USA > New Jersey > The New Jersey coast in three centuries; history of the New Jersey coast with genealogical and historic-biographical appendix, Vol. I > Part 32
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The cause of education in Monmouth county found a most capable and zealous advocate in Dr. Samuel Lockwood, who was at once a divine, a scientist and a literateur. In 1854 he became pastor of the Reformed Church in Keyport. When he came into the county the schools were in a sadly neglected and inefficient condition. He was anxious to see im- provement, and he found those who were of similar desire-Dr. Willis,
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the founder of the Freehold Institute; Amos Richardson, principal of the Young Ladies' Seminary; William V. Lawrence, a most capable teacher ; and the Rev. A. Millspaugh. For several years these public benefactors maintained a County. Teachers' Association, which met semi-annually in a two-day session, with a public evening meeting when were delivered ad- dresses intended to arouse a healthy public interest in education. So de- voted was Dr. Lockwood to this purpose that, when it was suggested that the various villages in the county should be visited by some one who would undertake to arrest the attention of the people, he assumed the task of lecturing in each one upon the needs of the schools. So intensely was he in earnest, that inability to pay for the use of a conveyance was no de terment, and he performed his travel on foot during one of the severest winters ever experienced in the State.
In 1859 Dr. Lockwood was elected School Superintendent of Raritan township, and this was the beginning of his career of higher usefulness. A law requiring that the Board of Freeholders should appoint a Board of Examiners to pass upon the qualifications of teachers and to license sich in their discretion, had been long inoperative. In 1865, however, a law was enacted which vested these powers in the State Board of Education in the event of the Board of Freeholders failing to act, and under this stim- ulus the freeholders appointed Dr. Lockwood and the Rev. A. Millspaugh to the positions of examiners-positions which involved great labor, and wholly without compensation. The teachers in each township were as- sembled at convenient points, where the work of oral examination was performed. The results were disappointing, but a movement had been made in the right direction, and good results came later.
Meantime, Dr. Lockwood had been an earnest member of the State Teachers' Association, and, largely through the efforts of that body, and under his inspiration, a new school law was enacted in 1867, which, among other provisions, abolished the offices of Township Superintendent and Examiners, and created that of County School Superintendent, with a. staff of examiners. His eminent fitness marking him as the one man for the position, Dr. Lockwood was at once appointed County Superintendent, the first in Monmouth county. He had previously served for nine years as Township Superintendent, and for fifteen years he had occupied the pastorate of his church in Keyport, and he resigned the latter position and removed to Freehold in order to give his undivided attention to educational concerns.
Dr. Lockwood discharged the duties of County Superintendent of Schools with rare intelligence and discretion during the long period of twenty-seven years, and until his death, which occurred in 1894. During
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this time and the preceding years he effected a complete organization of agencies for public education in the county, and lived to witness the most gratifying results. During his time the free school had supplanted that maintained under the rate system, and the high school had its birth. The illiterate class of school age had been reduced to two per cent., while the efficiency of teachers had increased fully fifty per cent., and each year the schools graduated a considerable number of pupils whose attainments were far superior to those of the average school teacher when Dr. Lock- wood first entered upon his educational work. The county institutes had increased in membership from a paltry score of teachers to a splendid gathering of two hundred, all filled with enthusiasm for their work. School property in the county had increased in value from twenty thousand dol- lars to nearly four hundred thousand dollars.
In 1878 Dr. Lockwood, debilitated by his great exertions, was induced to visit the Paris Exposition and make a tour of Europe, his expenses being defrayed by the teachers and friends of education in Monmouth county, as a testimonial to his worth. On his return he re-engaged in his work with renewed energy, and abated nothing of his effort until shortly before his death.
