The first places of worship in Virginia were thus described by Captain John Smith:
"Wee did hang an awning, which is an old saile, to three of foure trees to shadow us from the Sunne; our walls were railes of wood; our seats unhewed trees till we cut plankes; our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighbouring trees. In foul weather we shifted into an old rotten tent; this came by way of adventure for new. This was our Church till we built a homely thing like a barne set upon Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge, and earth; so also was the walls; the best of our houses were of like curiosity, that could neither well defend from wind nor rain."373
In a short time a timber church sixty feet long was built and some years afterward this church was replaced by a brick one. Some of the churches in the Southern colonies were modeled in shape after the old English churches and were built of stone, but most of them were wooden buildings without "spires or towers or steeples."
In 1646 the Dutch built a little wooden church in Fort Orange. The first church at Albany was built in 1657 and it was simply a blockhouse with loopholes for permitting guns to be fired through in case of an Indian attack and three small cannon were placed on the roof. The first church in New Amsterdam was built of stone and it was seventy-two feet long. The first church in Brooklyn was built in 1666 and it had thick stone walls with a steep peaked roof with an open belfry on top. Many of the old Dutch churches were six-sided or eight-sided with a high, steep, pyramidal roof, topped with a belfry on which was a weather-vane.
Not long after landing at Plymouth the Puritans built a fort, which was used as a Lord's Day meeting-place till a meeting-house was built in 1648. As other settlements were made, religious services were at first held in tents or under trees and where a settler had a roomy house this often was used. The first meeting-house at Boston had mud walls, a thatched roof, and earthen floor, which was used till 1640.
The first meeting-houses in New England were square and made of logs with the spaces between the logs filled with clay and with steep roofs which were thatched with reeds and long grass and with a beaten earth for a floor. These buildings were often quite small, one having been thirty-six feet long, twenty feet wide, and twelve feet high, and another was but twenty-six feet long and twenty feet wide. Later these were replaced by larger and better buildings and these early rude structures were used for granaries and storehouses.
The second form of meeting-houses was a square wooden building having a truncated pyramidal roof with a belfry or turret. One of this type, built at Hingham in 1681, known as the "Old Ship," is still in existence. The largest and finest of this second type was the First Church at Boston, a large square brick building, built in 1713, and which was used till 1808.
The third type of New England colonial meeting-houses had a lofty wooden steeple at one end, of which the old South Church at Boston, a well-known historic building, is a good example.
In the South the churches were often placed by the waterside and people came to them over the water in various kinds of vessels. In New England the first meeting-houses were often built in the valleys, or the meadow-lands and the houses of the settlers were built about them. As the population increased there could no longer be land available for all in the valleys and the houses were built out near watering places and pasturage for convenience and so the meeting-houses began to be placed on hill-tops. This was done so as to be a lookout for danger from Indians and also so it could be seen from all parts of the country as the people had to journey through narrow roads and bridle-paths obscured by trees and brush. Too, there was a pride in such a location, to show off a fine meeting-house, which would thus be visible for many miles around.
The old New England meeting-houses were used for various purposes, one of the strangest being for the nailing of the heads of wolves to the logs on the outside. Wolves were so numerous and so destructive and so feared that rewards were paid for their killing and to show this the heads were nailed to the outer walls of the meeting-house. This was all the decoration that the outer walls of the building had for near a century as during the seventeenth century it was considered vain and extravagant to paint them but by the middle of the eighteenth century paint became cheaper and more plentiful and the meeting-houses began not only to be painted but also in conspicuous colors and towns began to vie with one another in the most striking displays. One new meeting-house was painted a bright yellow and soon others were likewise adorned. "Brooklyn church, then, in 1762, ordered that the outside of its meeting-house be 'culered' in the approved fashion. The body of the house was painted a bright orange; the doors and 'bottom boards' a warm chocolate color; the 'window-jets,' corner-boards, and weather-boards white. What a bright nosegay of color! As a crowning glory Brooklyn people put up an 'Eleclarick Rod' on the gorgeous edifice, and proudly boasted that Brooklyn meeting-house was the 'newest, biggest and yallowest' in the county."374
There was no shade about the early meeting-houses in New England as the trees were cut down around it for fear of forest fires. There were no curtains nor window-blinds, so that the heat and blazing light in summer would make it bad for all in the church. They did often have heavy outside shutters but they could not be closed during services as the room would then be made too dark for the minister to see to read his sermon. Later the forests grew again and they were not cut away nor cleared up and the meeting-house would thus become dark and gloomy. Oiled paper was used in the windows of these early meeting-houses and later when glass came into use it was nailed in instead of being puttied.
The early meeting-house of the Puritans in New England were of a very simple interior with raftered walls and sanded puncheon floors or earthen floors. The early Dutch churches in New Netherlands also were plain and they were kept in the greatest cleanliness, scrubbed often and floors sanded with fine beach-sand. The churches of the Southern colonies were usually better furnished and flowers were used for decorations, which was never the case with the Puritans. The pulpits in all the churches were rather pretentious affairs, being elevated above the floor, enclosed, with a narrow flight of stairs leading up to them. At least in the early Puritan churches there was a sounding-board placed above the pulpit, which was a board supported from the roof by a slender iron rod.
In the earliest meeting-houses in New England the seats were made of rough hand-riven boards placed on legs and without backs. Later there were pews with narrow seats around the sides and high partition walls between. In the early Dutch churches the men had places in pews around the walls while chairs were placed in the center of the church for the women to occupy. In some of the Virginia churches the seats were comfortably cushioned. In later times in all the churches the pews were carefully assigned and persons who crowded into pews above their station were unceremoniously put out by those in charge.
