USA > New York > Bronx County > The Bronx and its people; a history, 1609-1927, Volume II > Part 10
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In 1763 he writes again :
"I express my own and my people's sense of the favour done us, in giving us leave to choose a schoolmaster for this place, tho' we have not yet been able to find a person properly qualified for the office." In 1764, he writes: "I have in pursuance of the powers given me by the Society, appointed Mr. Nathaniel Seabury, a son of the late worthy missionary at Hempstead, Long Island, to be schoolmaster at West- chester." Nathaniel Seabury was the brother of the Reverend Samuel Seabury, later rector of the parish. He remained a schoolmaster till 1768, when he was succeeded by George Youngs, whose services lasted
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until 1772. The position was apparently vacant till 1774, when Mr. Gott became the holder of the office and continued in it until the Revo- lution. After that the school ceased to be an appendage of the church and became an object of support from the town. According to the town records, the first public school in Westchester was established in 1798. Later the township was divided into three school districts: West- chester Village, Bear Swamp and Throgg's Neck. A more modern building was erected in Westchester by the city in 1897.
The following is a list of the Venerable Propagation Society's school- masters at Westchester:
Appointment
Schoolmasters
1709
Edward Fitzgerald
Salary 18 pounds per annum
1710
Daniel Clark
18 pounds per annum
1713
Charles Glover
18 pounds per annum
1719
William Forrester
10 pounds per annum
1743
Basil Bartow
10 pounds per annum
1764
Nathaniel Seabury
10 pounds per annum
1768
George Youngs
10 pounds per annum
1774
Mr. Gott
10 pounds per annum
The occupation of the various sections of the borough during the first half of the eighteenth century by a class of Englishmen, who may be termed gentlemen farmers, rendered the matter of education for their children a very important one; and it was met by the employment of a schoolmaster by families living within a convenient distance of the schoolhouse, or of the residence of one of the inhabitants used for the purpose, each family paying in proportion to the number of children sent. The schoolmaster was frequently the minister, who added to his small stipend by giving instruction in the three "R's" and in the rudi- ments of the humanities.
The Reverend John Peter Tetard, commonly known as "Dominie Tetard," was born in Switzerland and graduated from the University of Lausanne. He preached to French congregations at Charleston, South Carolina, and in the city of New York, and after his removal to Kingsbridge, at Fordham Reformed Dutch Church. In 1772 he opened a French boarding-school at Kingsbridge, on the height over- looking the present railroad station, which is called after him, Tetard's Hill. Here he taught not only the French language, but "the most useful sciences, such as geography, the doctrine of the spheres, ancient and modern history," etc. In Rivington's "Gazette" of February 23, 1775, there appears the following advertisement :
"To the Public, Samuel Seabury, M. A., Rector of the Parish of West- chester, hath opened a School in that Town, and offers his Services to prepare young Gentlemen for the College, the Compting-House, or any genteel Business for which Parents or Guardians may design them. . .
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Board (Washing included) may be had in unexceptionable Families, at about twenty Pounds per Ann. and the Tuition will be at six Pounds, New York Currency, and eight Shillings for Fire-wood."
In fact, the home churches that sent ministers to the colony in- tended that they should not only preach the gospel, but also educate the youth of both sexes. Sometimes a Yankee pedagogue, a graduate of Yale, perhaps-would occupy the position, which then, more than now, was a position of honor; as the "scholemaster" was in addition to his position as the school clerk, chorister, and visitor to the sick, or almoner, and often a member of the corporation. After obtaining all the education it was possible for the local schoolmaster to impart, and having reached the mature age of twelve or thirteen, the pupil was ready for Yale College or Nassau Hall at Princeton, the latter being generally preferred. The sons of the wealthiest merchants were some- times educated in the English colleges; and when King's College, later Columbia University, was founded, it received its share of the colonial youth. At the age of eighteen or twenty, the young man took his de- gree, and was then an educated gentleman; but the education imparted at the best of the colleges did not surpass that of our best high schools at the present day. Yet an education that could produce such grad- uates as Jefferson, Morris, Izard, Adams, and many others of like fame and character, must have been very thorough. It was not until long after the establishment of the new government that the matter of education became one of general importance and one of which the State took cognizance and control. The will of Lewis Morris, Junior, of Morrisania, dated November 19, 1760, is an indication of the value set on education at the time, as it is also a testimony to the dislike felt in New York for what was regarded as the New England character. "It is my will and desire that my son Gouverneur Morris may have the best education that is to be had in England or America. But my ex- press will and direction are, that he never be sent for that purpose to the Colony of Connecticut, lest he should imbibe in his youth that low craft and cunning, so incident to the people of that Country, which is so interwoven with their constitution that all their art cannot disguise it from the world, though many of them, under the sanctified garb of religion, have endeavored to impose themselves upon the world as honest men."
