A History of the city of Newark, New Jersey : embracing practically two and a half centuries, 1666-1913, Volume II, Part 13

Author: Urquhart, Frank J. (Frank John), 1865- 4n; Lewis Historical Publishing Company. 4n
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: New York, N.Y. ; Chicago, Ill. : The Lewis Historical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1136


USA > New Jersey > Essex County > Newark > A History of the city of Newark, New Jersey : embracing practically two and a half centuries, 1666-1913, Volume II > Part 13


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Another advertisement issued in December, 1774, read: "Schools. Wanted Immediately .- At the academy in Newark, New Jersey, an English schoolmaster. None need apply but a person who can bring ample testimonials of his being capable of instructing youth in the several branches of reading, writing and arithmetick, and of his good character. Such a one will meet with good encour- agement by applying to William Camp or Isaac Longworth at the New York Journal or the General Advertiser."


Thus was the Academy started, with high ambitions and noble purposes. But already the clouds of war were gathering, and the very men who had grouped themselves together to make the venture (the broadest and most public-spirited thus far launched in New- ark), were within two years to be arrayed on either side in the great conflict for independence; and less than six years thereafter the very building itself was to be destroyed by the British soldiers, and one of the leading spirits in its foundation, Joseph Hedden, Jr., to be so brutally treated that he succumbed a few months there- after. As for the schoolmaster, William Haddon, he remained a staunch loyalist, and in the Royal Gazette of New York, for May 12, 1779, we read: "Last Friday night departed this life in the 58th year of his age, Mr. William Haddon, a native of the town of Holt,


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in the county of Norfolk, in Old England, but has resided in this country many years, and for a considerable time before the rebellion had charge of the Academy at Newark, New-Jersey, but about two years ago was obliged to fly from thence on account of his unshaken loyalty to his King, and left behind him a family with considerable property. His remains were interred on Sunday evening in St. Paul's Church yard, attended by a very respectable body of the inhabitants of this place."


DR. MACWHORTER'S PHILOSOPHICAL ACADEMY, 1782.


The War for Independence was not over before the interest in education began to revive. On October 23, 1782, the New Jersey Journal announced that the Rev. Dr. Macwhorter of Newark was about to open a philosophical academy, if enough pupils who have "common learning" can be brought together. The instruction was to be for three months in the winter, to consist of lectures chiefly, with quizzes on the notes taken by the pupils. The tuition was to "no more than equal to one-half a year in his grammar school," which shows us that the Doctor was then conducting a lower grade school in Newark, probably the first to be opened after the demorali- zation to which the whole neighborhood was subject during the first four or five years of the war.


THE SECOND NEWARK ACADEMY, 1792.


The spirit of the people of Newark is nowhere more strikingly brought to light than in their plucky rebuilding of the academy which started out so proudly in 1774, and which the enemy had left a mass of shapeless ruins. The institution was not reared on the same spot, but on Broad street, at the corner of what is now Academy street (as told in Chapter XVIII), and classes were formed there in 1792. At the exercises upon the occasion of the laying of the corner stone, June 25, 1792, a hymn, written for that particular event, was sung (to what music is now unknown). The words, refreshingly suggestive of the formative days of the new federa- tion of States, are as follows:


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"To Thee, most holy and most high, To Thee we tune our grateful praise; Thy deeds proclaim a God is nigh, Deeds of renown and wondrous praise.


"When doom'd to wear base Slavery's chain, Our land convuls'd, our danger great; Heaven raised strong Pillars to maintain Our Liberties in Church and State.


"Religion sigh'd and learning mourn'd, Their Temples ruin'd or defac'd; When God our times in mercy turn'd New Temples rear'd and Schools replac'd.


"See Foes abash'd abase their pride, And lift no more a towering head; Lay menac'd plots of Rule aside, And own their Powers which God hath made.


"Pretended claims to Blood or Birth, Can fix no Despot on our Throne;


God the wise Sovereign of the Earth To man the Rights of Man makes known.


"What are the World's wide Kingdoms, Isles, And States but Seats of Tyrant-Sway; Columbia, where Jehovah smiles; Shine free more glorious far than they!


