USA > Maine > York County > York > New England miniature; a history of York, Maine > Part 14
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The Methodist Society was organized in 1829, and after holding services from time to time in the courthouse with permis- sion of the First Parish, erected their church building in 1833 at their present location in the Village Square. Another Methodist Society built a church near Brixham Four Corners, still standing but now used as a Grange Hall.
With the growth of the summer colony, Episcopalians or- ganized a society and built in 1886 a wooden church on Wood- bridge Road, and then, in 1908, a stone church at the corner of Woodbridge Road and York Street. The wooden building was given to the Women's League and moved to the Village to become a clubhouse, both for the League and the American Legion. At York Beach the Union Congregational Church was dedicated in 1895. The Roman Catholics held their first services, both in York Harbor and at the Beach, in 1895, meeting at Mason's Bath House at the Harbor and at Clement's Hall at the Beach. The Beach organization was the first to complete, in 1901, a Catholic church, the Star of the Sea; in 1903 the Harbor organization erected the Church of the Immaculate Conception, which though still standing is not regularly in use, since the society has pur- chased the brick Norton Inn on U.S. 1-A in the Village.
New "secteries" were introduced by itinerant elders who arranged meetings in private houses wherever they were made welcome. Some of these were earnest and sincere, and as mission- aries, represented organized societies in other Maine and New Hampshire towns. There is a suggestion that the Second Advent-
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ists, known as "Millerites" in other parts of the United States, had a following in York. There still exists the memory of a song lamenting the absence of their leader on the day in 1844 when the second coming of Christ was awaited.
As time passed some self-styled "Elders", no better than charlatans, preyed on isolated communities and imposed on the hospitality that was shown them. The "Cochranites" held a few meetings in Cape Neddick in 1818. The "Sons and Daughters of Zion and the Family of Egypt", who disturbed the Baptist meeting on a Lord's Day in 1823, were not heard of again after their leaders were fined in the Court of Common Pleas.
In the 1860's such an "elder" covered several counties in his circuit and dreamed bolder conquests as he found more gullible victims. Having made some agreement with a captain of a vessel, he began to preach of Jerusalem as the promised land where the faithful would never die and would never suffer pain. His flock had but to sell all their worldly goods and entrust all the proceeds to him and he would lead them there to bask forevermore in the warm glow of the Lord's eternal love. So far as is known, he found only one family in York which would forsake all and follow him. Johnson B. Moulton of Clay Hill, son of Ebenezer, with his wife and his only son, a boy of three, joined a band of families from other towns in Maine, near and far.
It was a frightful voyage; many of them suffered seasickness and scurvy. Before the voyage was over they were robbed by Arab pirates, and after they landed, penniless and short of food, they found no shelter awaiting them, and consequently they suffered in heat by day and cold by night. Beyond providing for their daily needs, their only aim was somehow to earn passage back to Maine.
Johnson Moulton managed to save enough to pay for the return trip of himself and his wife, but he considered he had reached the limit of endurance before he had accumulated enough for the boy's expenses, so the boy was entrusted to the care of an Arab family. The American consul on the scene, apparently keep- ing friendly watch over the plight of his countrymen, giving whatever assistance lay within his power, refused to allow Mr. and Mrs. Moulton to board ship without taking their son. Father Ebenezer, back in York on Clay Hill, informed by the consul of son Johnson's predicament in a distant foreign land, somehow, by sale of property and by generosity of friends, gathered sufficient funds from hard-pressed folk in York, and forwarded them to distant Asia. Eventually Johnson B. Moulton and his family were
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returned to Clay Hill, where for the rest of his life he was known as "Old Jerusalem Moulton".
By coincidence a group of about forty of these disillusioned refugees were put aboard the very ship on which Mark Twain was making a world tour, and in his Innocents Abroad he described the despair of the "Jaffa Colonists", as he called them.
No further divergencies have been recorded or remembered which affected the growth of York churches. After the inhabitants were no longer taxed for the support of the ministry, many former members renewed their affiliation with the Congregational Church, thereby enabling it to regain its former eminence in the community. There is but one parish at present, the Second Parish having ceased to function in 1869.
