USA > New Hampshire > State builders; an illustrated historical and biographical record of the state of New Hampshire at the beginning of the twentieth century > Part 8
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The district system, which at the time of its inception, had proved useful to the educational interest of the state, was abolished and the town was again made the unit; and as was the case previous to 1805, all the schools in the town were placed in charge of one board of educa- tion. This law, however, did not apply to such districts as had availed themselves of the "Somersworth Act," and had formed special districts. The boards of education were to consist of three members each and they were elected at the annual town meeting, each member to hold office for three years. This "town district" act made the length of the school year uniform, gave the same advan- tages to all children living in the town, which had been impossible under the old law, equalized the burdens of taxation and in many other ways improved the educa- tional condition.
In 1895 a law was passed looking toward the state
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certification of all teachers. The law as passed, however, has amounted to but little, since it placed no obligation upon school boards to engage certificated teachers only. A law was also passed requiring school boards to appoint some agent to take an annual census of the children of school age. The same year a law was enacted allowing two or more towns to unite and hire a superintendent of schools. Very little was done, however, under this pro- vision, but four years later the state agreed to pay half of the superintendent's salary where towns united for the purpose of hiring a skilled supervisor. With this induce- ment many such supervisory districts have been formed. This law bids fair to become one of far-reaching impor- tance. The employment of a person well skilled in the needs of the schools to take the place of town boards cannot be otherwise than beneficial to the schools. At the same session a law was passed giving state aid for the support of schools in the poorer towns. The sum thus given amounts to about twenty thousand dollars annually. In 1901 the legislature passed a most excellent law by which all .towns not having a high school were obliged to pay the tuition to some town which did maintain a high school of such pupils as were fitted to enter. It was also arranged for the state to aid the towns upon which the above would work a hardship.
Deductions have recently been drawn, from the fact that New Hampshire's place, according to the ratio of illiteracy, has fallen considerably in the last thirty years, that the schools of to-day would suffer by comparison with those of thirty years ago. Careful examination into the history of education in our state, however, will show that this deduction is entirely without foundation. Take, for instance, the State Superintendent's report for 1870, in which he says: "One-half the schools in the state average less than twelve pupils; the average, including city and village schools, is only eighteen. The average
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attendance of pupils was only two-thirds the total num- ber; that is, one-third of the school money was absolutely thrown away in consequence of the number absent from school. A decrease in the amount of money expended for schools, and in the number of weeks of school, is reported, because the dog tax was not available this year."
Comparing this state of things with those of to-day, there is absolutely no question but that the pupils in the common schools of the state are infinitely better off now than then. It would appear that the real cause of the apparent increase in illiteracy is due primarily to the large influx during the last thirty years of a French speaking population, whose percentage of illiteracy is far greater than that of the native Americans. Moreover, . these French people have brought into our midst parochial schools where emphasis is placed upon the teaching of their native tongue, and it is doubtless true that many times in census taking the inability to read and write in English has been accepted as prima facie evidence that the person was illiterate, when, if the inquiry had been more thorough, the person would have been found per- fectly competent to read and write in French.
The ability and professional zeal of the teachers in New Hampshire is evidenced in many ways. While their salaries have been exceedingly small, the quality of teaching has been altogether out of proportion to the amount received. In 1853 at a time when the state re- fused all aid in holding teachers' institutes, the teachers not being willing to forego the inspiration of such meet- ings, have maintained since that time and paid for out of their meagre salaries a state teacher's association which has met each year for the discussion of educational problems.
To give a true history of the education of the state is impossible, since it would be necessary to trace the im-
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press made upon the minds of each individual child by his or her teacher through the time in which education has been in progress. The teacher is the unit of educa- tional value; obviously his work cannot be weighed and measured. "It is said that Jupiter on one occasion made a proclamation that he would crown the person with im- mortality, who had done the most good, and been the greatest blessing to his fellow-men. The competitors were numerous; the warrior, the statesman, the sculptor and painter, the musican and benevolent, all pressed their claims. But Jupiter seeing an old gray-headed, sage looking man standing far behind the rest, and apparently taking no active part in the matter, asked him what made him look so smiling? "Ah!" the old man said: "it amuses me, since all these competitors were once my pu- pils." "Crown him," said Jupiter, "and seat him at my right hand."
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BY JOHN ALDEN
Staunch and large was the ship Mary and John of the Winthrop fleet which left Plymouth, England, early in the spring of 1630, carrying one hundred and forty pas- sengers, "godly families and people," led by their two ministers, and bound for the shores of Massachusetts Bay. Ten years had passed away since the Pilgrim Fathers had landed in midwinter on the bleak, inhospitable shores of that smaller bay to the south, since then immortalized and revered by the name "Plymouth," and there under circumstances and conditions in severity and discourage- ments unparalleled in history, had successfully set up a commonwealth "in the name of God."