"Patriots and Peers support her Cause, Culture and Arts enrich the Field; Wisdom inspires our equal laws, And Freemen pleas'd, obedience yield.


"This Day conven'd, Harmonious Bands! We found a new fair Science name; Hence letter'd Youth to foreign lands Shall found their Country's growing Fame!


"To Him whose Temple is all Space, Whose Altar, Earth, Sea, Skies! One Chorus, let all Being raise All Nature's incense rise."


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Dr. Macwhorter was the first president of the board of trustees, and continued as such until his death in 1808. The academy soon acquired a splendid reputation for the excellence and thoroughness of its course of instruction. A female boarding school was estab- lished in connection with it, in 1802, and a wing built on the north side of the original building. "In the rooms devoted to the use of the young gentlemen," says one prospectus, for 1811, "all branches are taught, by able instructors, which are necessary in preparing for the counting-house, or for admission into college. In the young ladies' apartments, all branches, useful and ornamental, are taught by various instructors, which are deemed important at any similar institution in the United States. * There are two vaca- tions a year at this institution, of three weeks each, from 9 April to the 1st of May, and from the 9th of October to the 1st of November."


One of the first commencements of the Newark Academy was held late in September, 1794, when it was announced: "The Latin, Greek and Mathematical students will be presented to the Governors for examination on Monday at 10 o'clock, A. M., the English and the French classes Tuesday, at 9 o'clock, A. M. Their public speak- ing will be at the Court House, on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. The pupils will begin to deliver their orations at 4 o'clock, between which and their dramatic pieces there will be an intermission for refreshments."


The establishment of a department for the girls at the Academy came as a direct response to a strong public demand. Previous to 1797 a few citizens had complained to the editor of the local news- paper that so little attention was paid in Newark to the education of young women, and early in that year a Mrs. Murden started such an institution. It was quite popular for a time, and drew the daughters of the leading families. Later it was overshadowed by the female department of the Academy. Here is an account of à "quarterly examination" at Mrs. Murden's school, written quite in the most "elegant" fashion of the time, in July, 1797:


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AN EARLY PLEA FOR WOMAN'S RIGHTS.


"Not a single error was committed in spelling though some of the words were composed of five and six syllables, and each pupil gave the sense of the word spelt. In reading, due accentuation and order of time were observed, as well as elegance of cadence, and energy of expression. Indeed, the young ladies pronounced with great propriety, and would have done honor to any female academy in any country.


"Pleasing was it to behold thirty young Misses, neatly dressed, behaving with the highest decorum, and emulous to excel, in their studies. To behold them, if the expression may be endulged, planted in a soil so fertile, that justly we may expect they will produce such fruit as will do credit to their instructress and to themselves; afford real satisfaction to their parents and be a great utility to society. "Ah! Why is the female mind, that rich diamond capable of so bright polish, so often suffered to be buried in obscurity? How long shall inattention and negligence attend, in general, the educa- tion of our females ? How long will parents be regardless of their daughters and those to whom they are to be companions for life?


"What encouragement is due to female instructresses of genius and merit? Happy the town in which females may receive an education of wisdom and virtue!"


THE WHITE SCHOOL HOUSE, 1792-1848.


In the year 1792 or '93, the "White School House," or "South Literary Institute," was built on the triangle immediately west of Lincoln or South Park, largely through the instrumentality of Captain Jabez Parkhurst. He gathered in the coin by every legiti- mate means, and one of his sources of revenue was a play, which he is said to have written himself and in which he seems to have been the principal actor. The chief character was "Gripus," a miserly old chap, plainly enough typical of a certain proportion of the community of "good old Newark" of that day. The miser never parted with his gold. The only time he loosed his purse strings was when he wanted to count over his wealth and make sure that none was missing. This play was very popular and Parkhurst gave it several times with substantial financial results.


It was an institution of great value to the town. A Newarker writing in 1864 speaks with deep enthusiasm of it, quite in the


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sententious manner of a self-made man of the times in which he wrote, as follows:


"Business in those days [1800, circa], was almost universally done with the labor of apprentices, who were always indentured, and there was a condition in this indenture, that they were to have a certain number of quarters of night schooling. The education acquired by apprentices attending night school at South School House, and at the free school established by Moses N. Combs, at the head of Market street, has fitted more men for the business of life whose industry and perseverance have added more to the business and wealth and building up the city, than all the students of our city of Newark who have had all the advantages of Yale, Nassau Hall or other literary institutions, with a gold medal on the lapel of their coats, with A. B., or some motto upon it in a dead language, unintelligible or inapplicable to any of the purposes for which men should be educated in a country like ours."