Thus it has come about, after the Church of England for twenty-five years and the Congregational Church for nearly one hundred and fifty years had, each in turn, received support from the special taxation of all the citizens and had by law been able to demand of every person attendance at services, that today Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Ro- man Catholics all have their meetinghouses and are equally respected.
SCHOOLS
WHEN THE PIONEERS were building their homes and lay- ing out their fields for planting, the plan for education of the young was a private matter for each family to decide according to its means, opportunity, and ambition. By Massachusetts law whenever any settlement increased to the number of fifty families, it was required to provide a common school. Apparently four decades passed before the population of York grew to that extent, and when that time came the inhabitants had to be reminded of their obligation by the Court before they took action in town meeting.
The first mention of any action taken appears in the court records for 1673, when the Grand Jury charged the Town of York "for not providing a school and schoolemaster for the aedu- cation of Youth according to law". This is followed by a note reading "Capt. Raynes as a selectman promisheth to use all means to procure a schoolmaster which the town hath provided".
The next mention seems to show that the result of Select- man Raynes's promised efforts was to induce a schoolmaster to live in York and carry on a school on his own responsibility, each pupil to pay individual charges at no expense to the town. In York Deeds Book V, dated 1676, in the settlement of the estate of James Jackson of Cape Neddick, one item shows that thirty-two pounds of pork had been paid to Edward Woolecock for schooling of daughter Elizabeth. The Jackson family, all but Elizabeth, had been horribly slaughtered in a raid by Indians during King Philip's War.
No official action on education appears in town records until, at the meeting held on May 13, 1700, it was voted under Article 10: "The town haeth Impowered ye Selectmen to settle A School Marster in this town". At the annual meeting of 1701 the selectmen reported :
Pursuant to a vote of this Town for a Scool Master the said Select men Indented and Bargened With Mr. Nathall
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ffreman to Ceep a free Scool for all the Inhabitance of our Town for Which the Town to pay said ffreman for one year Eight pounds in or as Money and three penc per week for Taching to Reade: and four penc: per Week for Writing and sifering and no Moor.
Mr. ffreman's year began
May ye 5: 1701
Before Nathaniel Freeman began his first year of teaching, writing, spelling, and punctuation were highly individualistic. Few adults had learned from the same teacher, and each teacher had made his own rules. Spelling was for the most part phonetic, and since pronunciation varied in different families, according to the dialect of the pioneer, the spelling varied, and no one could prove that any of it was wrong.
Nathaniel Freeman, on trial to prove his own worth and that of the newly authorized system, won acceptance. For the next year he renewed his "bargen" with an increase in salary to ten pounds. Presumably he continued to teach, year after year, under the same terms, but as Queen Anne's War was raging for ten years beginning in 1703, matters concerning a school and a school- master received no further recorded notice until the annual meet- ing of 1710. In order that the matter be taken care of in a manner that would require no regular annual attention for a reasonable pe- riod of years, the town empowered the selectmen to hire a teacher under a seven-year contract. The selectmen and Nathaniel Free- man agreed not only on a salary of thirty pounds per year, but also that the town would build him a "Dwelling house twenty-two foot long, Eighteen foot wide & eight foot between Joynts, with a brick chimney with doors floors & Stairs Convenient, suitable to live in". In this building, situated near the lower end of the Barrell Mill Pond, he continued to teach until his death in 1723.
Father Samuel Moody had started his Latin School to pre- pare serious students whose parents could afford to pay tuition for entrance into the college of their choice, usually Harvard. Among the pupils were some who came to York from considerable distances. A letter recommending Samuel Gardner of Boston, later captain and major, to kindly notice of William Pepperrell at Louis- burg in 1745, mentioned as a qualification that "his first educa- tion was under the Reverend Mr. Moody". Wigglesworth Toppan of Newbury, Massachusetts, who may have come to York to attend the Latin School, stayed on to become a citizen, and occasionally a town official. Edward Pell, a pupil from Boston, later married Jerusha Harmon of York. Their son, John Pell, a prosperous
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merchant in York, owned and lived in the "Pell Mansion", now known as the Elizabeth Perkins House, and established the "Pell Fund", to be spent on public works for the benefit of the town. Not much is known of York boys who attended the school, but it is certain that one was Dummer Sewall, and reasonably certain that among others were John Shaw and Paul Nowell, both of whom went to Harvard.