While the Puritans under John Winthrop were not Pilgrims, the Pilgrims were essentially, if not wholly, Puritans, and therefore the coming of this larger band to so near a point as Massachusetts Bay greatly strength- ened and raised the hopes of the original colony. The people of both settlements had the same object in view, the upbuilding of a religious community. They each de- sired to attain the grace of God by devotion to duty. This was the cardinal principle of their lives; all else was subservient to this purpose. Their material pros- perity and welfare and the gain of worldly power and wealth, were all of secondary consideration, even if thought of these were ever entertained. Their belief in individual responsibility to divine law was of the intensest
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nature and to win souls to Christ and to advance the interests of the kingdom of God in their realm was their daily (not alone weekly) concern. The Puritan accepted the New Covenant in the fullest measure but he never ceased to be an Old Testament or Old Covenant Christian. He observed the teachings of the entire Bible, conform- ing to what it taught and commanded and not seeking to cause the book to conform to his views. His religion was rigid, exacting and non-compromising. The teach- ings of Christ were to him of a non-elastic, inflexible character and if at this day he seems to have been un- necessarily austere and unbending it must be remembered that in his so living he believed he was fulfilling the divine injunction. He was sturdy, steadfast, useful and true. His whole life centred in his religion. For that he lived and toiled, timing his every act and thought, as though it was his last upon earth. Above all he moved with a heart filled with gratitude to God for unnumbered blessings, even though his daily path was one of thorns and tribulations and hardships. One of the Winthrop party on the ship Mary and John wrote of the voyage : "So we came by the good hand of the Lord through the deeps comfortably, having preaching and expounding of the Word of God every day."
The Bible of the Puritan was opened every day. He had a family altar and his worship there was sincere, open and heartfelt, and never perfunctory. There was a daily heart searching and a constant prayer for strength to resist the will of the flesh. Like the children of Israel they were sustained by a steadfast confidence in an over- ruling Providence. Loyalty to God, to his neighbor, and to the civil law were characteristics of the Puritan life. Material expediency played no part in his being, if it to the least degree questioned the integrity of his religious profession.
It is a notable fact that both the Pilgrims and the
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Winthrop Puritans, by which last statement is meant that "Godly assembly of men and women" who made the first settlement at Boston, were already organized into church and town bodies at the time of their arrival in New England, and the custom of gathering a church was a common one when a new settlement had been decided upon, not waiting for its actual consummation.
The early Puritans and other denominations called an organized body of worshippers a "church" and the build- ing for religious services a "meeting house." Thus the early New England records are replete with dates at which such and such a church was "gathered."
The religious creed or church polity of the Puritans did not disappear with the passing of the first generation of settlers but rather did it wax stronger, more aggressive and just as devout as the work laid down by the fathers was taken up by the children of another generation. Still another fact should be kept in mind as a study of the Puritan and his ways is pursued, and it is that New England came to be peopled throughout its whole domain practically by the descendants of those who reached its shores in the years between 1620 and 1660 or thereabouts. New England in the first century or more after the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth had no special attraction to the non-Puritan emigrant and the comparatively few of this class that did come returned for the most part to the land from whence they had come, presumably not caring to live the sturdy and energetic life enjoined upon all by the uncompromising Puritan, whose religious creed was not of the "easy" type.
The real peopling and development of New England as a geographical whole was by a race native to the land and this fact has its historical counterpart by the grow- ing up in the Wilderness of a new generation of Israelites to take possession of the land of Canaan. What is espe- cially significant about that generation of the children of
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Israel that grew up in the Wilderness was their develop- ment, physically and intellectually, under conditions radi- cally different from those of their fathers in the land of Egypt. First, their foods were not at all like those of Egypt, but, under divine direction, such as were calculated to build aright every element of the body. They ate no unclean thing, no adulterated food passed their lips, but everything they ate was natural in its organization. They thus became physically robust, strong and vigorous. The forty years in the Wilderness was a period of pre- paration under a new regime, new conditions, and a new creed, as respects the relationship of man to his Maker.
Strikingly similar to the record of those whom Moses led up out of the land of bondage is that of the Pilgrims and Puritans of New England. Once established upon New England soil they began to subsist upon the foods common to the land. Their habitations were wholly dif- ferent from those of the mother country and the one occupation of the great mass was farming. The country which they had settled was commonly referred to in speech and in the written word as the "New Canaan," the "New English Canaan," and the "New England Canaan." .
