Education in the United States

Front matter

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Contents

PAGE INTRODUCTION ‘ : : : ‘ : . arise ke PART I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD.

OHAP.

J. Tue Eartiest AmMErtIcAN SCHOOLS. A 9 1, New York and the Dutch West iad: Cana 2. Virginia and the Virginia Company. 3. Early New England Schools.

Part II. The Revolutionary Period

IV. Exementary Epvcarion. : ; : : : : «OL

1. “ Pauper” Schools. 2. Teachers. 3. Common-School Text-Books. 4. The Education of Girls.

V. ACADEMIES AND COLLEGES : ‘ é ;: i $ ae) 1. Academies. 2. Colleges. 1

CONTENTS.

PART II. THE PERIOD OF REORGANIZATION.

CHAP. : PAGE VI. Centratizina TENDENCIES . : : ag 1. The Transition. 2. The Creation of School. Funds. 3. Permanent Funds and Local Taxes.

VII. Cenrraizine TENDENCIES (continued ).—School Supervision 94 1. The District System. 2. State Supervision. 3. City Supervision. 4. County Supervision.

VIII. Tue Preparation or TEACHERS. ‘ : ; : NDE 1. Educational Associations. 2. Institutes. 3. Normal Schools.

IX. Tae Preparation or TEACHERS (continued ) . 142 4, Pedagogical Training in Colleges. 5. Hinoatiggs! Literature.

X. Recent CoLtEGes . 2 : : ; : : . 158 A. The Curriculum. 1. The Physical Sciences. 2. Modern Language Studies. 3. Institutional History. 4. Economic Studies.

XI. Recent Coiieces (continued ) . 186 A. The Curriculum (continued ) : ‘ 5. Elective Courses and Studies. 6. Graduate Courses, B. University Organization. 1. State-established Colleges. 2. Privately Endowed Institutions.

XII. Tue Proressions ‘ : ; " : . 2098 1. Theological Feuntion. 2. Legal Education. 3. Medical Education.

XII. Trecunotocicat Epucarion ‘ . 221

1, The Beginnings of Industrial training 2. The Curriculum. 8. Agricultural Education. 4. Military © and Naval Education.

CONTENTS. XV

CHAP, PAGE XIV. EpucaTion oF UNFORTUNATES AND CRIMINAL CLASSES . 248 1. Deaf-Mute Education. 2. Education of the Blind. 3. Education of the Feeble-Minded. 4. Reformatories. 5. Indian Education. 6. Education in Alaska.

XV. SuprLEMENTARY INSTITUTIONS . ; . 264 1. Private Schools. 2. Denominational Bchiools: 3. ‘ee: ing Schools. 4. Museums of Art and Science, 5. Clubs and Circles.

XVI. Learnep Societies AND LIBRARIES . ? : ‘ . 285 1. General Societies. 2. Libraries.

XVII. Toe GENERAL GOVERNMENT AND EpUCcATION : . 807 1. The Bureau of Education. 2. The Smithsonian Institution. 3. Special Scientific Work. 4. Special Publications,

Part IV. Current Educational Interests

XVIII. Comrutsory Scuoot ATTENDANCE R 3 : i . 826

XIX. Tue GraDATION oF SCHOOLS ‘ " oor 1. Primary Schools, 2. The Kindoseartort 3. The High School.

XX. Epvucation IN THE SouTH . ‘ . 847 1. The Ante-war Period. 2. The Period of Heo on: A. The Freedmen’s Aid Society. 38. Government Agency. ©. Denominational Agencies. pb. The Peabody Fund. «r. The Slater Fund. r. Public- School Systems. oe. Normal Schools. wu. Colleges. 1. Professional Schools. 3. General Conditions.

XXI. Tse Hicuer Epvcation or WomMEN . : : . 362 1, Ladies’ Seminaries. 2. Colleges for Women 8. Coeducation of the Sexes in College. 4. Examinations and Annexes. 5. Association of Collegiate Alumne. 6. The Professional Education of Women.