Post Revolutionary Education in The Bronx Territory-Following the war of the Revolution many fields of effort in Westchester County, of which the territory of The Bronx formed an important intellectual centre, in common with the newly freed and self-ruling States, became open to advanced ideas, both in regard to religious worship and matters of education. There were new incentives and necessities which pushed
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forward a new line of thought. The provisions of the act of April 9, 1795, by which the sum of one thousand, one hundred and ninety-two pounds was given annually for five years for school purposes to the county of Westchester, grew out of this feeling, and were responded to according to the conditions of the gift by the voters of each town, in the appropriation of a sum equal to one-half of what was received, school commissioners being chosen for the distribution of the moneys. The first apportionment under the act was made in and for Eastchester town. Just as readily in 1812, when an equal sum to that appropri- ated by the State was in a new act asked for each town, the vote was readily given, and the proper officers named. During this period, throughout the county, schoolhouses were being restored or reerected.
Westchester had close relations with the community at New Rochelle, where for a long time after the settlement of the town the facilities for education, owing to the peculiar circumstances, were exceedingly limited. The clergy, as elsewhere, were the principal teachers. "Our French ancestors," writes the Rev. L. J. Coutant, "who settled this town, and gave it the name which it now bears, about eighty-nine years before the Revolutionary War, received their education in the French language, and consequently during the greater part of the period above named the rising generation was educated in French. The writer's grandmother received her education in that tongue and used to read her French Bible and prayer-book. They were not destitute of good scholars, who understood both French and English, and could converse fluently in both languages. The education of their children in those times devolved clearly upon the pastors of the French Protestant Church. David Bonrepas, their first minister, gave instructions to the young people in letters and religion." Daniel Boudet was an excellent scholar and educator; his library, it is said, consisted of over four hun- dred volumes, which, for those times, was large. Pierre Stouppe, his successor in the pastorate of the French Church, was a well-educated man, and for many years kept a day and boarding school for instruc- tion both in French and English. It is no trifling comment on his abil- ity as a competent teacher that John Jay, subsequently American min- ister to the court of France, and of French descent, and General Schuy- ler, of Revolutionary fame, were among his pupils. Indeed the general knowledge of letters, insofar as reading and writing are concerned, may be inferred from the fact that among the list of sixty names sub- scribed to a petition to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in connection with the Church of England in 1743, only five individuals signed by making a cross. But alas! for poor human nature. All the devotion of these people to their religion, and such learning as they could command, did not prevent them from perpetrating an act of bar- barism. In 1776 they burned to death a negro by the sentence of three
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of the magistrates of the town, for the crime of murder. The revolt- ing details are given in Coutant's "Reminiscences," with a minuteness and particularity that are sickening.
