Part 230

"The Public Latin School of Boston enjoys the distinction of being the oldest existing school within the bounds of the United States. It was founded in the spring of 1635, thus ante-dating Harvard College, and has been in continuous existence ever since, with the interruption of a few months, during the siege of Boston, 1775-1776." The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the school was celebrated April 23, 1885, on which occasion the Reverend Phillips Brooks, D. D., delivered an address from which the following passages are taken: "The colony under Winthrop arrived in the Arabella and founded Boston in 1630. On the 4th of September, 1633, the Griffin brought John Cotton from the Lincolnshire Boston, full of pious spirit and wise plans for the new colony with which he had cast in his lot. It has been suggested that possibly we owe to John Cotton the first suggestion of the first town-school. … However this may be, here is the town record of the 13th of the second month, 1635. It is forever memorable, for it is the first chapter of our Book of Genesis, the very cradle of all our race: 'At a general meeting upon publique notice … it was then generally agreed upon that our brother Philemon Pormort shall be entreated to become scholemaster, for the teaching and nourtering of children among us.' It was two hundred and fifty years ago to-day [April 23, 1885] just nineteen years after the day when William Shakespeare died, just seventy-one years after the day when he was born. How simple that short record is, and how unconscious that short view is of the future which is wrapped up in it! Fifty-nine thousand children who crowd the Boston public schools to-day—and who can count what thousands yet unborn?—are to be heard crying out for life in the dry, quaint words of that old vote. By it the first educational institution, which was to have continuous existence in America, and in it the public school system of the land, came into being. Philemon Pormort, the first teacher of the Latin School, is hardly more than a mere shadow of a name. It is not even clear that he ever actually taught the school at all. A few years later, with Mr. Wheelwright, after the Hutchinson excitement, he disappears into the northern woods, and is one of the founders of Exeter, in New Hampshire. There are rumors that he came back to Boston and died here, but it is all very uncertain. … The name 'free school' in those days seems to have been used to characterize an institution which should not be restricted to any class of children, and which should not be dependent on the fluctuating attendance of scholars for its support. It looked forward to ultimate endowment, like the schools of England. The town set apart the rent of Deer Island, and some of the other islands in the harbor, for its help. {728} All the great citizens, Governor Winthrop, Governor Vane, Mr. Bellingham, and the rest, made generous contributions to it. But it called, also, for support from those who sent their children to it, and who were able to pay something; and it was only of the Indian children that it was distinctly provided that they should be 'taught gratis.' It was older than any of the schools which, in a few years, grew up thick around it. The same power which made it spring out of the soil was in all the rich ground on which these colonists, unlike any other colonists which the world has ever seen, had set their feet. Roxbury had its school under the Apostle Eliot in 1645. Cambridge was already provided before 1643. Charlestown did not wait later than 1636. Salem and Ipswich were, both of them, ready in 1637. Plymouth did not begin its system of public instruction till 1663. It was in 1647 that the General Court enacted that resolve which is the great charter of free education in our Commonwealth, in whose preamble and ordinance stand the immortal words: 'That learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers, in church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors, it is therefore ordered that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read.' There can be no doubt, then, of our priority. But mere priority is no great thing. The real interest of the beginning of the school is the large idea and scale on which it started. It taught the children, little Indians and all, to read and write. But there seems every reason to suppose that it taught also the Latin tongue, and all that then was deemed the higher knowledge. It was the town's only school till 1682."

_The Oldest School in America, pages 5-24._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1636. Massachusetts. Harvard College.

"The first settlers in New England, recognizing the importance of a higher education than could be given in the common schools, began at once the founding of a university. The avowed object of this university was the training of young men for the ministry. Nothing could show clearer the spirit of these early colonists. Though less than four thousand in number, and scattered along the shores of Massachusetts Bay in sixteen hamlets, they were, nevertheless, able to engage in such an enterprise before adequate provision had been made for food, raiment, shelter, a civil government, or divine worship; at a time when soil and climate had disappointed them, and their affairs were in a most critical condition; for, not only were they called to face famine, disease, and death, but the mother country and the surrounding savage tribes were threatening them with war. … It was near the close of 1636, a little more than six years after the landing of the Puritans, when this first step was taken by the General Court of the Massachusetts Colony. At this assembly, presided over by Sir Henry Vane, governor of the colony, the General Court agreed to give £400 (a munificent sum for the time) towards the founding of a school or college, but left the question of its location and building to be determined by the Court that was to sit in September of the following year. This, it is said, was the first assembly 'in which the people by their representatives ever gave their own money to found a place of education.' At the next Court it was decided to locate the college at Newtown, or 'the New Towne,' and twelve of the principal magistrates and ministers were chosen to carry out this design. A few months later, they changed the name of the town to Cambridge, not only to tell their posterity whence they came, but also, as Quincy aptly says, to indicate 'the high destiny to which they intended the institution should aspire.' Another year, however, passed before the College was organized. The impulse given to it then was due to aid which came from so unexpected a quarter that it must have seemed to the devout men of New England as a clear indication of the divine favor. The Reverend John Harvard, a Non-conformist minister, was graduated, in 1635, from the Puritan college of Emmanuel, at Cambridge, England, and came, two years later, to America and settled in Charlestown, where he immediately took a prominent part in town affairs. His contemporaries gave him the title of reverend, and he is said to have officiated occasionally in Charlestown as 'minister of God's word.' One has recently said of him that he was 'beloved and honored, a well-trained and accomplished scholar of the type then esteemed,' and that in the brief period of his life in America —scarcely more than a year—he cemented more closely friendships that had been begun in earlier years. The project of a college was then engrossing the thought of these early friends and doubtless he also became greatly interested in it. Thus it happened that, when his health failed, through his own love of learning and through sympathy with the project of his daily associates, he determined to bequeath one-half of his estate, probably about £800, besides his excellent library of three hundred and twenty volumes, towards the endowment of the college. This bequest rendered possible the immediate organization of the college, which went into operation 'on the footing of the ancient institutions of Europe,' and, out of gratitude to Harvard, the General Court voted that the new institution should bear his name."