The dates when the school was first opened and when it was finally closed are not known. The earliest mention found is in the diary of Joseph (Handkerchief) Moody in 1723, recording that he had been absent from his school for a week. In the same year Father Moody, in a letter to a friend in Wells, apologized for having neglected his correspondence, pleading "one part of my Latin School has been my Dayly Care all this Winter". Nor is it definitely known where his school was held, whether in the parsonage, or in the study "near the garrison" that in 1708 the town had built for him.
In 1714 the Town of York was again censured by the Massachusetts Court-this time "for want of a gramer scoole Master". Perhaps the citizens were for the first time made aware, from sources far away, that the town had achieved the status of having a hundred families. The law which had gone unheeded had been passed in May 1647, while York was still Gorgeana, the first English city in America. It is worth quoting in full:
It being one chief project of Satan to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures as in former times keeping them in unknown tongues, so in these latter times by per- suading from the use of tongues that so at least the true sence and meaning of the original might be clouded and corrupted with false glosses of deceivers-to the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers in church and commonwealth the Lord assisting our en- deavors: it is therefore ordered that when any town shall increase to the number of 100 families or householders they shall set up a grammar school the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the Uni- versity. (Anc. Charters P Col. Laws)
The grammar school was the forerunner of the high school of a later day, not the modern grammar school. The name "high school" had not yet been invented.
No action on the Court censure of 1714 is recorded until in the town meeting held in September of 1717 the following votes were passed:
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Voted that this town will have a Gram' School Master for one yeare to Tach our Children in the Larned Things, and to Reade write and Cypher: to keep said School in the Senter of our said town of York: which said School master is to be Paid and Subsisted by our said town.
Voted to have a School Master to Instruct our Chil- dren, &c: to Read write and Cypher-said School Master to be Paid by the Town as aforesaid and to Remove from Place to Place as the Town shall order
York was to have two schools, but there was only one schoolhouse. Where the grammar school was held in the next few years is open to question. The vote that the common school was "to Remove from Place to Place as the Town shall order" marked the beginning of what was known as the "Moving School". It apparently was begun to satisfy the dwellers in the western part of town and those living at the south side of the river, who evi- dently considered that these sections of town were sufficiently populated to require schooling for their children. Probably because of their insistence, the building of a second schoolhouse was put off until 1723 when conditions required that action could no longer be delayed. There was criticism also because the selectmen were given so much authority to order the exact dates when the Moving School should be held for six months in the Village, three months at Scotland, and three months somewhere on the south side of the river. Each section wanted more control and longer terms and the services of the grammar school master during some part of the year.
In what must have been a tumultuous town meeting in 1722 the issues were squarely faced. Article 17 called for some method by which it could be determined "where ye Senter of ye town is for a Scool House". Under Article 18, it was voted that the schoolhouse was to be built on parsonage land. Then a dissent was entered against the two votes by citizens of the outlying sections in the western and southern parts of town, wherein they declared, over their signatures, that while they stood by their vote to have the schoolhouse built in the center of town they did not agree that the center was on parsonage land in the Village.
The matter of building a new school was not settled until 1725 when it was voted that it "be built at ye Lower end of the town on ye ministerial land". The following year, the schoolhouse apparently having been built, some not unqualified agreement was reached as to the regulation of the two schoolteachers. By the vote
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on one article, "a Grammar School Master shall be agreed with". Next it was "Voted that besides the Grammar School Master there be a School master agreed with to move about the Town". Next, under Article 41, it was "Voted the Grammar School be fixed down at the School House the Present Year". Under Article 42 it was "Voted that the Select Men be impowered to agree with a moving School Master & to order his Motions". To "the last three votes" fourteen representative voters from the outlying districts registered their dissent.