5 ore ah

EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

Introduction

OF the underlying notion of the colonists who instituted the American school system, Dr. D. C. Gilman has asked :* “ How far was it a natural evolution from the social usages and laws of England? How far from those of Holland ?”

For an answer to this query, one of which Lieber says “it must be of interest to every American,” the future gives continually less of promise. Every day loses something of record. The question remains. It recurs perennially. It must be asked by every thoughtful mind. Every day’s experience enforces the belief that no life is dissociated from its past—of government or man. Whence, then, the American idea of control, of society, and the family? of education and industry ? of place and character? For these are the flower of culture for which institutions exist. Of whom and where were learned the lessons of self-mastery and direction, of distributed sovereignty and co-operation ? For these make a general education, not so much possible, as safe. They can not be supposed wholly unknown to Puritan and Huguenot Europe; and yet the want of them has made her the battle-ground of the centuries.

* Education in America,” D. C. Gilman, ‘* North American Review,” January, 1876.

“Puritan” and “ Huguenot,” “Saracen” and “ Protestant”—the very names recall the birth in Europe, of the impulse whose developments in the newer West have outstripped the best in the Old World. They mean what modern dissent and the independence of a growing individualism have led us to understand by them. They mean modernism wherever found—in institutions or the personal life, in education or industry.

Mr. Eugene Lawrence says: “The true parent of the current system of teaching was the Reformation.” It was the world’s recoil from authority; the renunciation of servitude; the assumption of personality. Protestantism meant, not so much independence, as a growing fitness for independence. We have learned to think of the race, in every period, as growing toward its manhood; and America is a step in that growth, a phase of race-development; along stride may be— Americans believe it is. Horace Mann insisted, and his life enforced the thought, that “the transference of the fortunes of our race from the Old to the New World was a gain to humanity of a thousand years.” It was the opinion of Froebel, to which he gave frequent expression, that “the Kindergarten could only have its full development in America, where the national principle is self-government ; in perfect freedom, but according to law.”

Here were to be found the more favorable conditions, freedom from established customs and precedents, and an absence of fixed public institutions, giving room to invention, a field for new and, in the light of a larger independence, more rational adventure.

The period itself (seventeenth century) was one of vigorous social and intellectual activity. The invention of printing, and the consequent and rapid multiplication of books— equally multiplying the resources and occasions of mental culture—were more than paralleled by the coincident increase in the facilities of commerce, the extension of geographical discoveries, the increase not less than the diffusion of physical knowledge, and the expansion of industries. It

INTRODUCTION. 3 was a period in whose activity every people and every sort of human interest more or less participated. Society became eclectic. The past was studied and drawn upon for its wisdom. Nations began to take note of their neighbors. Governments were remodeled. New inventories were taken, and men came to read history with anew purpose. In the awakening education shared richly.

“The idea that education must be coextensive with sovereignty,” says Dr. E. EK. White, “was not original with our fathers. This has been,” he continues, “the favorite doctrine of aristocracy the world over” ; and “despotism clamors for a restricted education, because she would have a restricted sovereignty.” That control should be intelligent is older than Plato, and is denied by no people. =~.

In the Zealand school law of 1583, education is insisted upon because “it is the foundation of the commonwealth.” And Charlemagne, eight centuries before, had required that the children of all persons participating in the government should be educated, “in order that intelligence might rule the empire.”

Nor is the idea of universal freedom less ancient or more Western in its origin. It has been the inspiration of poet and statesman ; the dream of Roman gladiator and Greek slave ; of Israelitish brick-maker and Russian serf. The idea of local self-government was already historical at the time of the colonization of North America. Among the Germanic ancestors of the colonists, the custom was so general for the inhabitants of a district to control their local affairs, that it has been said : ‘One leading principle pervaded the primeval polity of the Goths ; where the law was administered, the law was made.” *

In ancient England, local self-government was found along with the common political and territorial division of tithings, hundreds, burghs, counties, and shires, in which the body of the inhabitants had a voice in managing their own

* Frothingham’s, ‘* The Republic of the United States,”’ p. 14, affairs. Local self-government was the germinal idea of Anglo-Saxon polity.