The application of force to the inculcation of learning was some- times attended with disastrous results to themselves. From the sever- ity of discipline very unpleasant affrays took place between the teacher and his scholars, ending occasionally in the expulsion of the teacher from the schoolroom. As to qualifications, "If the teacher could make a good quill pen and write with facility a neat and fair hand, and solve the sums and repeat the tables in Daboll's arithmetic, he was consid- ered a competent teacher, and received a certificate entitling the school taught by him to receive its proportion of the public money." The reading books were "The New Testament," "The Sequel," "The Amer- ican Preceptor," and "The Child's Instructor" for the larger and more advanced scholars, and a few primers for small children. These early schools were but the pioneer forerunner of the more wonderful "com- mon school system" of later times. Every vestige of the old Huguenot schoolhouses has long since been swept away. One of the first acts in the community of White Plains was the erection of a schoolhouse; when it was raised and where it stood are interesting questions to which the utmost research does not vouchsafe answers. At any rate it had grown old and dilapidated in 1737-38; for at a meeting of free- holders held in that year it was resolved that "the public pound should be where the old schoolhouse stood." The new schoolhouse was built on the highway, at the northwest corner of the Squire place, and re- mained there nearly a century. The White Plains Academy, which was attended by students from Westchester and Eastchester, was incorpor- ated by Legislative act passed in 1828, under the management of several trustees. A building was erected on the east side of Broadway. In this building the Rev. John M. Smith taught until 1832, and was fol- lowed by Professor John Swinburne. A female seminary was estab- lished there in 1835 by Andrew L. Halstead. The Rev. Robert W. Harris opened a boarding school for boys about 1835 in the rectory; he continued until his removal to the West in 1857. Mrs. S. B. Searles conducted a girls' school. It closed its doors in 1873. As late as 1886 the town had three private schools-The Alexander Institute, estab- lished in 1845, as the Hamilton Military Institute. Another school in the eighties was the Miss Frances Harris School, established in 1867. Another institution founded in 1886 was Miss Mary Adler's School.
In Eastchester the Fourteenth Article of Agreement made between the early settlers was as follows: "That provision be endeavored for education of children, and then encouragement be given unto any that shall take pains according to our former way of rating." In this lan- guage no doubt reference is made to the mode to which they had been
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accustomed, in their old Connecticut home, in providing for the col- lective instruction of their children. How far they were successful at the first in carrying out their desires does not appear. The erection of a schoolhouse was not determined upon until 1683. The encourage- ment then given to Mr. Morgan Jones to be their schoolmaster did not, it would seem, add any more to his haste to comply with their wishes than the call three years previous to be their minister. In 1696, whoever may have been his predecessor, "Mr. Benjamin Collier" was admitted "to live in this town as schoolmaster amongst us." Mr. Col- lier, from 1688 to 1692, had been high sheriff of Westchester County, and a resident of the town of Rye. In the following February an acre of land for a home-lot was voted him. At the meeting, however, which authorized this gift, the language, in which "a place for a schoolhouse is expected" from the order forbidding any more land being laid out half a mile above and half a mile below the. country road, rather shows that a schoolhouse had not yet been built.
A short time after the Revolution the schoolhouse in District No. 1 was replaced by a new one. In 1852 a portion of this district was set off as a new district called No. 4. District No. 2 had some of the best instructors of the State. The handsome marble building of 1835-36 took the place of the old frame structure built before 1784. District No. 3 in 1815 had twenty-three pupils in attendance. In 1858-59 a marble schoolhouse was provided, the land being a gift from a New York firm. District No. 4 was set off in 1852, the first school was taught that year, and in the spring of 1853 an act was passed calling for "Free Schools in District No. 4." A primary department was opened in December, 1859, under Mrs. William Atkinson. In 1870 fine new buildings were provided. Again in 1877 a fine structure was found necessary and was erected. This was a three-story building. District No. 5 was formed in 1856 under the new Union Free-School Act. In 1876 was formed a new large brick building constructed to accom- modate the many pupils who sought admittance. This cost about $18,000. In 1885 the library of the district amounted to three hundred and fifty volumes. John Oakley's Select Boarding and Day School for boys and girls was established by Mr. Oakley in April, 1857, at his home on the corner of Tenth Avenue, near Second Street, Mount Ver- non. The founder had charge until one year before his death, which took place in 1880.
There is no clear picture yet provided of the growth of educational facilities in that part of The Bronx formerly included in the township of Yonkers in colonial days. There have been published references to two public schoolhouses in the township in the beginning of the last century. It is said that in 1810 these buildings looked dilapidated
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and had been abandoned many years, and it was believed that they had been erected at least as far back as the period of the Revolution. How- ever, there are the data and published accounts of early schools made by John Hobbs, an old teacher of the Westchester County, from which A. P. French, the recent historian of Westchester County, has culled a few facts. John Hobbs, one of a large family of children, was born on June 17, 1801, in the town of Princeton, Massachusetts. When old enough to go, he was sent to the district school, which was usually taught for ten or twelve weeks in the summer by a woman teacher, and for the same length of time in the winter by a male teacher. After John Hobbs was about eleven or twelve years old, and able to work, he was sent to the school during the winter, being kept at home during the summer to work on his father's farm.