The meeting-houses in New England were wholly without means of heating until the middle of the eighteenth century. Throughout the long and tedious services during the coldest weather of a bitter climate, attendants at the meetings had to get along as best they could. The men wore their heaviest clothing during the services. The minister, too, would keep himself wrapped up while in the pulpit just as on his way to the meeting-house. The women in the earlier times dressed to suit the temperature, but as wealth came fashion also entered in and thin silk hose, cloth or kid or silk slippers, linen underclothing, dresses with elbow sleeves and round low necks, and a thin cloth cape or mantle for the shoulders was too often in midwinter the Sunday apparel. The women did protect their heads with caps and mufflers and veils and their hands with gloves and muffs.
The officials must be given credit for trying to keep the meeting-house free from the winds as well as possible, as in some places it was ordered that during the cold weather "no doors be opened to the windward and only one door to the leeward." In 1725 in one place it was ordered that the "several doors of the meeting-house be taken care of and kept shut in very cold and windy seasons according to the lying of the wind from time to time; and that people in such windy weather come in at the leeward doors only, and take care that they are easily shut both to prevent the breaking of the doors and the making of a noise."375
In some of the early log meeting-houses the skins of wolves and other fur-bearing animals were made into bags which were nailed or tied to the benches in such a way as to let the people thrust their feet into them for warmth. In the bitterest weather foot-stoves were taken to the meeting-houses for the use of the women and children. During the middle of the eighteenth century stoves began to appear in the meeting-houses in New England, perhaps the first stove used having been at Hadley in 1734. But there was a hard fight to introduce stoves and it was near another century later before they came into general use.
If the meeting-house should have been situated in a town, at noon the people went to their homes or to the tavern or to neighbors' houses in that vicinity to eat their dinners and to warm themselves. If the meeting-house in the country was near the home of a hospitable farmer the congregation would go there at noon. But too often the meeting-house was away off at the top of a hill or in an out-of-the-way place and so there would be built near it a rough-like structure, known as the "noon-house." Sometimes it was called the "Sabba-day house" and again a "horse-hows," this last name because in some of the houses the horses were placed at one end. At the other end was built a large rough stone chimney. Of severe Sundays some one, a servant or an older son, would usually be sent at an early hour to start a good fire in this fireplace for warming the family after their cold ride. At noon all would repair to this house for warmth and for eating their dinner. Before starting for home a warming was again taken. Too, during the long sermons in forenoon and afternoon a servant or some member of the family would replenish the coals in the foot-stoves from the coals in the fireplace of this noon-house.
In front of the meeting-house there were usually horse-blocks, or stepping-stones, or hewn logs, for mounting their horses as usually all rode. All kinds of notices were posted on the meeting-house, notices of town-meetings, prohibitions from selling guns and powder to the Indians, notices of sales of cattle or farms, lists of town officers, copies of the laws against Sabbath-breaking, notices of intended marriages, and sometimes even scandalous and insulting libels. Often on the meeting-house green stood the stocks, pillory, cage, and whipping-post. The meeting-house was not only used for religious services, but also for town meetings and likewise as a store-house. Never having fire in it nor about it, it was the safest place for a powder-magazine and some place in it was fitted up for such purpose. Also grain was stored in its loft and in particular that which might have been given to the minister as pay for his services.
"In one church in the Connecticut valley, in a township where it was forbidden that tobacco be smoked upon the public streets, the church loft was used to dry and store the freshly cut tobacco-leaves which the inhabitants sold to the 'ungodly Dutch.' Thus did greed for gain lead even blue Connecticut Christians to profane the house of God."376
There were various ways in colonial times of calling the people to the religious services of Sunday morning. In the early times and particularly so in New England, they did not always have bells on the churches and various devices were used to let people know when it was time to go to church. The time of morning service was usually about nine o'clock and this was announced sometimes by the tooting of a horn or the blowing of a conch-shell or the sounding of a trumpet. The beating of a drum was a very common signal and some also used the firing of guns, in this latter the number of times firing was different from that signifying danger, so as not to frighten the people. Sometimes a flag was used to notify the people of meeting time, having been put out when time of notice arrived and left hanging out till time for the beginning of the service, when the flag was taken down. Some meeting-houses were supplied with belfries from which the conch or horn or trumpet was sounded, or whatever signal was used, and in other places a platform was made upon top of the meeting-houses for this purpose. When bells were used, in the early churches there were often no towers in which to place them and they were hung on trees near the meeting-house.
At the first signal from conch or trumpet or horn or drum, the people would be seen starting out from their homes. With some communities it was the custom for the congregation to stop at the church door and wait until the minister and his wife arrived and passed into the house and then all followed, of course the boys hanging back and coming in at the very last moment, shuffling and scraping and clattering with their heavy boots as they went up the stairs to their place in the loft. Other congregations entered the church as they came and then all arose as the minister entered and remained standing till he went into the pulpit and then sat down as he did. It was also the custom for the congregation to remain standing in the pews at the close of the service till the minister had come down from the pulpit, joined his wife, and passed out to the church-porch, there to greet the people as they would come out of the church.