So is the notion of universal education common to all philosophy. That it is yet to be realized, only emphasizes the aspiration.

John of Nassau, in the sixteenth century, urged upon the States-General that they should “establish free schools where children of quality as well as of poor families, for a very small sum, could be well and Christianly educated and brought up.” He saw the fruitfulness of a wise and stateadministered system of universal education. This he said to his subjects “ would be the greatest and most useful work you could ever accomplish, for God and Christianity, and for the Netherlands as well.” *

In the middle of the tenth century, the Arabian Caliph Alhakim, at Cordova, besides schools in every village, established pvente seven others at his own expense, where the children of indigent parents were instructed free of charge. Prior to this even, Abderrahman I. had established, in addition to the usual agencies, high-schools for girls, taught by female teachers. The expulsion of the Jews, the effects of the Inquisition, and the limited oppartihities and means of education, prevented the influence of this early Arabian learning ee being immediately felt in the colonies of the early Spanish explorers.t

The very barbarism of the uninstructed but self-dependent Saxons and Germans attracted Alfred and Charlemagne, and schools and universities attest the faithfulness of their service.

Charles X and Gustavus Adolphus did for Sweden and their generations what America, with all her achievement, has failed to do since—made education so common that in

* Motley’s, ‘‘ Rise of the Dutch Republic.”

+ See, in the ‘ Report of the United States Commissioner of Education,’’ a collection of facts relative to the Old World early ideas of education, 1875, p. 13. Also ‘ Circular of Information,’? No. 1—1873.

INTRODUCTION. 5 the year 1637 (the year of the founding of Harvard) “not a single peasant’s child was unable to read and write.” *

In the previous century, under William, Holland, having founded the universities of Leyden and Frankfort, supplemented them by Latin or “great schools,” and lower, or public, or “small schools,” for the elementary training. Fixed salaries were paid to such as, by an examination before the magistrates, had shown their competency. Following the Union of Utrecht (1579), it was ordered that ‘the inhabitants of towns and villages should, within six weeks, find good and competent schoolmasters.” Two years later, it was further provided that “such as neglected to do this should be bound to receive the schoolmasters sent to them,” and provide the usual compensation.+ In the year 1618 the Synod of the Protestant Episcopal Dutch Church of Dort urged that schools be instituted, ‘“‘not only in cities, but in towns and country places.” So common was the impulse, it is said, that ‘neither the perils of war, nor the busy pursuit of gain, nor the excitement of political strife, ever caused them to neglect the duty of educating their offspring. Schools were everywhere provided at the public expense, with good schoolmasters to instruct the children of all classes in the usual branches of education.” t

Motley, the historian, is authority for the statement * that in 1635 the Latin school at Dordrecht had been in existence for some centuries, || and was one of the most famous institutions of Northwestern Europe. It frequently instructed six hundred students brought from all parts of the continent. It was a training-school for a nation of merchants, and, though classical, was eminently practical as fitted to the social conditions. “The one linguistic need of the boys,”

+ Compare this provision with that of the Massachusetts law of 1642, p. 16.

t Broadhead’s ‘‘ History of New York,’ vol. i, p. 462.

# See his ‘‘ John De Witt,’’ p. 35.

| Founded about 1290.

said Motley, “was instruction in Latin and French. No progress in public life was possible without a knowledge of these tongues.” *

Mr. Motley concludes that the New England colonists gained their educational impulse more from the Netherlands than from their own country. And a recent writer,} after asserting that the influence of the Dutch in shaping our educational life has not been enough regarded, says: “ Our free public-school system of which we are justly so proud seems to have its beginnings distinctly traceable to the earliest life of the Dutch colonies here in America, and to have had its prototype in the free schools in which Holland had led the van of the world.” .