It is not the province of the present writer to enter into the history and useful life of Dr. Lockwood in detail. A graduate of the New York University, and a doctor of philosophy, he was a scholar of rare attain- ments-an accomplished naturalist, and archaeologist, and a member of numerous scientific societies ; a divine and teacher of great ability ; a force- ful writer and pleasant speaker; and, withal, a broad-minded Christian citizen and gentleman. Devoted to duty, as he saw it, his most useful work was that performed in behalf of education, and in his accomplish- ments in that field he undesignedly builded to himself a more stately and enduring monument than his warmest admirers could rear.
The work begun by Dr. Lockwood was taken up no less conscien- tiously by Professor John Enright, who succeeded him in the County Su- perintendency of Schools immediately after his death, and who has served in that capacity without intermission to the present time.
Professor Enright entered the State Normal School at Trenton when he was but seventeen years of age, and at once took high rank in his classes. He finished the prescribed two-years course in three-fourths that time, and after his graduation, when nineteen years of age, was engaged to teach a school in Freehold. He was successful in his calling from the outset, and when a new school building was erected in 1875 he was called to the principalship, and he organized the school, established a course of study, and founded one of the first graded schools in Monmouth county.
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In 1891-2 he was President of the State Teachers' Association. For very nearly twenty years preceding his appointment as County Superintendent of Schools he served continuously as a member of the County Board of Examiners-a position which he occupied for a longer period than did any other teacher in the State.
The Asbury Park schools made an excellent showing during the. year ending June 30, 1901. A new high school building was erected dur- ing that and the following year. Its departments are now those of Eng- lish, Mathematics, Science, History, Classical Languages, Modern Lan- guages, Drawing, Manual Training and Domestic Arts, Music and Elocu- tion. The teacher in each of these departments is a specialist.
The high school department was last year equipped throughout with new furniture. To the Science Department was added a biological labora- tory, furnished with a porcelain sink, six tables sufficiently large to ac- commodate four students each, and a wall-table supplied with water and gas, and suitable in length for the accommodation of twenty students. This places the work of the Science Department in its four branches of Zoology, Botany, Physics and Chemistry on the upper floor of the build- ing.
The courses of study have been so broadened and modified as to per- mit considerable freedom in choice of studies. The high school offers the five courses-Classical, Literary, Scientific, Liberal and Commercial. No limit of time is imposed for the completion of the course. The school is able to offer four years of English, four years of Mathematics, including Trigonometry and Advanced Algebra, three years, and possibly next year four years; of Science, four years; of Latin, Greek and German, three years each; two years of French and four years of History ; also one year of Social and Political Science; four years of Drawing, and two years of Domestic Science and Art. The Commercial course offers also several years' training in the usual business subjects.
The Reference Library founded for the high school departments in 1899 has grown to a total of 342 volumes. Most of these 'books are stand- ard reference books, in Grecian, Roman, Mediaeval, Modern-European, English and American History, although the departments of English and Science are well represented.
The manual training rooms are well equipped with all the necessary tools and suitable material, and the work there prepared for the school exhibit at Buffalo, New York, was of an interesting nature, and reflected credit upon the department.
The enrollment in two grades of the kindergarten department has reached 131, with an average daily attendance of thirty to forty pupils.
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The institution of Mothers' Meetings in connection with the kindergarten proved a decided help in the work of the school in bringing the home and the school together. The department has been fully equipped with all necessary furniture and materials.
Much interest has been shown on the part of teachers and pupils in decorating and beautifying the school rooms. The Alumni Association has also devoted its energies to this end. The result has been the placing upon the walls of the school rooms more than one hundred dollars worth of pictures, reproductions from masterpieces, etc. Several pieces of statuary have also been placed in the corridor and auditorium. So excellent a be- ginning in this good work augurs still larger accomplishment in the future.
In 1901 a new school building was erected in Red Bank at a cost of $60,000. The schools in that city are a model of efficiency, and include a complete high school course and a manual training department. In the year cited, the total enrollment was 1,027, with a daily attendance of 707. A class of twenty-five pupils was graduated-the largest in the history of the school.