It would seem that the most important officer in church and public life in New England was the tithing-man. "He was in a degree a constable, a selectman, a teacher, a tax-collector, an inspector, a sexton, a home-watcher, and above all, a Puritan Bumble, whose motto was Hic et ubique."377 Among his duties were the seeing that the children learned the church catechism, looking out that people went to church, inspecting the taverns to note that they were kept in an orderly manner and did not sell liquors to disorderly persons, and watching that boys and other persons should not go swimming in the water on week days. His most important duty, perhaps, was that of keeping order and proper decorum in the meeting-house by beating out the dogs, prodding the noisy boys, and awakening the sleeping adults. For this latter he had a long staff with a knob on one end to tap the sleeping men while on the other end was a fox-tail to dangle in the face of the sleeping women. The following from a journal of those early days tells how well he performed his duties and some of the effects thereof.
"June 3, 1646.—Allen Bridges hath bin chose to wake ye sleepers in meeting. And being much proude of his place, must needs have a fox taile fixed to ye ende of a long staff wherewith he may brush ye faces of them yt will have napps in time of discourse, likewise a sharpe thorne whereby he may pricke such as be most sound. On ye last Lord his day, as hee strutted about ye meeting-house, he did spy Mr. Tomlins sleeping with much comfort, hys head kept steadie by being in ye corner, and his hand grasping ye rail. And soe spying, Allen did quickly thrust his staff behind Dame Ballard and give him a grievous prick upon ye hand. Whereupon Mr. Tomlins did spring vpp mch above ye floore and with terrible force strike hys hand against ye wall; and also, to ye great wonder of all, prophanlie exclaim in a loud voice, curse ye wood-chuck, he dreaming so it seemed yt a wood-chuck had seized and bit his hand. But on coming to know where he was, and ye greate scandall he had committed, he seemed much abashed, but did not speak. And I think he will not soon again goe to sleepe in meeting."378
Among the Dutch in New Amsterdam there was a somewhat similar officer, "the voorleezer, or chorister, who was also generally the bell-ringer, sexton, grave-digger, funeral inviter, schoolmaster, and sometimes town clerk. He 'tuned the psalm'; turned the hour-glass; gave out the psalms on a hanging-board to the congregation; read the Bible; gave up notices to the dominie by sticking the papers in the end of a cleft stick and holding it up to the high pulpit."379
The ministers among the Puritans in New England were very greatly considered. The laity who were bold enough to criticize or disparage the minister or his teachings were severely punished. A woman who spoke harshly of her minister had her tongue placed in a cleft stick and made to stand thus in a public place. A man for declaring that he received no profit from his minister's sermons was fined and severely whipped. Worse than bodily punishment was excommunication, for if a minister pronounced such upon a member of his congregation he was excluded from partaking of the sacrament and the people of the church refrained from all communion with him in civil affairs, even from eating and drinking with him. Yet with all this great power of the ministers in early Puritan times, they were not permitted to perform the marriage-service, which was wholly a civil affair, nor could they pray or exhort at a funeral. The ordination of so important an officer as the minister was a very important event. This was celebrated by a great gathering of people and ministers for many miles around. It was a deeply serious affair and yet a great festival occasion, for frequently there was an ordination ball and always an ordination supper, where there was a plenty and a variety of things to eat and to drink.
Although the minister's calling was one of trust and honor it was not also one of profit. The salary was small and paid in different ways, not a large part of it in cash. It was the universal custom to provide a house for the minister and often this was among the very first houses built in a new town and at its laying out some of the best lots were set aside for his use. He was also provided with free pasturage for his horse, the village burial-ground having been placed at his disposal for pasture land. In the early days a large part of the salary was paid in corn and labor and the amount for each church member to give was fixed by the authorities. Cord-wood was another common contribution, and each male church-member was expected to give a load of wood delivered at the door of the parsonage. Any money contributed by strangers who chanced to attend the services was usually given to the minister. A spinning bee, a forerunner of the donation party of later times, was often held at the home of the minister, wherein each woman would take her spinning-wheel and flax and all would spend the day in spinning and give the outcome to the minister's family. Also the women would meet and make patchwork bed-quilts and give them to the minister's family. Some ministers would go out among the members of their congregations and beg supplies for themselves and families. Many of the ministers found it necessary to do outside work to make a living, such as farming on week days, taking young men to teach and to fit for college, compounding and selling drugs and medicines; while some were coopers, carpenters, rope-makers, millers, and cobblers. It took great thrift and economy on the part of the minister and his family to get along. The wife not only had to be zealous in religious practices but also in domestic practices and often she was the thriftiest wife of the community. Every kind of denial had to be made and yet with this poverty the minister's children were quite often well kept and trained and many ministers were enabled to help their sons to obtain a college education.
Fear of the Indians did not keep the Puritans away from the meeting-house, but it did cause them to go there armed. At first each man carried arms to church and then later a certain number were detailed to arm themselves. In 1642 in Massachusetts the law provided for six men to be at the meeting-house with muskets and powder and shot. The armed men were placed near the door so as to be ready to protect the congregation or to rush out in case of need. When the services were ended, the armed guards went out of the meeting-house first and then the other men and the women and children were last, thus to be protected. Too, it was the custom for the men always to sit at the door of the pew, next to the aisle, so they could be ready to get their arms and rush out in case of a fight. Also being at the door of the pew the father could better protect the other members of the family, and a man who would not have occupied this place would have been considered a poor kind of husband and father.