It was a favorite doctrine of the protesting Luther that every child was worthy to have the best education—languages, history, music, mathematics — everything that can contribute to his highest development. And in a “ Letter to Magistrates” (1524), after recounting the advantages to the Church and to the religious life of the individual, he insists that, “if there were no soul, no heaven, no future after this life, and temporal affairs were to be administered solely with a view to the present, it would yet be a sufficient reason for establishing in every place the best schools, both for boys and girls; that the world, merely to maintain its outward prosperity, has need of shrewd and accomplished men and women.” Taking the sentiment as, typical of a national idea, Hon. Henry Barnard speaks of the “common school” as “only an improvement on the parochial schools of Germany.” t

Once more: John Calvin, at Geneva, in the sixteenth century, made education, so fon as he might, obligatory upon all ; and, to-day, the re cantons of Switzerland enjoy

* It would seem as if the founders of the Boston mae School adopted the form of this, without the social demand (see p. 338).

tL Bs Nee in ‘“‘ Johns Hopkins Studies in History,” series iii, p. 15.

t ‘‘ American Journal of Education, ” vol. x, p. 82.

INTRODUCTION. wg the beneficent influences of a law of whose significance the author little dreamed. Tracing the growth of this impulse, George Bancroft says : “The common-school system was derived from Geneva, the work of John Calvin ; introduced by Luther into Germany ; by John Knox into Scotland ; and so became the property of the English-speaking nation.” *

So instances of old ideas clustering about this common sovereignty and universal education might be cited indefinitely. No stronger word, however, has been said in the interests of the latter, and the enforcement of school provisions and attendance, than by Plato, in his “ Laws.” Indeed, throughout both this and the “ Republic,” one frequently falls upon ideas peculiarly modern, and especially so of education.

In the “ Laws,” as a part of a discussion on schools and their importance to the state, the Athenian stranger is made to say : “In these several schools let there be dwellings for teachers who shall be brought from foreign parts by pay ; and let the frequenters [learners] be taught the art of war, and the art of music ; and they shall come, not only if their parents please, but if they do not please ; and, if then education be neglected, there shall be compulsory education, of all and sundry, as the saying is, so far as this is possible ; and the pupils shall be oerdod as belonging to the state rather than to their parents.” +

That these sentiments can not be more definitely derived, only marks their universality. They form a kind of ideal of civilization ; and the problem that the states were set to solve had been a long-established theory of thinkers and statesmen. ~ The English, as the later born of European nations, was the heir of all the East ; and among the early colonists to this country were specimens of both individuals and families from the highest level of English thought. There

* «¢ History of the United States,’’ vol. iii., p. 100.

t ‘‘ Laws’ (Jowett’s translation), book vii, p. 732. A presentation of Plato’s ‘“‘ Theory of Education’? appeared in the *‘ Presbyterian Review”? for July, 1887, by Prof. J. Watson.

were English Churchmen in Virginia, English Puritans in Massachusetts, English Catholics in Maryland, and English Quakers in Pennsylvania. And, not ignoring the early educational attitude of Dutch and Swede, Spanish Saracen and modern German, the united colonies were founded and school systems organized by somewhat homogeneous forces —a people of common stock, having common political instincts, and with the tradition of common institutions. In England they sprang from a superior class : a rank that produced Milton and Sir Walter Raleigh and Locke; Hampden and Cromwell ; Carver, Eaton, and Winthrop ; Robinson, Cotton, and\Davenport. Of the first six hundred who landed in Massachusetts, one in thirty, it is said, was a graduate of the English Cambridge. These and their companions were rare men, They had the schooling for a service the like of whose execution, in completeness and good sense, the world has never equaled.*

“With matchless wisdom they joined liberty and learning in a perpetual and holy alliance, binding the latter to bless every child with instruction, which the former invests with the rights and duties of citizenship. They made education and sovereignty coextensive, by making both universal.” + 2

* Two interesting papers were published some years ago: the one in 1859, ‘‘ The American System of Education,’’ by Dr. E. O. Haven; and the other the ‘‘ Common School Historically ’’—a most valuable summary made in 1873, by Prof. David Putnam, and read before the Ohio Teachers’ Association. Both are well worth reading on this point.