All they taught in the South School, according to the writer just quoted, was the three R's, and on Saturday mornings some theology, from the Westminister Confession or the New England Primer. Two or three times a year members of the board of trus- tees examined the pupils in the catechism. The "White School House" was burned to the ground on Monday, March 28, 1848, and the fire was said to have been of incendiary origin. Its bell, said a newspaper writer of the day, had called the pupils to school for fifty-six years. There was a tradition that an even more ancient temple of learning stood on the spot before it was erected, but nothing definite about it can be gathered. "During its early his- tory," wrote a Newarker in 1848, "the White Schoolhouse was somewhat famous as the theatre of occasional dramatic perform- ances, in which many amongst us now grown to man's estate figured as the Caesars, Rollos, Richards and Coras of the mimic scene." Jabez Parkhust, who superintended its erection, at different times during his life officiated in the capacity of teacher, justice of the peace, county clerk, overseer of the poor, hotel keeper (in Roff's hotel, afterward the hotel of David D. Chandler), and finally dentist, in which position he died in New York, much respected.


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NEWARK A SCHOOL CENTRE, 1798-1810.


In 1798 there were seven or eight different schools in Newark, including, beside the Newark Academy, which then had four teach- ers, two female academies. A list of the various little schools that came and went in Newark during the first quarter of the last century would no doubt include close to a hundred different institu- tions. Frenchmen, fugitives from their sadly stricken country, gave instruction in their native tongue, in architecture and kindred subjects, while Frenchwomen taught embroidery and kindred fine accomplishments, as well as the French language. Buildings were especially constructed for some of these schools, including the White School House, already described; the Stone School House, on Market street, on the site of the original town school building, at 142 Market street, in 1804, afterwards the Newsboys' Lodging House, where the Century Building now (1913) stands; Frank- lin School, in Fair street (now Lafayette street), built in 1807, and the Washington School, in Orange street, built in 1820. All these were erected by private individuals or groups of persons. The origin of the Franklin School is shrouded in uncertainty. Like the others, it was leased to a succession of schoolmasters or school promoters. Toward the end of its career it became the property of the town and was used for public school purposes, and it was due to certain obligations laid upon the authorities by the heirs of the owners that the public school on Park avenue was given the name of "Franklin School."


Not a few of these schools supplied lodgings for pupils. In 1798 a "new Female Academy" was advertised as just opened in Fair street, with room for thirty-four scholars. "Lodging per annum, £42. Tuition, £52." At that time and for more than a decade thereafter it seems to have been quite a custom among the residents of all the upper section of the county and from the regions further to the west to send their children to one or another of the Newark schools. In 1805, "Lady Tutoress announces that she has opened a school on the second floor of the 'Stone Schoolhouse,' on Market street, where she teaches : spelling, reading and plain sewing


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for 12 shillings the quarter; $2 extra for common embroidery."


An evening school was in operation in the Franklin School building in Fair street as early as 1798, opening on Monday, October 3. the sessions to begin "at early candle lighting."


One of the most astonishing phases of this hit-or-miss, alto- gether unsystematic educational order of things in Newark at the time of which we are treating was the establishment of a summer school in the Franklin School building, opening on July 1, 1811, the sessions to start at 5 o'clock in the morning. If the advertisement telling of it had not been published in the town newspaper for several weeks in succession, we would be inclined to think that the printer had boggled his types. The instructor was Stephen R. Grover.


By 1810 the female department at Newark Academy had become what would be called to-day a first-class "finishing school." In that year the trustees announced that they had engaged Rev. Dr. Timothy Alden of Boston to take charge of the young ladies' department. Terms: Entrance $2. For common sewing, reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar and principles of morality and religion, $5 a quarter. Those who, in addition to the above, attend to penciling, painting in water colours, and various branches of ornamental work (needle), geography, astronomy, the artificial globes, rhetoric, composition, history and natural and experimental philosophy, $8. Board, washing, lodging, pupils supply beds and bedding, $50 a quarter, including all the studies. French, music and dancing were "separate."