In addition, two other school buildings were erected during the year in Monmouth county-a one-room building in Upper Freehold township, costing $1,000, and a four-room brick structure at Oakhurst, in Ocean township. The latter is one of the most handsome and commodious four- room school structures in the county, and the building cost was $12,000. There now remains but one place along the coast from Sandy Hook to the Ocean county line with indifferent school accommodations-Neptune City -which recently voted ten thousand dollars for a new school house.
In Monmouth county, during the year ending June 30, 1901, the total number of children enrolled was 17,072, with an average daily attendance of 10,562. The number of teachers employed was seventy-three males and three hundred and three females, and their average monthly salary was $72.43 and $50.87, respectively.
A County Teachers' Association was formed at Long Branch in Jan- uary, 1901. One hundred and seventy teachers attended the first meeting. These meetings are not designed to take the place of the local teachers' circles, held in the different townships, but rather to supplement and sup- port them. If the initial efficiency and enthusiasm exhibited at the first be maintained, these meetings will certainly result advantageously.
OCEAN COUNTY. :
There is little available of early educational history in Ocean county. There is evidence, however, that early in the beginning of the Tuckerton:
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settlement schools were established for the education of both sexes, and, even after the establishment of schools under the first public school law, the Society of Friends maintained, at their own expense, schools for the education of their children. At the same time they sent many of their chil- dren to Philadelphia and elsewhere for a more finished education than the local schools could afford. For a period of twenty years beginning about 1845, however, there were in the township several select schools, most of them for girls.
The educational history of Little Egg Harbor is quite similar, and schools there were fostered from the beginning. The township has pro- duced an unbroken line of clergymen of much ability, and men who have honored every useful calling in life. A native of Egg Harbor, Jacob Ridg- way, founded the Rush Library, of Philadelphia.
In New Egypt, the New Egypt Seminary and Female College was chartered by the Legislature and clothed with full collegiate powers shortly before the beginning of the Civil War. Its history has been most useful, and it has sent out into the learned professions and into business life scores of men who have reflected honor upon their alma mater, and many of its female graduates have become accomplished educators or ornaments to society in domestic life. For thirty-seven years this institution was con- ducted by George D. Horner, A. M., who was succeeded by the Rev. Dr. Wallace, an eminent divine.
In the county, for the year ending June 30th, 1901, the enroll- ment was 4,682, an increase of 42, and the average daily attendance was 2,716, an increase of 91. The percentage of daily attendance, based on the average enrollment, was 85, a slight increase over that of the previous year. The average salary paid to males per month for teaching was $51.88, and the average monthly salary paid to female teachers was $35.57, a slight decrease for the males and a slight increase for the females over the previ- ous year.
There are twenty school districts in Ocean county, sixty-eight public school-houses, four of which were erected during the year ; 122 class-rooms, and three private schools. The value of school property was estimated at $161,050, an increase of $40,200. During the year, four commodious new school buildings were completed-a six-room frame building at West Point Pleasant, valued at $6,000; a four-room frame building at Bar- negat, costing $7,000; an eight-room brick building at Toms River, cost- ing $18,000, and a six-room brick building with assembly-room, at East Lakewood, costing $19,000.
During the school year the Ocean County Teachers' Association
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held eleven divisional meetings and one general meeting, and Ocean and Monmouth counties united in an annual institute in November, 1900, at Ocean Grove.
ATLANTIC COUNTY.
In 1836 the foundations of education in Atlantic county were laid. by Richard Risley, who came from the mainland to the present site of Atlantic City, on Absecon Island, to instruct the children of the Leeds families. The private tutorship (for such it was) resulted in a school for all who desired to attend. Following the advent of the railroad, in 1854, various private schools were established, and were taught by Miss. Anna M. Gaskill, Edward S. Reed, a Miss Thomas, and others. Arthur Westcott, who afterward became city assessor, taught a private school in a small building erected for the purpose. There were in those days perhaps a half hundred children on the island.
