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was succeeded by Mr. William P. Huntington. In a few years this school began to languish and was finally given up.
While the academy was in active operation, and, viewed from that standpoint, the cause of education would seem to be progressing, the condition of the district schools was by no means flattering, - less so undoubtedly in consequence of the existence of the academy. Nor was this peculiar to this town. The same cause had produced the same effect in every part of the Commonwealth. A few years later, when specific returns were made from every town of the condition of its schools, the fact became apparent that in those towns where academies and select schools were maintained, the district schools were more or less neglected, and were in point of sup- port below the schools in towns where no such academies existed.
It should not, however, be inferred from these facts that academies were useless, or that parents did wrong in all cases in sending their children to select schools. Academies were valuable as intermediate institutions between the common schools and the colleges, and were necessary to fit scholars to enter the colleges. Nor were parents at fault in all cases in taking their children from district schools. Every intelli- gent parent desires to give his children a good education; and for this purpose and for the good of all classes he should use his influence to improve the condition of the public schools, where his own children and the children of those around him may have opportunities for an education. But if he fails in bringing the town schools up to a proper stand- ard, or if he wishes to have his children pursue studies not taught in the town schools or taught only imperfectly, then it is right and it becomes his duty to send them where they can enjoy these opportunities.
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