In the early colonial days in New England there were two services in the meeting-house on Sunday, in the forenoon and in the afternoon. The sermons were long, two or three hours not being uncommon and some even ran up to five hours in length. Added to these long sermons were long prayers, frequently an hour in length and sometimes even continuing for three hours. At a desk near the pulpit there was an hour-glass and sitting near it was an officer of the church whose duty it was to turn it at the end of the hour. During the prayer the congregation stood, about its middle the minister would make a long pause to let the infirm and those ill sit down, but all the others remained standing till its close. It was the duty of the tithing-man to see that no one left the house before the close of the services without there was a real good reason and also he was to keep the congregation awake. These long prayers and sermons were not disliked by the congregation, but on the contrary they considered it a great gift for the minister to be able to continue long in prayer and a short sermon would have been looked upon as irreligious and lacking in reverence, and beside that was for what the minister was paid. "In every record and journal which I have read, throughout which ministers and laymen recorded all the annoyances and opposition which the preachers encountered, I have never seen one entry of any complaint or ill-criticism of too long praying or preaching."380
The music of the Puritan meeting-house is well summarized in the following: "The singing of the psalms was tedious and unmusical, just as it was in churches of all denominations both in America and England at that date. Singing was by ear and very uncertain, and the congregation had no notes, and many had no psalm-books, and hence no words. So the psalms were 'lined' or 'deaconed'; that is, a line was read by the deacon, and then sung by the congregation. Some psalms when lined and sung occupied half an hour, during which the congregation stood. There were but eight or nine tunes in general use, and even these were often sung incorrectly. There were no church organs to help keep the singers together, but sometimes pitch-pipes were used to set the key. Bass-viols, clarionets, and flutes were played upon at a later date in meeting to help the singing. Violins were too much associated with dance music to be thought decorous for church music. Still the New England churches clung to and loved their poor confused psalm-singing as one of their few delights, and whenever a Puritan, even in road or field, heard the distant sound of a psalm-tune he removed his hat and bowed his head in prayer."381
In the meeting-house in New England in colonial times the young men sat together on one side and the young women sat in a corresponding place on the other side. The little girls sat on stools or low seats in the pews with their mothers or, if too many of them for place in the pew, they would sit out in the aisle, and sometimes there would be a row of little girls on a row of little stools extending the full length of the aisle. In some of the meeting-houses the boys were seated together on the pulpit and gallery stairs, while in other houses a place was made for them in the gallery, but wherever the place they were all herded together.
The boys among the Puritans were as other boys in all times and among all peoples, and the huddling them together in meeting-houses only helped to bring out their growing physical activities, as the taking them away from the watchfulness of the parents gave them better opportunities for expression of their repressed powers. One way of doing this was by slamming the pew-seats at the close of prayer and sermon and the vigor with which they did this called for an order from one church at least that "The boys are not to wickedly noise down there pew-seats." Another pastime was the twisting of the balustrades of the gallery railing in order to make them squeak. Whittling and cutting the woodwork and benches where they sat gave opportunity to put in time and also to try out their jack-knives. They passed the time in other ways, for there are court records showing that youths were taken before magistrates and fined for playing and laughing in church and doing things to make others laugh and play.
The best evidence left us to show that boys kept themselves busy in the meeting-houses is that they kept other people busy attending to them. There are plenty of records left to show that the tithing-man was continually being ordered to look after the behavior of the boys and also of the appointing of extra men to look after these unruly beings, in one church as many as six men had to be appointed at one time to keep them in order. These men had power to inflict punishment on the boys, and they did not hesitate to rap them soundly with their sticks and, too, sometimes a boy was taken out of the meeting-house and given a severe whipping. The tithing-man also used other means, for sometimes he took a boy from his place with the other boys and paraded him across the house and put him by side his mother on the women's side. If a young man would not behave himself, sometimes he was taken away from his place among the men and led to where the boys sat and forced to sit with them. Even during the noon hour the boys were watched over. While in the noon-house they had to listen to Bible teachings and interpretations. This was done to keep them quiet during this time so they might not "sporte and playe."
It is not wondered at that under such training much early religion developed. The Bible was read through many times by the young and much precocity in religious things was developed. A father gives in his diary the following in reference to a little girl of eight: "A little while after dinner she burst out into an amazing cry, which caused all the family to cry, too. Her mother asked the reason; she gave none. At last said she was afraid she would goe to Hell; her sins were not pardoned. She was first wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr. Norton's, Text, ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And those words in the sermon, ye shall seek me and die in your sins ran in her mind and terrified her greatly ... told me she was afraid she should go to Hell, was like Spira not elected."382
Another father makes this entry in his diary about his four-year-old daughter: "I took my little daughter Katy into my study and then I told my child I am to dye shortly and shee must, when I am dead, remember Everything I now said to unto her. I sett before her the sinful Condition of her nature, and I charged her to pray in Secret Places every Day. That God for the sake of Jesus Christ would give her a New Heart. I gave her to understand that when I am taken from her she must look to meet with more humbling Afflictions than she does now she has a Tender Father to provide for her."383
These two quotations are from the diaries of educated men, the first being from Judge Sewall and the second from Cotton Mather. It is hard for us now to see any reason for such a talk as Cotton Mather gave a child of four, especially as he lived for thirty years afterward and died long after this little girl died.