The first public school in Atlantic. City was opened about 1858, in the old Ocean House, with Charles S. Varney as the teacher. In the fol- lowing year the trustees erected the first public school building-a frame edifice. Mr. Varney was succeeded by Alexander L. Bellis, who was a graduate of the State Normal School, and whose innovations in educa- tional and disciplinary methods proved highly efficient, but occasioned much comment and created some antagonism.
About 1863 the school-house became inadequate and the trustees. awarded to Richard Souder the contract for erecting a two-story four- room front addition to the old building. Sufficient funds were not forth- coming, and Robert L. Evard, with great public spirit, completed the work. For many years afterward he served as a school trustee, and his services. were invaluable in maintaining and advancing school interests in the early formative days.
In the autumn of 1863 Silas R. Morse, an accomplished teacher, was appointed to the principalship of the schools. He served most acceptably for a period of nine years, and for seven years of this time he had a most capable assistant in his wife, to whom he had been married just prior to. his moving to the town.
In 1877 John F. Hall became principal. He was a most excellent teacher, but his school room service was of short duration, as he resigned after two years to engage in journalism.
ยท About 1881 a separate school for colored children was opened, and it was successfully conducted for several years, then to be closed on account of the adverse public sentiment against such schools.
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In 1891 Prof. William A. Deremer became principal. He died after he had served only two years, but during this brief period his service was. phenomenally useful. He was an indefatigable worker, and his bound- less enthusiasm and rare tact enabled him to bring to his aid the best pos- sible effort on the part of his assistants. He introduced the manual train- ing system, and during his administration large additions were made to several school buildings, and the number of teachers was increased from thirty-five to forty-seven. He also called to his aid his associate teachers, and introduced methods of investigating the condition of the suffering worthy poor, and of relieving their necessities.
In the year 1900 there were in Atlantic City six school buildings con- taining sixty-eight rooms, and representing a valuation of $205,000. Since then a new ward school building was completed, and also a high school building, the latter costing $80,000. The school enrollment was 4,760, an increase of 739 over the previous year. The regular teaching force comprised eighty-one regular grade teachers and six special teachers. Of the regular teachers, ten were engaged in the colored schools, which occupy rooms in the same buildings where white children attend. The separation is continued as far as the seventh grade, after which the two classes are combined. The number of colored children in the advanced grades is nec- essarily very small.
The curriculum is broadly comprehensive, and includes a post-grad- uate course. Graduates are fitted to immediately enter the higher institu- tions of learning. There are five rooms for the manual training course, which is open to all pupils in the grammar grade. A thorough commer- cial course is maintained, and vocal music is taught as a class study. The sum of two hundred dollars was raised for the support of the school libraries. This, with the additional funds received from the State, was carefully and judiciously expended in the purchase of an additional nuni- ber of valuable library books. Numerous teachers' meetings have been held during the year, and these have been in charge of special teachers or of the Supervising Principal, and have always been for the special con- sideration of matters relating to the work of the respective grades. General monthly meetings have been held during the year. At these meetings the chief aim was the study of the writings of noted educators and of their influence upon modern education.
The school was splendidly represented in the Educational Exhibit at . Buffalo, New York, and was highly commended by many distinguished educators.
In Atlantic county (outside Atlantic City:) the total enrollment during the school year cited was 8,876, and the average daily attendance was 5,501.
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The number of teachers employed was 29 males and 155 females, and their average monthly salary respectively was $56.33 and $38.97.
Outside of Atlantic City, no new school buildings were erected during the year, but many additions and improvements were made. In Egg Har- bor City two new rooms were furnished and steam heat was introduced throughout the building. The pupils of Egg Harbor City, by individual contributions, raised sufficient money to purchase a handsome new piano. Music in this place, as well as in Hammonton and Mays Landing, has been made a part of the regular course of study.
CAPE MAY COUNTY.