In 1819 and 1820, during part of the year, he attended an academy at New Salem, Massachusetts. In November, 1820, riding for six suc- cessive days on the back of a colt three and a half years old, he made a journey of three hundred miles into the State of Maine, where he taught a district school at Lincolnville during the winter that followed. In the spring he returned to his home, accomplishing the journey through the same mode of travel by which he had left it, and in the same length of time, and devoted the summer that followed to farm- ing. During the winter that followed he taught in a public school at Hubbardston, a town adjoining that in which his own home was placed. During the summer and the fall that followed he was a clerk in a coun- try store, and in the course of the next winter he again taught in the Hubbardston school. In April, 1823, he resolved on making teaching his life-work. As a result he set out from home with all his extra clothing in a handkerchief, and a few dollars in his pocket, to look for a school in need of a permanent teacher. Roads were bad and public conveyances were untrustworthy. Mostly on foot, therefore, he trav- eled as far as the State of Pennsylvania. Not finding what he de- sired, he retraced his way to New York, walked up to Dobbs Ferry, and there learning from a farmer, with whom he stopped over night, that a public school was without a teacher, engaged himself at once, boarded round and had for a few months a successful school. At the end of these months he received and accepted a call to the public school of White Plains, which he conducted for the next three years. Being called from the public school at White Plains to that of Tarrytown, he labored in the latter village for two years more. At this point in his career, being solicited by a White Plains lawyer to enter his office and study law, the lawyer offering him twenty dollars a month during his course of study, he complied. But soon finding the study of the law uncongenial and receiving a call at the time to a school in the west-
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ern part of Greenwich, Connecticut, he resumed teaching, and taught in that place two years. Following this he returned to Westchester County, and opened a private school in Port Chester. Six months after, however, he gave up this new work at the solicitation of the rector of Trinity Church, New Rochelle, who invited him to be his associate in an effort to establish a boarding and day school in that place. It was after about a year and a half of that association that he at last received a call to the public school of Yonkers, upon the charge of which he entered in the beginning of April, 1832. The trustees of the school at the time were Major Ebenezer Baldwin, John Bashford, and Jonathan Lawrence.
The Yonkers school, when John Hobbs took it, had been waiting several weeks for him to close his engagement at New Rochelle. Dur- ing this time two private schools had been opened by ladies and had together collected fifty-two pupils. Mr. Hobbs opened the public school with about twenty, but before the end of his quarter, had drawn away from the private schools all their pupils but six. The existing schoolhouse soon becoming too small, he made the fact known to the trustees, who referred him to Mr. Lemuel Wells, the owner of the prop- erty. After some delay that gentleman determined to erect a new school building, and turn the old one into a tenement house. When the new house was finished, Mr. Hobbs entered it with his school. In it he taught twelve years, performing all the duties and labors of the establishment, from those of janitor upward. During part of the same period, also, he was inspector of schools and teachers for the town of Yonkers.
In 1843 the supervisors of the county, wholly on their own motion, appointed him superintendent of the public schools of the county, at the time one hundred and fifty in number. Throughout the first year of his superintendency he employed an assistant at his own expense, and retained his headship of the Yonkers school, paying but one visit to each of the county schools. At the end of his first year, however, he resigned his own school and gave his whole time to the superin- tendency. His official term in due time ending he was unanimously reappointed. In 1847 the system was changed, and with the change the office of superintendent was abolished. One of the duties it had devolved on its incumbent had been the examination of the district libraries and the weeding out of unsuitable books. Mr. Hobbs, having proved himself thorough in his work, his reputation had gone abroad, and he was as a result urged by many people to make a specialty of selecting books for the libraries. Compliance with this solicitation gave turn to the entire remainder of his public and active life. It brought him into contact with publishing and book firms, with whom he en- tered into permanent engagements. From 1849 to 1875, twenty-five
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years, he gave himself to the scrutiny, selection and furnishing of school books, from which work, after having achieved in it an honorable and substantial success, he retired upon a competency.