The religious books of Puritan New England children were of a remarkable character. Mrs. Earle gives the following in reference to one of the most popular and widely read books:
"Young babes chide their parents for too infrequent praying, and have ecstacies of delight when they can pray ad infitum. One child two years old was able 'savingly to understand the mysteries of Redemption'; another of the same age was a 'dear lover of faithful ministers.' Anne Greenwich, who died when five years old, 'discoursed most astonishingly of great mysteries'; Daniel Bradley, who had an 'Impression and inquisitiveness of the State of Souls after Death,' when three years old; Elizabeth Butcher, who, 'when two and a half years old, as she lay in the Cradle would ask herself the Question What is my corrupt Nature: and would answer herself It is empty of Grace, bent unto Sin, and only to Sin, and that Continually,' were among the distressing examples."384
The following is an extract from a letter written about 1638 by a Puritan boy of twelve years of age and well displays the tendency toward religious fears as found in the young people of that period:
"Though I am thus well in body yet I question whether my soul doth prosper as my body doth, for I perceive yet to this very day, little growth in grace; and this makes me question whether grace be in my heart or no. I feel also daily great unwillingness to good duties, and the great ruling of sin in my heart; and that God is angry with me and gives me no answers to my prayers; but many times he even throws them down as dust in my face; and he does not grant my continued request for the spiritual blessing of the softening of my hard heart. And in all this I could yet take some comfort but that it makes me to wonder what God's secret decree concerning me may be: for I doubt whether even God is wont to deny grace and mercy to his chosen (though uncalled) when they seek unto him by prayer for it; and, therefore, seeing he doth thus deny it to me, I think that the reason of it is most like to be because I belong not unto the election of grace. I desire that you would let me have your prayers as I doubt not but I have them, and rest
"Your Son, Samuel Mather."385
As was given under the discussion of infancy, the Puritan babe had to be taken to the meeting-house on the Sunday following its birth to be baptized, even in the most bitter weather. One record is given of the baptism of an infant but four days old and this during the first part of February. In one diary there is given about a day in January so bad that but few women could get out to meeting, and yet a babe was taken to the meeting-house and baptized. It must be considered, too, that this occurred in a building that never had had a fire in it nor was there fire on that day. It is difficult for us at this day to hold even in imagination the carrying of the young babe by the midwife through the snow and the wind, and the cold of a New England January, the taking him to the altar and placing him in the arms of his father, the throwing the icy cold water over the child, and the shuddering of the child; yet worse, for this baptism might have been an immersion in the cold water after the ice had been broken, for at least one minister did practice infant immersion.
The second form of schools was the parochial organization of the middle colonies of New Netherlands and Pennsylvania. In these colonies there arose a school in connection with a church and, unlike the education of the South, which was along secondary training, the work of this parochial school was chiefly in elementary education. In New Netherlands, as in Holland, the church was connected with the state and there was but one church, the Dutch Reformed, and the civil and religious authorities jointly controlled and directed the education. In Pennsylvania, however, religious and civil freedom had been granted from the very first and there had come into the colony people of different nationalities and of different religions, and education came to be established with the different religious bodies and each religious sect had its own distinctive parochial school alongside its own church. There also were some attempts at higher and secondary education. Among the schools started was the Penn Charter School, which was originally organized by the Friends in 1689, and there were higher schools of other denominations. When New Netherlands fell into the hands of the English, there came about in New York conditions somewhat similar to those in Virginia and a number of secondary schools were organized.
The third type of schools in colonial times was that formed by governmental action in the New England colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. In these colonies there was no such class distinctions as in Virginia, and, unlike Pennsylvania, there was but one nationality and one religion, and, unlike the Dutch of New Netherlands, they had cut themselves away from the ruling classes of their native land, and thus they were free to develop along their own ideas. Their religious belief and training called for the education of each of the members of the colony, as the Bible was held to be the infallible rule of faith and practice, and so every one should at least have enough schooling to enable him to read the Bible for himself. Hence schools arose in a short time after settlement. In 1644 Salem taxed all who had children and were able to pay and procured in this way means for paying for the schooling of children whose parents were too poor to pay for them. In 1647 Massachusetts passed a law that in every town of fifty families a school for the teaching of reading and writing should be provided and that in a town of one hundred families a grammar school should be provided. Connecticut in 1659 provided for its children in the same way. But all such schools were not free as we term free schools now, and it was not till near the time of the Revolution that general taxes were levied for school purposes and free schools were thereby established.
The early schoolhouses in Pennsylvania and New York were made of logs and the top covered with bark. Holes were cut in the sides for windows, which sometimes were covered with greased paper that let in a dim light. Some had a rough puncheon floor and others a dirt floor. A distance up from the floor around the walls pegs were placed between the logs and boards laid on them for desks and by them were boards set on stakes for seats for the older children, while the younger children sat on blocks or benches of logs. At one end or in the middle was a catted chimney. At least some of the schoolhouses in New England were better furnished, as is shown by the following entry in the town records of Roxbury in 1652:
"The feoffes agreed with Daniel Welde that he provide convenient benches with forms, with tables for the scholars, and a conveniente seate for the scholmaster, a Deske to put the Dictionary on and shelves to lay up bookes."386
This schoolhouse was not kept in proper repairs, as the teacher in Roxbury in 1681 wrote:
"Of inconveniences (in the schoolhouse) I shall mention no other but the confused and shattered and nastie posture that it is in, not fitting for to reside in, the glass broke, and thereupon very raw and cold; the floor very much broken and torn up to kindle fires, the hearth spoiled, the seats some burned and others out of kilter, that one had as well-nigh as goods keep school in a hog stie as in it."387
Supplies for school purposes were quite scarce in colonial times. There were no blackboards nor maps. Paper was quite scarce and very carefully used. Birch bark was used to cipher on. Slates also were used and those of the earlier times had no frames and had a hole in one side in which a string could be tied for holding a pencil or for hanging around the neck. If lead pencils were used at all during colonial times it was in the latest part of the period. Instead of lead pencils they used plummets made of lead melted and cast into wooden molds and cut into shape by a jack-knife. Pens were cut from goose-quills and it required quite a little skill to make good pens and keep them in order. Ink was made by dissolving ink-powder, each child furnishing his own ink-bottle or ink-horn and ink. Sometimes the ink was wholly home-made: "In remote districts of Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts, home-made ink, feeble and pale, was made by steeping the bark of the swamp-maple in water, boiling the decoction till thick, and diluting it with copperas."388
There were not a great number or variety of books for use in these early schools. The two most noted books were the Hornbook and the New England Primer. The hornbook was the first book used by the child. This consisted of a thin piece of wood about five inches long and two inches wide. A sheet of paper was placed upon this. At the top of this paper came the alphabet in small letters; then the alphabet in capital letters followed; then the vowels; then syllables, as, ab, eb, ib, etc.; next "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen;" and last came the Lord's prayer. Over this paper went a sheet of horn, through which the printed matter could be read. The paper and the horn were fastened to the wood by strips of brass or other metal, going around the sides and ends, and all held fast by tacks driven through the metal strips. At the lower end of the hornbook was usually a handle, which sometimes had a hole through it for a string to carry it by or to hang it around the neck.