The building of the Second Church, in the Scotland Dis- trict, had been underway since 1724, but progress had been slow for want of funds. In 1726, the town, having voted forty-two pounds for the building of a schoolhouse in "the upper End of the Town", allowed this sum to be spent towards completing the church if the new building would also be used as the desired schoolhouse.
In 1728 the grammar school was permitted to "move": six months "at the school house near the lower Meeting House, three months on the other side of the River, & the other three months at the upper End of the town". Also, under Article 24, it was "Voted that the Select Men provide a suitable person to teach a school at Cape Neddick for four months in the present year".
Beginning in the meeting of March 13, 1733, there appears an attempt to trim the appropriation for education. Four months schooling at town cost was allowed to Cape Neddick, but "the inhabitants of Cape Neddick to find [the teacher] his board the said term". In 1734 the selectmen were instructed "to agree with" Mr. Amos Main to teach school "with the Provisn that sd Maine will keep school as cheap as any".
In the following year there appears no record of any teacher of common schools being employed. From the vote taken in the next year it would appear that the inhabitants took successful action to order affairs in their own way. Without explanation, it was "Voted that the Inhabitants of the Town that Live to the Eastward of the Short Sands Brook so-called exclusive of those that live at Ground Root Hill receive their Proportion of Sixty Pounds Provided they lay out same for a School & no other use". Here was the beginning of the "district system" whereby each settlement having at least eight children of school age could apply for a sum of money in the proportion which the amount of money the town received in taxes from that settlement bore to the whole sum appropriated for schools. Having received their
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allotment, each settlement chose an agent and conducted its school as independently as the Massachusetts laws allowed, but was obliged to account annually to the town for the money spent.
And so the school system grew. In 1739 twenty pounds were granted for a schoolhouse on the South Side. Cape Neddick was allowed to extend its bounds as a school district, presumably so that by including a large tax area it would be granted a larger proportion of the school money. The Second Parish, granted for its own use a quarter part of the town school appropriation, was allowed to maintain its own grammar school and master. By vote in 1743 the town recognized four almost independent districts : the Center, the Upper Parish, the Southwest Side of York River, and Cape Neddick. In 1744 another school was opened at or near Lewis Bane's house at what is now York Corner. In 1746 a new schoolhouse was built in that neighborhood-paid for partly by funds raised by private subscription and finally by addi- tional funds appropriated by the town to finish the building. Until 1785 it was controlled as a part of the Center District, after which time it was made a separate district known as District No. 2 until in 1822 it became known as District 13.
From 1746 until 1785, after the Revolution, there was scant attention paid in town meetings to school affairs. Year after year a vote was passed that school be kept as usual, by which was meant that the selectmen were thereby instructed to turn over to each district its proportion of the school appropriation. Whatever was done with that money was of little concern to the town as a whole. During those years, however, the inhabitants in each dis- trict gave careful consideration to the conduct of their school. They attended faithfully the district meetings, and they limited the powers of their agents in accordance with the votes passed.
Crude as this system may appear in the twentieth century, the results were favorable. Schools in York were as good as they were in any of the provinces at that time. Several of the teachers in the grammar school have been remembered for their achieve- ments in other sections of New England. After teaching in York for two years, Isaac Hasey served for many years as a minister in Lebanon, Maine. Amos Main, born in York, was known and loved for his long career as pastor and teacher in Rochester, New Hampshire. The Reverend Daniel Little, who taught in York for a year or two, became the first minister of Kennebunk and traveled over most of northern Maine as a missionary to the newly-founded towns. Parker Cleaveland, highly regarded as professor of chemis-
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try, mineralogy, and natural philosophy for fifty years at Bowdoin College, taught in his early years, around 1800, the grammar school in District 1. Stephen Longfellow, grandfather of the poet, after teaching in York was later active in politics in Falmouth. Nicholas Pike of Somersworth, New Hampshire, whose Pike's Arithmetic was long a standard textbook, taught for several years, until 1769, in the grammar school of District 1.