_G. G. Bush, Harvard, pages 12-15._

ALSO IN: _J. Quincy, History of Harvard University._

_S. A. Eliot, Sketch of the History of Harvard College._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1642-1732. New England and New York. Early Common Schools.

"New England early adopted, and has, with a single exception, constantly maintained the principle that the public should provide for the instruction of all the youth. That which elsewhere, as will be found, was left to local provision, as in New York; or to charity, as in Pennsylvania; or to parental interest, as in Virginia, was in most parts of New England early secured by law. … The act of 1642 in Massachusetts, whose provisions were adopted in most of the adjacent colonies, was admirable as a first legislative school law. It was watchful of the neglect of parents, and looked well after the ignorant and the indigent. But it neither made schooling free, nor imposed a penalty for its neglect. … Schools were largely maintained by rates, were free only to the necessitous, and in not a few of the less populous districts closed altogether or never opened. This led, five years later, to more stringent legislation. … As suggesting the general scope and tenor of the law, the following extract is made. … {729} 'It is therefore ordered by this Court and authority thereof that every township within this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him, to write and read; whose wages shall be paid, either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those who order the prudentials of the town shall appoint; provided that those who send their children be not oppressed by paying much more than they can have them taught for in the adjoining towns. And it is further ordered that where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or house-holders, they shall set up a grammar-school, the master thereof being able to instruct youths so far as they may be fitted for the university; and if any town neglect the performance hereof, above one year, then every such town shall pay five pounds per annum to the next such school, till they shall perform this order.' … Three years after the law just cited Connecticut passed a very similar one. … In Rhode Island there was no attempt at a school system prior to the efforts of John Howland about 1790. There were schools in both Providence and Newport; but the colony was small (with a population of less than ten thousand in 1700), broken into feeble settlements, and offering little opportunity for organization. … It is claimed that, at the surrender of the Dutch in New York (1664), so general was the educational spirit, almost every town in the colony had its regular school and more or less permanent teachers. After the occupation of the province by the English, little attention was given to education. … Thirteen years after the surrender, a Latin school was opened in the city; but the first serious attempt to provide regular schooling was in the work of the 'Society for the Propagation of the Gospel' (1704) in the founding of Trinity School. The society kept up an efficient organization, for many years, and at the opening of the Revolution had established and chiefly supported more than twenty schools in the colony. About 1732, also, there was established in New York city a school after the plan of the Boston Latin School, free as that was free, and which became, according to eminent authority, the germ of the later King's (now Columbia) College."

_R. G. Boone, Education in the United States, chapter 3._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1683-1779. Pennsylvania. Origin of the University of Pennsylvania.