"The New England Primer is a poorly printed little book about five inches long and three wide, of about eighty pages. It contains the alphabet, and a short table of easy syllables, such as a-b, ab, e-b, eb, and words up to those of six syllables. This was called a syllabarium. There were twelve five-syllable words; of these five were abomination, edification, humiliation, mortification, and purification. There were a morning and evening prayer for children, and a grace to be said before meat. Then followed a set of little rhymes which have become known everywhere, and are frequently quoted. Each letter of the alphabet is illustrated with a blurred little picture. Of these, two-thirds represent Biblical incidents. They begin:
and ended with Z:
'Zaccheus he
Did climb a tree
His Lord to see.'
"In the early days of the Primer, all the colonies were true to the English king, and the rhyme for the letter K reads:
'King Charles the Good
No man of blood.'
"But by Revolutionary years the verse for K was changed to:
'Queens and Kings
Are Gaudy Things.'
"Later verses tell the praise of George Washington. Then comes a series of Bible questions and answers; then an 'alphabet of lessons for youth,' consisting of verses of the Bible beginning successively with A, B, C, and so on. X was a difficult initial letter, and had to be contented with 'Xhort one another daily, etc.' After the Lord's prayer and Apostle's Creed appeared sometimes a list of names for men and women, to teach children to spell their own names. The largest and most interesting picture was that of the burning at the stake of John Rogers; and after this a six page set of pious rhymes which the martyr left at his death for his family of small children. After the year 1750, a few very short stories were added to its pages, and were probably all the children's stories that many of the scholars of that day ever saw."389
In the establishing of the elementary schools in New England there was but little more required of the teacher than to instruct the children in reading and writing, especially were they to be taught sufficiently that they could read the Bible. Also they were to be taught enough arithmetic for their every-day needs. This is well shown in the records of the town of Plymouth, where in 1671 they had built a schoolhouse and employed a schoolmaster "to teach the children and youth to read the Bible, to write, and to cast accounts."390 In the secondary schools the emphasis was laid upon Latin and such other subjects were taught as would fit the scholars for college. Penmanship was made a great deal of while orthography was not, the results of which are shown by the writing and spelling of the diaries and other writings of that period that remain.
The work of the district school, of the academy, and of the college is well portrayed by McMaster. "The daily labors of the schoolmaster who taught in the district school-house three generations since were confined to teaching his scholars to read with a moderate degree of fluency, to write legibly, to spell with some regard for the rules of orthography, and to know as much of arithmetic as would enable them to calculate the interest on a debt, to keep the family accounts, and to make change in a shop.... To sit eight hours a day on the hardest of benches poring over Cheever's Accidence; to puzzle over long words in Dilworth's speller; to commit to memory pages of words in Webster's American Institute; to read long chapters in the Bible; to learn by heart Dr. Watt's hymns for children; to be drilled in the Assembly Catechism; to go to bed at sundown, to get up at sunrise, and to live on brown bread and pork, porridge and beans, made up, with morning and evening prayers, the every-day life of the lads at most of the academies and schools of New England.... The four years of residence at college were spent in the acquisition of Latin and Greek, a smattering of mathematics, enough of logic to distinguish barbara from celarent, enough of rhetoric to know climax from metonomy, and as much of metaphysics as would enable one to talk learnedly about a subject he did not understand."391
The teachers of the elementary schools of those early days were too often not educated nor cultured men. These men in many cases were drunken, cruel, ignorant, and lazy. Drunkenness seems to have been quite prevalent among the teachers of early New York, and yet there were some most excellent men among them. In the middle and southern colonies among the teachers were redemptioners and exported criminals. It was not uncommon on the arrival of a ship for schoolmasters to be advertised for sale along with men of other callings and usually the teachers did not fetch as good prices as weavers, tailors, and the like. The teachers in the secondary schools, on the contrary, often were men of good scholarship and of high standing in the community, occupying a place of honor among their fellow men. Such teachers were Christopher Dock in Pennsylvania and Ezekiel Cheever in New England.