+ E, E. White, ‘‘ Proceedings of Nationa] Education Association,’’ 1882.

Chapter I. The Earliest American Schools

IN a prefatory note to a recent oration, the Rev. Phillips Brooks records that “the Public Latin School of Boston enjoys the distinction of being the oldest existing school within the bounds of the United States.” *

As frequently happens of sweeping statements concerning “first events” and “ oldest institutions,” this one of Dr. Brooks seems questionable. A similar claim has been made for Dorchester, Hartford, Brooklyn, and Virginia. Indeed, it is known that various schools had been established prior to that in Boston, one of which, the school of the Reformed Dutch Church in New York, founded as early as 1633, continues to the present.

Those in Virginia, though established earlier, had generally a short existence. Schools in the three sections + were very unlike, and were typical of very dissimilar institutions.

1. The New York Settlements.

The Dutch West India Company, organized in 1621, received, nine years after, instructions from the States-General

* Founded 1635. + New England, New York, and Virginia.

of Holland, among which occurred the following order, “to all founders of colonies”: Patroons should particularly exert themselves “ to find speedy means to maintain a clergyman and a schoolmaster, in order that divine service and zeal for religion may be planted in that country.”* And it was required that to this end “each householder and inhabitant should bear such tax and public charge as should be considered proper for their maintenance.”

Four years later, in an official estimate of the company’s expenses, the schoolmaster is entered at three hundred and sixty florins per annum (just one fourth that of the clergyman).t Under these provisions, the educational policy of New Amsterdam was unbroken, and for many years more or less uniform. The second Director-General of the new province was Wouter Van Twiller, who arrived at Manhattan in the year 1633, and with him Adam Roelandsen, the first schoolmaster. The latter remained nine years. With the advent of the new administration, the first school-tax was levied, four pounds being collected. This would seem. to give color to Brooklyn’s claim to have had the first Free public school in the United States. t

Corel de Beauvois, a recent arrival from Holland, was called to take charge of the school; adding to his duties as instructor those of grave-digger, court bell-ringer, and precentor. During this period, and for many years thereafter, indeed until 1808, when a special board of trustees was appointed, this school, both for support and management, was in the hands of the local congregation of the Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. It was perhaps only an elementary parochial school, receiving now and then aid from the public treasury, and, while controlled by the Church, was maintained

* “ Colonial History of New York,’’ vol. i, p. 99. These volumes are valuable not alone for New York, but for all the early colonies.

t See article ‘‘ Brooklyn” in Kiddle and Schem’s ** Cyclopedia of Education.”’

for the use of the general public. From its founding it has a continuous history,* through a long line of teachers, legislative and ecclesiastical provisions, and educational progress,

Though Stuyvesant wrote in 1642, “‘ Nothing is of greater importance than the right, early instruction of youth,” no care seems to have been shown for more than the rudiments, including, besides reading, writing, and arithmetic, the doctrines of the Church, and the fundamental “‘ Freedoms, Privileges, and Exemptions,” granted to the colonists, through the West India Company. {

But in the year 1658, while yet Stuyvesant was Director, the burgomasters petitioned “ for a fit person as Latin Schoolmaster, not doubting that the number of persons who wil send their children to such teacher will, from year to year, increase, until an Academy will be formed, whereby this place to great splendor will have attained.” The petition was granted, and the first classical school was instituted— nearly a quarter of a century after the founding of the Boston Latin School. The first principal was one Dr. Alexander Carolus—a professional teacher—who was paid out of the public treasury five hundred guilders ($187.50) annually, was given the use of a house and garden, received six guilders from each scholar, and was privileged, in addition, to practice medicine !