NEWARK ACADEMY, 1834-1913.


In the second quarter of the last century, Newark Academy appears to have lost much of its popularity, apparently through the inefficiency of the principal and his instructors, for we read the following in a Newark newspaper for 1834:


"The trustees of the Academy, we are pleased to learn, are making arrangements to provide a classical school for boys. It is quite time that something was done for this institution. From whatever cause, the subject has been too long neglected; and there


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is now, we believe, no boys' school of any sort in the building. There was a time when its spacious rooms were fully occupied, a time when youth of both sexes might be carried entirely through the various branches of elementary education without going out of town. It is otherwise now, and it is a mortifying fact that we are worse off for schools than we were twenty years ago, though the wants and means of the place are now well nigh quadrupled. But we rejoice to learn that the trustees of the old Academy have at length deemed it their duty to interfere."


The Academy occupied the Broad and Academy street building until April 1, 1855, when it was discontinued on account of the anticipated sale of the property to the Federal government. There seems to have been no school from April 1, 1855, to September, 1857. In the first mentioned year the Academy was reincorporated and reorganized, and on March 17, 1857, the Academy trustees directed the president and secretary to sign an agreement with the trustees of the Newark Wesleyan Institute for the purchase of their property on the south corner of William and High streets, for $18,000. The purchase was completed on April 20, 1857. The Wesleyan Institute was organized in 1846 or 1847 and the corner stone of the High and William street building, the structure still used as the Newark Academy (1913) was laid on September 23 or 24, 1847. The most important change to the building since then is the gymnasium at the north end, erected in the late 1880's. The first principal of the Academy in the High and William street building was the Rev. Frederic A. Adams. The reorganized school was opened September 20, 1857, for youths of both sexes. Mr. Adams resigned in June, 1859, and the late Dr. Samuel A. Farrand was appointed, opening the school on September 5, 1859, with two assistants and twenty pupils, the entire enrollment of pupils for that year being 67. Dr. S. A. Farrand died in November, 1909. Mr. Wilson Farrand, his eldest son, was appointed headmaster in 1901, Dr. Farrand still retaining the title jointly with the son. From 1901 Dr. Farrand's connection with the school was largely advisory, and in a few years became entirely so. For several years before his death Dr. Farrand was practically emeritus, although not so named.


The institution now owns a fine plot a little north of the


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Lackawanna Railroad, and directly west of Branch Brook Park, which so far (1913) it has made use of for a playfield only.


In 1840, Newark had six academies, with 319 students, and thirty schools, with 1,955 pupils.


FROM MOSES COMBS TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS.


Through the coming and going, rising and falling of many schools, Moses Combs' free school (described in Chapter XXII) remained the only one of its kind, for somebody had to pay for pupils in the others. As late as 1811, Combs' School was offering education free of charge, the following announcement being made in that year: "School for Educating the Children of the Poor in New- ark. Trustees: Moses N. Combs, president. David Combs, treas- urer. James Johnson, secretary. David Hays, jun. Josiah John- son. Isaac Combs. Jonathan Parkhurst. A number of young men kindly officiate in rotation, at present, in teaching the youth of this school."


If one exclude the instance of 1769, given early in this chapter, there is no evidence that there was any provision made by the town or any person or group of persons to provide schooling for the poor (except in the case of Moses Combs' philanthropic enterprise, and in a free school started by David Rodgers in 1810), before 1813. In 1812, "on the last Sabbath in January," according to a newspaper account, "a collection was made in the first Presbyterian church of Newark for the benefit of the charity schools in this town, and $100 was collected, besides a donation in books. A sermon suited to the occasion was preached by the Rev. James Richards. We mention this in hopes that it may command the attention of the public in other places, and excite them to measures intimately connected with the welfare of the church and the best interests of society."


"FOR THE SCHOOLING OF THE POOR," 1813.