"Among the New England teachers there were men of both learning and ability. Not a more cultured body of men ever formed a colony than settled about Boston, Salem, New Haven, and Hartford. They coveted the best advantages for their children, frequently making the best men their teachers. It is on record that of the twenty-two masters of Plymouth from 1671 to the Revolution, twenty were graduates of Harvard. The like was true of Roxbury. Such men, next to the functionaries of church and state, commanded the highest respect. In the churches they had special pews provided for their use beside those of magistrates and the deacon's family. In every community was usually one who was the teacher professionally, so considered as much as was the minister or physician."392
There were women teachers in the colonial times. They taught what was known as dame-schools, which were attended by small boys and girls. Women teachers and dame-schools were probably confined to New England and parts of New York adjacent to New England and settled by emigrants from there. There grew up the custom in some rural districts of having one term of school in the summer for the younger pupils and taught by a woman and another term in the winter for the older pupils and taught by a man. This arrangement arose because it was difficult for the younger children to attend school during the bitter weather of the winter, while the older pupils could attend well only during the cold time of the year when there was not much work to do on the farm.
There is in existence a contract between a Dutch schoolmaster and the authorities of Flatbush, New York, of the date of October 8, 1682. This is a full paper and quite well shows the duties of a teacher of that time in that colony. The school day was to be from eight o'clock to eleven and from one to four. Each forenoon and afternoon session was to open and close with prayer. On every Wednesday and Saturday the schoolmaster was to instruct the children in the common prayers and in the catechism and to be present at the church meeting when the children were catechized before the congregation. He was to keep school nine months in succession, from September to June of each year. Beside his school duties he had church duties. He was to keep the church clean, ring the bell, lead in the singing, and sometimes he was to read the sermon. He was to provide water for baptism and to furnish the minister with the name of the child to be baptized and also the names of the parents or witnesses. He was to provide bread and wine for the communion. He was to serve as messenger for the consistory. He was to give out the funeral invitations, dig the grave, and toll the bell.393
It can scarcely be believed that the schoolmasters of the early period of our country could have been so cruel as is told of them. It would appear as if a great deal more time was put upon devising means of punishment than upon learning ways of instruction. It was a time of cruelty and of belief in the general depravity of humanity. It was deemed that there was a natural wilfulness in children that needed stern repression and harsh correction. The parents and teachers in New England were especially repressive of child nature and their guide and rule of action, the Bible, gave them constant proof of the need of corrective punishment for children. "John Robinson, the Pilgrim preacher, said in his essay on Children and Their Education: 'Surely there is in all children (though not alike) a stubbornes and stoutnes of minde arising from naturall pride which must in the first place be broken and beaten down that so the foundation of their education being layd in humilitie and tractablenes other virtues may in their time be built thereon.'"394
The rod was very greatly in use by the schoolmasters of colonial times and too often the rod became the cudgel. Some teachers had the boy mount the back of another boy and with arms and legs held tight he was given a beating. The ferule was applied to the hands, the face, and the feet, and sometimes this ferule was a heavy oaken ruler. One instrument used was a hickory club with leather thongs attached at one end and similar to it was the tattling stick, a cat-o'-nine-tails with heavy leather straps. Another instrument used was termed a flapper, which was a piece of leather about six inches wide with a hole in the middle and fastened to a handle. Every stroke with this flapper on a boy's bared back would raise a blister the size of the hole in the leather. A branch of a tree was split and placed over a child's nose and he had to then stand before the school. For whispering a whispering-stick was used, which was a kind of wooden gag tied in the mouth with strings, somewhat as a horse's bit. Another punishment was to put two boys together in a yoke devised for that purpose, similar to an ox-yoke, and to make the punishment all the more disgraceful would be to yoke a boy and girl together. A unipod, a one-legged stool, was used, and the child occupying it found it very hard and tiresome to balance himself on it. The dames in their schools used quite freely a heavy iron thimble, which by being snapped quite vigorously against a boy's head would make for him "thimell-pie." The dunce-block was freely used and the culprit appropriately labelled, as, "Tell-Tale," "Bite-Finger-Baby," "Lying Ananias," "Idle-Boy," and "Pert-Miss-Prat-a-Pace." There were some teachers who did not use such cruel punishments, although they must have been very few in number, one being Samuel Dock, a German schoolmaster of Pennsylvania, who was intelligent enough to be kind to his children, but there were plenty of the drunken, dirty, careless, and cruel teachers in that colony. Mrs. Earle states: "I may say here that I have not found that New York schoolmasters were ever as cruel as were those of New England."395
"I often fancy that I should have enjoyed living in the good old times, but I am glad I never was a child in colonial New England—to have been baptized in ice water, fed on brown bread and warm beer, to have had to learn the Assembly's Catechism and 'explain all the Quaestions with conferring Texts,' to have been constantly threatened with fear of death and terror of God, to have been forced to commit Wigglesworth's 'Day of Doom' to memory, and, after all, to have been whipped with a tattling-stick."396
The colonial period was an age of child precocity. In that time overzealous parents pushed children forward till they displayed a remarkable precocious learning, to end, in most cases, in an early death either physically or mentally, and yet some of these children did survive the process to become noted and honored men. One such parent wrote to her sister asking to have sent to her a set of toys now known as alphabet blocks and stating that the child's father was contriving a set of toys to teach the child his letters by the time he could speak, he being not yet four months old at the time of the letter. In a later letter the mother wrote to the child's aunt that at twenty-two months of age he could tell his letters in any book and he was beginning to spell. This boy grew up to be the Revolutionary General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. One boy born in 1752 learned his alphabet in a single lesson and he could read the Bible before he was four years old. At the age of six he was sent to a grammar school, and, as his father would not let him study Latin, he borrowed a Latin grammar and studied through it twice without a teacher. This boy afterward was known as President Timothy Dwight of Yale College.