"Education had not been over-looked in the policy of Penn. In his Frame of Government we read: 'The governor and provincial council shall erect and order all public schools, and encourage and reward the authors of useful sciences and laudable inventions, in the said province. … And … a committee of manners, education and arts, that all wicked and scandalous living may be prevented, and that youth may be successively trained up in virtue and useful knowledge and arts.' The first movement to establish an educational institution of a high grade was in the action of the Executive Council which proposed, November 17, 1683, 'That Care be Taken about the Learning and Instruction of Youth, to wit: A School of Arts and Sciences.' It was not until 1689, however, that the 'Public Grammar School' was set up in Philadelphia. This institution, founded upon the English idea of a 'free' school,' was formally chartered in 1697 as the 'William Penn Charter School.' It was intended as the head of a system of schools for all, rather than a single school for a select few, an idea which the founders of the Charitable School, fifty years later, had also in mind—an idea which was never carried out in the history of either institution. The failure of Penn's scheme of government, and the turmoil during the early part of the eighteenth century arising from the conflicts between different political parties, for a time influenced very decidedly educational zeal in the province. The government, which at the outset had taken such high ground on the subject, ceased to exert itself in behalf of education, and the several religious denominations and the people themselves in neighborhood organizations took up the burden and planted schools as best they could throughout the growing colony. … Feeling the importance for some provision to supplement the education then given in the established schools, Benjamin Franklin as early as 1743 drew up a proposal for establishing an academy. … He secured the assistance of a number of friends, many of them members of the famous Junto, and then published his pamphlet entitled 'Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania.' … On all sides the paper met with great favor and generous support. The result was the organization of a board of trustees, consisting of 24 of those who had subscribed to the scheme of the Academy, with Franklin as president. This body immediately set about to realize the object of the pamphlet, and nourished by subscriptions, lotteries, and gifts the Academy was placed in a flourishing condition. … The Academy comprised three schools, the Latin, the English, and the mathematical, over each of which was placed a master, one of whom was the rector of the institution. … The English School was neglected. The other schools were favored, especially the Latin School. In the eyes of Franklin and many of the supporters of the Academy, the English School was the one of chief importance. What we would call a 'starving out' process was begun by which the English School was kept in a weak condition, most of the funds going to the Latin School. … The success of the Academy was so gratifying to all interested in it that it was determined to apply for a charter. This was granted to the trustees by Thomas and Richard Penn, the proprietors, on July 13, 1753. Desirous at the same time of enlarging the course of instruction, the trustees elected Mr. William Smith teacher of logic, rhetoric, natural and moral philosophy. Mr. Smith accepted the position and entered upon his duties at the Academy in May, 1754. The history of the institution from this date, whether known as the Academy or the College, to 1779 is the history of the life of William Smith."

_J. L. Stewart, Historical Sketch of the University of Pennsylvania (United States Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, 1892, number 2: Benjamin Franklin and the University, chapter 4)._

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EDUCATION: A. D. 1701-1717. Connecticut. Yale College.

"For sixty years the only school for higher education in New England had been Harvard College, at Cambridge. The people, and especially the clergy, of Connecticut naturally desired the benefit of a similar establishment nearer home. The three ministers of New Haven, Milford, and Branford first moved in the enterprise. Ten ministers, nine of them being graduates of Harvard College, met at Branford [1701] and made a contribution from their libraries of about forty volumes in folio 'for the founding of a college.' Other donations presently came in. An Act of Incorporation was granted by the General Court. It created a body of trustees, not to be more than eleven in number nor fewer than seven, all to be clergymen and at least forty years of age. The Court endowed the College with an annual grant, subject to be discontinued at pleasure, of one hundred and twenty pounds in 'country pay,'—equivalent to sixty pounds sterling. The College might hold property 'not exceeding the value of five hundred pounds per annum'; its students were exempted from the payment of taxes and from military service; and the Governor and his Council gave a formal approval of its application to the citizens for pecuniary id. … The first President was Abraham Pierson, minister of Killingworth, at which place he continued to reside, though the designated seat of the College was at Saybrook. Eight students were admitted, and arranged in classes. At each of the first two annual commencements one person, at the third three persons, received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. President Pierson was succeeded, at his death, by Mr. Andrew, minister at Milford, to which place the elder pupils were accordingly transferred, while the rest went to Saybrook, where two tutors had been provided to assist their studies. … For nearly twenty years the College of Connecticut … continued to be an unsatisfactory experiment. While the rector taught some youth at Milford, and two tutors had other pupils at Saybrook, and the few scores of books which had been obtained for a library were divided between the two places, there was small prospect of the results for which institutions of learning are created. Notwithstanding the general agreement that whatever facilities for the higher education could be commanded should be brought together and combined, the choice of the place was embarrassed by various considerations. … Saybrook, Wethersfield, Hartford, and New Haven competed with each other for the preference, offering such contributions as they were able towards the erection of a college building. The offer from New Haven, larger than that of any other town, was seven hundred pounds sterling. The plan of fixing the College there, promoted by the great influence of Governor Saltonstall, was adopted by the trustees; and with money obtained by private gifts, and two hundred and fifty pounds accruing from a sale of land given by the General Assembly, a building was begun [1717], which finally cost a thousand pounds sterling. … The Assembly gave the College a hundred pounds. Jeremiah Dummer sent from England a substantial present of books. Governor Saltonstall contributed fifty pounds sterling, and the same sum was presented by Jahleel Brenton, of Newport, in Rhode Island. But the chief patronage came from Elihu Yale,—a native of New Haven, but long resident in the East Indies, where he had been Governor of Fort St. George. He was now a citizen of London, and Governor of the East India Company. His contributions, continued through seven years, amounted to some four hundred pounds sterling; and he was understood to have made arrangements for a further bounty of five hundred pounds, which, however, through unfortunate accidents, never came to its destination. The province made a grant of forty pounds annually for seven years."

_J. G. Palfrey, History of New England, book 4, chapter 11, and book 5, chapter 4 (volume 4)._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1746-1787. New York. King's College, now Columbia College.