During this early period, from the first, teachers, whether of private, parish, or public schools, were subjected to an established and formal examination ; and, while licensed by the council of “nine men,” must be sanctioned by the deacons of the Church.

* This has been well and fully written by H. W. Dunshee, in “‘ A History of the School of the Reformed Protestant Church in New York.”’

+ It was ordered (see ‘‘ New York Colonial MSS.,”’ edited by George Bancroft) that “‘ no other religion should be publicly admitted in New Netherland, except the Reformed, as it was then preached and practiced by public authority in the United Netherlands.”

¢ Dunshee, p. 51.

Besides Roelandsen and Cornelison, of elementary teachers, there were others. Mr. Dunshee, the historian of the school, speaks of certain private schools, of Jan Stevenson and Aryaen Jansen, and “other teachers in hired houses,” prior to 1649. By the middle of the century, New Amsterdam had a population of eight hundred. This was doubled in the next decade, and, by the close of Stuyvesant’s administration, fifteen teachers are recorded as having served in the settlement, some of them with long terms. As early as 1650 they were paid regularly out of the public treasury; the excise money being set apart for this purpose. The pay there as elsewhere, then and since, was probably poor enough; for a few years later one William Vestens headed the long line of petitioners for “an increase of salary.” *

2. Virginia and the Virginia Company.

Even prior to New Amsterdam and Boston, the needs of education were being considered by the older colony of Virginia. These also were an earnest body of men. In 1619 Sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer to the London Company, moved in the English Parliament, the grant of fifteen thou-

* It has frequently happened that the services performed and the wages received by the common-school teacher have been sadly disproportioned. Concerning the former it is interesting to note the functions of the teacher in the early colonial period. He was usually, both in New England and the middle colonies, clerk of the town, chorister of the church, and official visitor of the sick. Indeed, far into the last century, the teacher was scarcely differentiated from the preacher. The Rev. Gideon Sheets, when engaged as minister at Rensselaerwick, New York, was required among other duties ‘‘to bring up both the heathens and their children in the Christian religion; to teach the catechism; and to pay attention also to the office of schoolmaster for old and young.’”? The following extract from the ‘Town Book,” indicates the manifold duties of a New England schoolmaster of 1661: 1. To act as court-messenger ; 2. To serve summonses, 3. To conduct certain ceremonial services of the church, 4. To lead the Sunday choir; 5. To ring the bell for public worship; 6. To dig the graves; 7. To take charge of the school; 8. To perform other occasional duties.

Adam Roclandsen not only taught the youth, but took in washing also!

THE EARLIEST AMERICAN SCIIOOLS. 13 sand acres of land for a university. It was to be a great Kpiscopal college—a preparatory school to English learning and English religion. The grant was made. The king appealed to the churches for contributions. Interest was aroused. Schools as well as a college were projected. Fifteen hundred pounds were contributed “toward the erecting of some churches and some schools for the education of the children of those barbarians.” Two years later, upon the arrival of the Royal James, a subscription was opened by the chaplain, Rev. Mr. Copeland, for the erection of a free school. The company gave “one thousand acres of land, five servants, and an overseer, for the maintenance of a master and an usher.” * Toward the erection of the house, also, the company subscribed one hundred pounds, to which were afterward added other small amounts of money, and afew books. About the same time (1621) two English crews gave nearly sixty-seven pounds;+ and the year following a bequest of three hundred pounds was left to the proposed college. Matters were promising. Affairs, educational and commercial, were shaping themselves to the profit of both the company and the settlers. School and college were in sight; buildings and land had been provided. But the terrible Indian war of 1622 came on. Settlements were laid waste, houses and property destroyed, and lives lost. Education was out of the question; rather, the education most needed was that of arms and self-defense. Neither school nor college, however, was forgotten. Immediately steps were taken to increase the funds and replace the buildings. Collections were made throughout the kingdom, in English factories, and on board ships. But the summer following, it was ordered that “all the moneys collected be deposited, until the plantation be so settled as there may be use of a school there.” t