The larger part of a century was needed to bring the population of all New England up to one hundred thou- sand souls. In 1676, or exactly fifty years after the land- ing at Plymouth, New Hampshire contained four thou- sand people located principally in the coast region. Upon the organization of the colonies of New Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay in 1691 into the province of Massa- chusetts it contained a total of seventy-one thousand people, the settlements extending from the coast to the Connecticut river. Connecticut and Rhode Island were the next most populous colonies in New England, while Maine and New Hampshire were about even as respects the number of their inhabitants down to the opening of
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the eighteenth century, when New Hampshire received through successive decades a most valuable overflow of population from Massachusetts and Connecticut and a most vital gain in quantity and quality by the coming of the Scotch-Irish to that portion of the state called in state history Nutfield.
As the Pilgrims declared in the compact entered into and signed without dissent or hesitation in the cabin of the Mayflower that the purpose of the undertaking,-that is the founding of the colony at Plymouth,-"was for ye glorie of God and advancement of ye Christian faith," that declaration of purpose was the keynote and con- trolling motive of the successive generations for at least two and a third centuries. The Puritan' idea of morality and religion and the Puritan Sabbath remained inviolate during all this time of New England history and as there was a continuous moving westward into new and unex- plored territory by her sons and daughters they carried these principles and planted them in the great West and North-West and thereby made possible the fact that there is to-day one and only one United States of America.
Especially is it true that down to the second half of the nineteenth century New Hampshire was a home of the Pilgrim and Puritan descendant, speaking of the state as a whole. The faith of the church of the Scotch-Irish descendant was scarcely dissimilar to the original Ortho- dox first planted on the shores at Plymouth, Boston and Salem and the founders of the Presbyterian creed in New Hampshire came hither for exactly the same purpose as did the first Puritans. Born of the church which the Pilgrim Fathers had gathered ere reaching the shores of the "New Canaan," was that greatest of all things in the modern record of the human race,-Constitutional Liberty, and as they gathered together churches, through- out New England they likewise planted school houses and the extent to which the Puritan and his descendants
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have taxed themselves for the cause of popular education has no parallel in history.
Notwithstanding the historical truths that the first few settlements in New Hampshire were made for trade and commercial gain to the neglect of religion in general, and that here and there about the state were settlements without churches, the fact prevails that as colony, prov- ince, and state, New Hampshire has ever been a commu- nity in which the church and schoolhouse were funda- mental factors of its life. No less have her people in every generation been known for mental alertness and activity and a disposition for intellectual speculation, progress, and investigation. Taking the state as a whole her first settlers came within her borders with a well defined pur- pose which was to advance the Christian faith by spiritual living and this purpose was adhered to down to a remote time even if it is not in the opening years of the twentieth century. The founding of a settlement was practically coeval with the gathering of a church and the formal organization of each was inaugurated by a season of fasting, humiliation, and prayer as an invocation for Divine guidance and blessing. The whole town was in those early days the congregation and the ultimate deci- sion and final decrees were vested with the whole congre- gation. The ministry was the selected guide of the church and town but not the master in any sense. In- dividual favor with God as a reward for obedience and fidelity was no less believed in than was individual re- sponsibility to Omnipotence.
The first colonists in what is now New Hampshire were the mere agents or representatives of commercial interests in England. The establishment of a trading post or commercial community was the sole or at least princi- pal motive. The object in view was to get the maximum measure of wealth out of the holdings without thought of the general common weal. As this was the domi-
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nant idea it became the dominant characteristic, for a community takes on the characteristics of its people every time. Commercialism in itself lacks a founda- tion. At its best it is a characteristic of a charac- teristic that furnishes a stable and secure under- pinning from which it can arise, expand, and in- crease in all directions. Commerce and trade were almost immediate factors in the Plymouth settlement and so continued with a singular constancy, but it was ever held as secondary to that primary purpose of building a commonwealth dedicated to religion and morality.
The settlements on the banks of the Piscataqua had among its leaders and first comers two brothers, Edward and William Hilton; both were able and good men and the inference seems to be justified that they were represen- tative merchants of their time. Nearly a century passed ere the settlements in all the Piscataqua region took on a very vigorous life and made marked progress in gain of population and material substance. Ten years passed away before the first meeting house in New Hampshire, at Dover, was built and when forty-seven years had been counted from the date of that first settlement in 1623, Dover, Exeter and Hampton, alone in all the colony had settled ministers. The close of the eighteenth century saw only five Congregational churches and the fifth of these was in Dunstable, now Nashua. By 1638 Ports- mouth had an Episcopal chapel with its settled rector, but it was not until 1640 that regular pro- vision was made for the support of an orthodox ministry in the town and still another seventeen years passed before the construction of a meet- ing house began, and a minister, Joshua Moodey, was called to become a settled pastor. The building of the meeting house and the calling of the minister appears to have quickened the spiritual life of the community for it is recorded that the town ordered a cage to be
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made wherein to punish those attendants upon religious service who might fall asleep, chew tobacco, or be guilty of any form of misdemeanor. But in spite of the de- cision to call a pastor and build a meeting house it yet required thirteen years to successfully gather a church and to formally ordain Mr. Moodey. This first church in Portsmouth became the Old North Church of historic fame. One of its pastors, Samuel Langdon, became president of Harvard, and Rev. Dr. Stiles, though never formally ordained pastor of the church, became president of Yale.