Most famous of all, known and respected throughout the colonies, was Master Samuel Moody (1726-1795), a son of the Reverend Joseph and grandson of the Reverend Samuel Moody. A graduate of Harvard in the Class of 1746, he taught the grammar school from 1747, succeeding Master Daniel Little, until 1762 when he accepted the invitation to become the preceptor of the new Dummer Academy in the Byfield Parish of Newbury, Massa- chusetts. There is evidence to show that before this opportunity came he had planned to start a private school in York. In 1760 the First Parish "Voted and granted to Mr. Samuel Moody with concurrence of the Revd. Mr. Lyman Liberty and Priviledge of Erecting a House for the Instruction of Youth in the Learned Languages on Parsonage land near the Pound [between the Hugh Holman and the Nicholas Sewall Houses] for the term of his natural life".
The constable's records for 1761 show that he accepted as salary for his last term seven pounds, eighteen shillings in money, and the wood from the old Pound valued at 2£ 13/and 4 to make up about ten pounds. Probably his most famous pupil during his sixteen years of teaching in York was David Sewall, who succeeded him as teacher for one year. His Dummer Academy gained such recognition that when Benjamin Franklin's sister wrote in 1778 to her brother in Paris concerning the son of their friend Gov- ernor Green of Rhode Island that "Ray is at Mr. Moody's scool & comes on bravely with His Larning", she saw no need for further explanation. In 1790 the entire faculty of Harvard-the president and the three professors-had all been pupils of Master Moody. It was said at that time that most of the prominent men in govern- ment, in law, medicine, and the armed services had received their early education under this famous son of York. One of these was Rufus King, a grandson of Captain Samuel Bragdon, who was a delegate from Massachusetts to the Constitutional Convention, a leader in the Massachusetts Convention to .obtain ratification, a senator from New York to the first Congress, and minister to England during three administrations.
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There is preserved a letter written by Captain Henry Sewall in 1845, when he was ninety-two. A grandson of Nicholas Sewall, he was born in the Newtown section of York and lived there on his father's farm until he enlisted in the Army in 1775. In it he told about the education he had received in the school which stood behind the church :
Dear Sir:
.. the first school that I attended, say 1764, when I was about 12 years of age, was conducted by master Samuel Moody, of York, my native place. I had been previously taught by my mother. ... The only books then used in the town were the N.E. primer, N.E. spelling book, the Psalter and the Bible. Neither English grammar, geography, or even arithmetic, were then and there taught. . . . I had learned, at home, to distinguish the vowels from the consonants, and was considerably expert in spelling, but I never heard the name of a verb or a noun, or any technical parts of speech, during the years that I attended this or any other school, previous to the commencement of the revolutionary war. Master Moody ... professed pre-eminent skill in ... the syllabic division of words in spelling. It was an estab- lished rule with him (which I have often heard him en- force with emphasis) that in spelling certain words, the consonant must always be put to the last-such as lov-ed, ha-ted, gi-ven, etc. And whenever a syllable was formed by a single vowel, it must be so expressed in spelling, viz., a by itself, a-e by itself, e-and so of all the vowels. And here permit me to give you a specimen of his quaint method of dividing the syllables in longer words, by selecting the word abomination, and spelling it as taught in this school, viz. a by itself, a, b, o, bo, abo-m, i, abomi-n, a, na, abomina -t, i, ti, abominati-o, n, on, abomination. And the word Aaron was thus analyzed in spelling: great A, little a, r, o, n, Aaron. Moreover the word one, had, by many raw schol- ars, who were so taught at home, been pronounced so as to ryhme with tone; and I have often heard it so read in the Bible by elderly people. But master Moody corrected this error, and taught the true pronounciation. Still the word touch was by his approbation pronounced in rhyme with couch, and augh in daughter pronounced like the same letters in laughter; also the word staves (plural of staff) in rhyme with slaves. In the words motive, active, native, representa- tive, and other words of kindred termination, the last syl- lable was pronounced long as in five, both in reading and in common parlance; with several other antiquated pronouncia- tions, accents and inflexions, which I have found it necessary to unlearn in theory and repudiate in practice. But I did not discover that tion, at the termination of many words in
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