In 1813, without clear authority, the Newark Township Com- mittee "Resolved, that $500 be raised for the schooling of poor


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children, to be placed in the hands of the town committee for said purpose." "Poor" and "charity" were the words most commonly applied to this innovation, and it is not strange that self-respecting parents were not inclined to take advantage of the blessings of free education. These poor pupils were placed in various pay schools about the town.


In 1822 the Female Union School was established by a number of charitable Newark women. The building was on Harrison street, the name for many years of the section of the present Halsey street between Market street and Spruce street. Thereafter this school was sustained by township money. From 1813, the beginning of town- ship appropriations for the schooling of the poor, until 1829 the funds were derived directly from a township school tax. In 1828, however, the Legislature enacted a law authorizing the distribution of a portion of the State school fund among the several townships of the State. The annual appropriation by the State for this purpose increased steadily, year by year, until it has reached the tremendous proportions of to-day.


The lack of proper educational facilities for the children of parents of straitened circumstances aroused the sympathies of philanthropic'Newarkers. In 1830, Thomas Longworth died, leaving a considerable sum of money to be devoted to the care and education of the children of the poor. The other heirs objected to the bequest, and after a time the township committee effected a compromise, by which the township received $5,000 for the benevolent purpose just described. The income from this fund was used as intended until the late fifties, when, by a ruling of the Court of Chancery the fund was diverted for the benefit of the three orphan asylums then in Newark: the Newark Orphan Asylum, the Protestant Foster Home and St. Mary's Orphan Asylum. These three institutions receive the interest of this fund, divided equally, each year. In 1836, another generous Newarker, Stephen Sayres, left $4,000, the income of which was to be used for the education of the poor children of the city. The wording of the will was specific enough to permit the fund remaining with the Board of Education, which


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receives the interest, $240 annually, using it to pay a tiny fraction of the mountain-like expense account, and without attempting to pay it out for the education of poor children, as such. Still another fund, bearing the name of Tichenor, and amounting to about $2,300, was left for the same purpose, some time after the establishment of the city government. This, like the Longworth bequest, has for many years been used for the aid of the three orphan asylums already mentioned.


THE FIRST PUBLIC SCHOOL BUILDING.


Newark's city charter, adopted in 1836, provided for the annual election of a school committee and authorized the Common Council to raise money by tax for the schooling of poor children. In 1838 the committee decided that the distribution of its funds among the several private schools (and they were all "private" according to present understanding) to maintain the children of the poor in them, was both injudicious and improper, and it immediately there- after proceeded to establish one school in each of the four wards, as follows: North Ward, in the Washington School on Orange street; East Ward, in the basement of the First Reformed Dutch Church on Market street, on the north side, where the Lyric Theatre now (1913) stands; South Ward, in the basement of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Franklin street; West Ward, on the first floor of Nathan Hedges' school in Bank street near Washing- ton. A female department was at the same time opened in the Female Union School building already described. On the top floor of the Hedges School building, a high school for boys was estab- lished. The pupils were sent to it from the four ward schools upon certificate issued by the school committee.


At that time, 1838, the city did not own a public school building. These six schools were largely attended, at once, and they are truly the germ of the great Newark public school system of to-day. They were entirely free. The time for the public school was now ripe. The city had a large industrial population, and the desire of the Newark mechanic for an education for his children was strong enough for him to put his pride in his pocket and make his children


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also endure the petty slurs and flings, both expressed and implied, cast by some of the more prosperous, but shallow and thoughtless, of their neighbors, who gloried in the fact that they did not send their youngsters to a "free" school. The use of the words "poor" and "charity" in connection with the then new- idea school soon disappeared.


In 1843-44, the first public school building in Newark was erected, in a back lot, between Court and Hill streets, east of Halsey. It was known as the "Third Ward School" for many years there- after. In 1846-47, schools were built in the First and Fourth Wards (the names North, South, etc., were now being abandoned with the creation of more wards than there were cardinal points). The First Ward School was the present State street building and the Fourth Ward the Commerce Street School. The Second Ward School (Market street near the Court House) was built in 1847, and build- ings were erected in the Fifth and South Wards in 1848 and '49. The old Sixth Ward School was provided in 1851. In 1851, or a little later, the first colored school was created, in the basement of the African Presbyterian Church in Plane street. This school had 107 pupils in 1856.




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