Coeval with the settlement at Portsmouth was that at Dover and it was likewise by the Hiltons. In 1633 a number of families of the Puritan faith took up their abode in the town under the patronage of Lords Say and Brooke. The new emigrants, as a condition of their settlement, had been furnished a minister of their own faith and with their landing was perhaps the real begin- ning of the ecclesiastical history of New Hampshire. The first pastor of the little flock was William Leveridge. The second pastor was George Burdett, who soon after his ordination was elected governor of the colony. The third spiritual leader of the pioneer band was Hanserd Knollys, under whose direction and effort the church in Dover was gathered in 1638, fifteen years after the settle- ment by the Hiltons and five years after the coming of the Puritan families through the influence and aid of Lords Say and Brooke. Upon the political union of New Hampshire with Massachusetts in 1641 the ecclesiastical authorities at Boston aided in the direction of the Dover church and in the person of Daniel Maud sent them a minister who became popular and successful. During his pastorate the original log meeting house gave way, in 1653, to a more pretentious structure, of the following accepted plan : "forty foote longe, twenty six foote wide, sixteen foote studd, with six windows, two
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doores fitt for such a house, with a tile covering, and to flanck all the walls, with glass and nails for it."
A portion at least of the original settlers of the town of Hampton went there as a regularly organized church. This was in 1638 and the Congregational church in that town is the oldest in the state. The first pastor of this pioneer church was the Rev. Stephen Bachiler, whose descendants for generations have been a power in the up-building of the material and spiritual interests of every one of the six New England states. Mr. Bachiler had reached the Psalmist's limit of life at the time of his settlement in Hampton, a fact that forcibly illustrates the sturdy self forgetfulness and heroic devotion to Divine will of the first builders of the New England Canaan. After leaving Hampton Mr. Bachiler in course of time returned to England, where he died a centenarian.
Still another church of special and great historic in- terest in New Hampshire is that one gathered or or- ganized in Exeter, likewise in 1638. The prime mover in its formation was John Wheelwright, said to have been a classmate of Oliver Cromwell in Cambridge Uni- versity, England. Boston was his first home in America and there he united with the church of the Puritans. He was a man of genuine ability and decided individuality. He was a brother-in-law of William Hutchinson whose wife, Ann Hutchinson, was the founder of antinomianism in New England. A sermon preached by Wheelwright caused him to be banished from the colony of Massa- chusetts Bay. He, with a small number of adherents, went to New Hampshire and he purchased from the abori- gines a vast tract of land lying between the Merrimac and Piscataqua Rivers. He founded the town of Exeter and formed there a church. Scarcely four years elapsed after these events when the whole of New Hampshire came under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, and as the sentence of banishment still hung over Mr. Wheelwright
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he was compelled to seek yet another home, which he did in Wells, Maine. After a brief stay in Maine the sentence imposed upon him was removed by the General Court of Massachusetts, when he received a call to preach in Hampton, which he accepted.
In 1685 what is now the First Congregational church in Nashua, was organized, the fifth in number in the sixty-two years since the making of the first settlement at Piscataqua. To people living in the twentieth century this seems like slow progress, but all circumstances con- sidered, it was rapid development, indeed, as those condi- tions are studied and weighed the wonder is that the little bands of first comers should have been able to overcome the long and trying list of difficulties, perplexities, and trials which in time they did. No great steamships then came freighted with the surplus population of the Old World as now they do daily. The region all about was then a trackless wilderness, the abode of wild animals and worse wild men. But there was growing up a new race of men and women native to the land and putting on those national traits and characteristics that was to make a distinct class. Yet again, ere the close of the second decade of the eighteenth century came the advance guard of what proved a mighty element in the popula- tion of New Hampshire, New England and all the colo- nies,-the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who settled the southern central portion of the state.
Between these Presbyterians from the north of Ireland and the Puritans there was a close community of interest as respects their religious creeds and professions. In truth the terms were simply interchangeable. Both sought religious liberty and the advancement of the Christian faith. Whenever they elected to build a home and community success followed the effort. Education came in with morality and religion and material pros- perity was as a matter of course. Londonderry and all
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its adjacent territory that was within the original grants to the sturdy, rugged, steadfast, and progressive Scotch- Irish was speedily transformed from a wilderness into a region of magnificent estates, of spacious homesteads, and of benign influences. The spirit of the Scotch-Irish permeated every nook and corner of the state and crossed the line into Massachusetts. The church which the first comers gathered as their first duty performed in their Nutfield home is still intact and it has been as the mother to many another church organization throughout the length and breadth of the land.
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