Mr. Hobbs declared that the schoolhouse to which he went in 1832 was a very old building indeed. He considered that it might have been the first public schoolhouse ever erected in the township of Yonkers; but we have already spoken of two that had been abandoned long be- fore. Yet the date of the erection of Mr. Hobbs's schoolhouse must have been very far back, though as to how far we have no proper clue. It was a small one-story frame building of about fifteen by thirty feet. Mr. Hobbs's immediate predecessor in the school had been Mr. Lewis H. Hobby, who subsequently became a teacher in the primary depart- ment of the University of New York, and finally, after many years of teaching, died at Greenwich, Connecticut. Previous to the incorpo- ration of Yonkers as a city and before the partitioning which gave part of it to The Bronx, there were in the township six public schools, known as Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, numbered according to their dates of forma- tion. Each of these schools was, as to control, independent of the others, having its own separate board of trustees. No. 3 was at Mosholu, within the territory of Kingsbridge. Later the township of Yonkers had two Catholic parish schools-St. Mary's and St. Joseph's. The former was established in 1852, and the latter in 1872.
Lemuel Wells was the first to establish private schools in the town- ship of Yonkers. In 1840, two years before his death, he erected two houses and founded a school for the education of girls and another for boys. Many of the prominent women in the township and in The Bronx obtained their education at one of these schools, which in those days were more popular than they have been since. The common public high school system now supplements them and a higher standard is maintained. Another old private institution was the Rev. Hooper's Academy, which was established in 1867. Mr. Hooper was a clergy- man in the Protestant Episcopal Church. In his school boys were fitted for West Point and for scientific schools. The Yale School for Boys was started in Yonkers in 1877. Professor Davison's Institute was founded in 1881. Several other private institutions had a more or less successful course in the township, but in time they passed out of existence.
Schools Above and Below the Harlem-There was, of course, con- siderable affinity between the old schools of Westchester County and the territory later marked out as the Borough of The Bronx, and the old schools of New York. Going very far back, when the directors of the West India Company in 1629 changed their policy from one of trade only to one of trade and colonization, and held out inducements
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to settlers by promises of extensive land grants, they made it a condi- tion that the grantees of large tracts of land, called patroons, should particularly exert themselves to find speedy means for the mainten- ance of a clergyman and a schoolmaster on their patents, in order that divine service and zeal for religion might be planted in New Netherland. At first the patroons were to send comforters of the sick. Hence we see that what was said about a minister going to the newly settled country on the Hudson River also applied to a schoolmaster, who, however, did not accompany the first settlers, but came as soon as there was any need of his instruction for pupils. Up to that time, which was almost coeval with the arrival of the first regularly ordained minister, the various duties of minister, comforter of the sick, or lay reader, and schoolmaster, had rested on the shoulders of one person, so that, knowing that Sebastian Crol and Jan Huyck served the little village of New Amsterdam, with probably fewer than a hundred souls, as lay readers up to 1628, we can safely presume that the children who needed instruction found no difficulty in obtaining it. This is proved by a clause in the marriage settlement made between Ariaentje Cuvilly, a widow with children, and Jan Jansen Damen, on April 30, 1632, in which the contracting parties bound themselves to the guardians of the children that they will make them go to school, "as good parents are bound to do." The first schoolmaster at New Amster- dam whose name we know was Adam Roelantsen. He is mentioned as such in a list of the salaried officials of the West India Company in 1633, and taught a school which still exists in the city of New York as the School of the Collegiate Reformed Church. But where did Adam, this schoolmaster of 1633, teach the A B C's and the elements of numbers? The records of that time are defective, and what we have of them is silent on this point; but an utterance of Stuyvesant seems to indicate that there had been erected a building for that purpose. He says to the Nine Men, on November 14, 1647: "It is very necessary that a new schoolhouse and a dwelling house for the schoolmaster should be built. We are willing to make a fit contribution personally and on behalf of the Company. In the meantime, the school may be kept in the kitchen of the Fiscal, or in such other place as the Church Wardens approve."
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