This precociousness was not confined to boys, for one little girl, born in Boston in 1708, daughter of the President of Harvard College, before her second year was finished could speak distinctly, knew her letters, could relate many stories out of the Scriptures, and when three years old she could recite the greater part of the Assembly's Cathechism and also she could recite many of the psalms and many lines of poetry and read distinctly. The Governor of the colony and other distinguished guests at her home sometimes would place this little girl on a table to show off her acquirements. Another little girl, born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1759, in her third year could "read any book," so the story ran, and, too, this she could do holding the book upside down.
Boys entered the Boston Latin School as young as six and a half years of age and often parents had them begin Latin at an earlier age, some parents teaching their little ones to read Latin words when but three years old along with the English. Young Timothy Dwight would have been prepared to enter college at eight years of age had not his grammar school been discontinued because of having no teacher. A boy in 1686 entered Harvard College at eleven years of age and another boy in 1799 graduated from Rhode Island College (now Brown University) at barely fourteen years of age.
The most remarkable case of childish precocity given by Mrs. Earle was that of Richard Evelyn, who died in 1658 at the early age of five years and three days. The father in his diary recounted in the following quoted passage the wonderful acquirements of the little boy before his death:
"He had learned all his catechism at two years and a half old; he could perfectly read any of the English, Latin, French, or Gothic letters, pronouncing the first three languages exactly. He had, before the fifth year, or in that year, not only skill to read most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular, and most of the irregular; learned out of Puerelis, got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substances, ellipses and many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in Comenius' Janua; begun himself to write legibly and had a strong passion for Greek. The number of verses he could recite was prodigious, and what he remembered of the parts of plays which he would also act; and, when seeing a Plautus in one's hand, he asked what book it was, and being told it was comedy and too difficult for him, he wept for sorrow. Strange was his apt and ingenious application of fables and morals, for he had read Æsop; he had a wonderful disposition to mathematics, having by heart divers propositions of Euclid that were read to him in play, and he would make lines and demonstrate them. He had learned by heart divers sentences in Latin and Greek which on occasion he would produce even to wonder. He was all life, all prettiness, far from morose, sullen, or childish in anything he said or did."397
The girls of colonial times did not receive much education, as it was not considered necessary for women to have learning beyond that necessary for household duties. All that was considered really needed by a girl in the way of book learning was to know how to read and write and cipher a little. Most of the girls received nothing further than elementary training in reading and writing and many of them did not even have that much of education. This was true in all the colonies, New England, New York, and the others.
A lady writing of the education of girls of her time in New York, in the first quarter of the eighteenth century stated:
"It was at that time very difficult to procure the means of instruction in those island districts; female education was, of consequence, conducted on a very limited scale; girls learned needlework (in which they were indeed both skilful and ingenious) from their mothers and aunts; they were taught, too, at that period to read, in Dutch, the Bible, and a few Calvinistic tracts of the devotional kind. But in the infancy of the settlement few girls read English; when they did, they were thought accomplished; they generally spoke it, however imperfectly, and few were taught writing."398
A historian of New York, writing of his fellow townswomen during the year 1756, said that "there is nothing they (New York women) so generally neglect as Reading, and indeed all the Arts for the improvement of the Mind, in which I confess we have set them the Example."399
The attitude of the people of the period toward the admission of girls into boys' grammar schools is shown by the following extract from the rules for governing such a school in New Haven in 1684:
"... and all girls be excluded as improper and inconsistent with such a grammar school as ye law injoines and as is the Designe of this settlement."400
But it must not be considered that the education of the girls was wholly neglected among the colonists, for, though they were scarcely ever admitted to boys' schools, yet they did go to the dame-schools and also they received training at home. The girls were all taught household duties and the fancy needlework that went with it. Reading, writing, a little arithmetic, dancing, needlework, music, deportment, and elegance of carriage composed the curriculum for girls. Sometimes a girl would get some help from a brother and thus gain an education beyond that ordinarily obtained by girls. Occasionally an educated father would teach his daughter, one such case being that of President Colman of Harvard College, who gave what was called a profound education to his daughter Jane. Withal this meager education, nevertheless we are not at all ashamed of the bearing of our foremothers of the colonial and Revolutionary times.
As academies grew up during the latter half of the eighteenth century, most of which were for boys, a few were made co-educational and a few others were established for girls:
"For a hundred years the Penn Charter School, Philadelphia, had admitted both sexes on equal terms. The Moravians had established a school for girls at Bethlehem, Pa., as early as 1745, while the Philadelphia Female Academy dates from the Revolution. Among the earliest in New England were Dr. Dwight's Young Ladies' Academy, at Greenfield, Conn. (1785), and the Medford School, near Boston (1789)."401
Of the colleges in the United States today, two of them were founded during the first century of the colonial period, the seventeenth century, ten others in the next century before the Revolution, and by the close of the eighteenth century the list had increased to twenty-six, eleven of the original colonies being represented in the list and also Kentucky and Tennessee. Arranging the twelve colleges of the colonial period in the order of the year of first opening and with the names and locations as now, they run as follows:402
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1636; College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1693; Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1701; Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland, 1723; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1740; Moravian Seminary and College for Women, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1742; Princeton University, Princetown, New Jersey, 1746; Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, 1749; Columbia University, New York City, New York, 1754; Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 1765; Rutgers College, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1766; Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1769.
With dame-schools for the younger children, district schools for the older ones, academies for the yet more advanced, and colleges for completing the education, the early period of the United States gave such an education to its young people as well to prepare them to become the noble men and women, who, by books, papers, addresses, and general bearing, were able to stand alongside the people of the world in the great period of the American Revolution, and furnished thinkers and doers such as have not been surpassed by our own time.