During the latter part of the eighteenth century the only schools in the county were such as were taught for short terms at long intervals by itinerant schoolmasters. Aaron Leaming records in 1765 that his children attended school for about a month. At the beginning of the following century there were three teachers of considerable importance who went about the country teaching and "boarding around."
From 1810 to 1820 the teachers of sufficient prominence to be men- tioned in the annals of the times were Jacob Spicer (third), Constantine Foster and Joseph Foster. After 1830 schools were fairly well main- tained in the principal settlements. In 1840 there were in Dennis Town- ship four schools with 205 scholars-this in a population of 1350. In the same year there were in Middle Township (population 1624) five schools with 328 scholars; in Lower Township (population 1,133) there were six schools and 240 scholars; and in Cold Spring, "a thickly settled agricultural neighborhood," there was an academy for both sexes, of which the Rev. Moses Williamson was principal.
Among those who in later years accomplished much for the cause of education were some who afterward became prominent in other fields. Dr. Theophilus T. Price taught for three years beginning in 1848, and was subsequently township superintendent of the public schools of Little Egg Harbor for eight years. Joseph S. Leach was a teacher at Seaville shortly after his coming to the county in 1840, and he followed that oc- cupation until 1855, when he purchased the "Ocean Wave" newspaper. He was subsequently town superintendent of public schools, and he occu- pied various other responsible positions. In 1860, when the population of the county was 7,130, there were twenty-seven schools, in which were thirty-two teachers and 2,373 scholars. The only academy was at Cold Spring, yet conducted by Mr. Williamson.
For many years and until 1881 the scholarly Dr. Maurice Beesley
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was county superintendent of public schools, and he contributed more than did any other of his time to increasing the efficiency of the public educa- tional system in the county. He was succeeded by the Rev. Edward P. Shields, D. D., a highly capable man, who three years later removed to Bristol, Pennsylvania, to enter upon the pastorate of the Presbyterian Church there. His term of pastoral service with the Presbyterian Church at Cape May had extended over a period of thirteen years, and in duration it was only exceeded by that of the Rev. Moses Williamson, at Cold Springs, who served for forty-six years. Mr. Shields was succeeded in the county superintendency of schools by Vincent O. Miller, who served most faithfully and usefully for thirteen years. Aaron Hand became county school superintendent in the year of the retirement of Mr. Shields, and is yet serving in that position. Since 1895 Mr. Hand has been editor and manager of the "Star of the Cape" newspaper.
In the county, during the year ending June 30th, 1901, the total en- rollment of pupils was 2,981, and the daily average attendance was 1,727 The number of teachers employed was 30 males and 43 females, and their average monthly salary was $55.64 and $34.05 respectively.
Two notable events of the year were the erection of a handsome new school building at Cape May and the creation of the new district of Wild- wood. The Cape May building cost $35,000 exclusive of the furnishings. It contains twelve class-rooms and a large assembly-room, and is equipped. with all the latest and best ;sanitary appliances. At Wildwood another handsome new building was being erected at a cost of about $7,000. A building is to be erected at Woodbine to supply the necessity for more. room in that growing town.
In the year 1901 the number of private schools in the State, each having twenty-five pupils or more, was 303, of which 155 were sectarian and 148 were non-sectarian. The total number was sixty-three less than in the previous year, and the decrease is ascribed to the increased efficiency of the public schools.
THE HIGHER EDUCATION.
To this point our concern has been with elementary and secondary educational institutions. The former comprises the ordinary public school grammar course, which occupies the attention of the pupil, say from his sixth to his fourteenth year. Secondary education is that of academical scope, occupying the pupil (approximately ) from his fourteenth to his eight- eenth year, and fitting him for entrance to college. Among secondary in-
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structional institutions are now included the public high school, which in all of the cities of New Jersey, and in most of the towns and larger villages, affords a curriculum and methods of training which supply every need of the industrious student who seeks to enter upon the higher education.
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