* E. D. Neill, ‘* Virginia Company of London,” p. 211. + Warren and Clark. ‘‘ Public Libraries of the United States,’’ p. 22. } “ Virginia Vetusta,”’ Neill, p. 180.

In the Bermuda (Somers) Islands there was already a considerable population—some five thousand inhabitants— and a school regularly established. The bequest (three hundred pounds) noted above, failing of its purpose because of the Indian massacre, was turned (1622) to the Somers Island Company, on condition that they “ educate three Virginia Indian children, and, when they were of proper age, put them into business or send them back to convert their relations.” The Bermuda school, both then and later, had a reputation on two continents, and claimed the thought of the philosopher Berkeley, who sought to found a college there. Richard Norwood, writing from the island (1645), stated that he had been teaching in that place for thirty years, and at that time had twenty pupils.*

That on the continent also the efforts stand as something more than vain attempts, appears from an extract made from a thoroughly entertaining description of Virginia, 1649. The writer says: “I may not forget to tell you we havea free school, with two hundred acres of land, a fine house upon it, forty milch kine, and other accommodations to it; the benefactor deserves perpetual memory; his name is _Mr. Benjamin Symmes, worthy to be cherished. Other ‘petty schools we have too.” +

3. Karly New England Schools.

On the 13th of April, 1635, the people of Boston, in townmeeting assembled, impressed not less with their need of schools than with their appreciation of education in general, requested “ Brother Philemon Purmont to become schoolmaster, for the teaching and nourteuring of children” in the town. In part pay for his services, thirty acres of land were

* It was here that Bishop Berkeley proposed founding his college, and in anticipation of which he spent some years at Newport, R. I. For further notice of the schools of the island, see Neill’s ‘* Virginia Company of London,”’ p. 214.

t ‘‘ Massachusetts Historical Collections,” vol. xix, p. 119.

voted him by the young colony. Almost immediately “a garden plot was voted to Mr. Danyell Maude, schoolmaster,” also. Both of these occurred within less than a year from the founding of the town. John Winthrop, writing, 1645, said: “Divers free schools were erected at Roxbury (for the maintenance whereof every inhabitant bound some house or land for a yearly allowance forever), and at Boston, where they made an order to allow forever fifty pounds to the master, and an house, and thirty pounds to an usher who should also teach to read, write, and cipher. Indian children were to be taught freely. The charge to be by yearly contribution, either by voluntary allowance, or by rate of such as refused; the order being confirmed by the General Court.” Sixteen years before, wild and warlike natives alone stood between Virginia and the proposed Charles City school and Henrico College; three years before, the infant school of the Reformed Church was beginning its long career. Looking back upon these events, it is easy to see that they were big with promise of the marvelous achievements of the first half of that great seventeenth century, destined to do so much for liberty and intelligence. These three settlements were civilization centers for a continent. _ Little can now be definitely known of the first few years of the Boston school or schoolmaster. They were brave, and not the less scholarly men, who were laying the foundations of a new commonwealth. Posterity is left to infer the greatness of the deeds of those years from the outcome. Other Massachusetts towns also showed a vigorous and liberal spirit of culture. Rehoboth was set off from Weymouth as a colony about 1643, and the fifth man upon the list was a professional schoolmaster, who taught the village urchins twelve months in the year. Plymouth Colony had ordered schools, 1650; while, ten years before, Dorchester had petitioned for some islands “for and toward the maintenance of a free school.” * Ipswich and Salem each, had