Vector illustration from "Ethels Keepsake" circa 1888 - archive.org. in the public domain
School days, school days
Dear old golden rule days
Readin' and 'ritin' and
'rithmetic
Taught to the tune of the
hickory stick
Lyrics written by Will B. Cobb (1907)
Have you ever wondered what school was like for your ancestors? Were they home schooled, church schooled, public schooled? Was it mandatory for children to even attend school? What age could they drop out of school? Was school free? All these questions and more enter my mind when I am looking at school records in my research.
Colonial Education
Students who did receive any schooling were mostly males during colonial times. Reading and writing was taught mostly to males. The thought at the time was that females only needed to read the Bible. This explains why many colonial women used an x for their signature. I wonder if they even knew what they were signing.
Nick Allen, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>,
via Wikimedia Commons accessed 2 April 2022.
The New England colonies opened the first schools in the 1600's. Boston Latin School was the first public school, founded in 1635. All New England colonies required their towns to set up schools.
Laws Pertaining to Colonial America and Education
In 1642, the Massachusetts Bay Colony made
schooling compulsory. Parents were expected to teach their children and servants to read. In 1647, the Massachusetts Bay General Court
passed an act compelling every town of fifty householders to appoint a teacher
for all their children, and further required a grammar school for every town of
one hundred families or more.1The laws of 1658 advised each
town to consider the matter of getting a schoolmaster. In 1677, the General
Court ordered that each town with fifty families or more have a grammar
school.2 Grammar schools were the precursor to today's
high schools. Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth adopted the same system. Rhode Island was the only colony not adopting these laws. Massachusetts was the first colony to have a college, Harvard College, in 1635. Harvard was originally formed as a missionary college. It wasn't until the
1700's that boys AND girls attended schools together. It was usually a one room
schoolhouse with one teacher.
How does this help with my genealogy research?
Knowing this information can help in one's research. My school records research starts in the late 1700's and early 1800's. I found school records in the Family Search collection: Shoreham Town Records and Associated Material 1783-1964 I created a table to help keep my Fenn family organized. This is the information I found. I did find records for 1831, 1832, and 1833 but formatting options limited the years I could post on this blog. The highlighted portions are the ages when children would be expected to attend school.
Daniel Fenn (1787-1836)
Children and Ages
Shoreham VT School Records
|
Name |
Birth
Year |
1818 |
1823 |
1825 |
1827 |
1828 |
1829 |
|
#
in School |
|
3 |
5 |
5 |
4 |
5 |
5 |
|
Orlo H Fenn |
1808 |
10 |
15 |
17 |
19 |
|
|
|
Tully C. P. Fenn |
1811 |
7 |
12 |
14 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
|
Martha Fenn |
1819 |
|
4 |
6 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
|
Orpha Ann Fenn |
1820 |
|
3 |
5 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
|
Daniel C Fenn |
1823 |
|
0 |
2 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
|
Betsy Meurisa Fenn (m. 1833) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Abel Fenn |
1826 |
|
|
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
|
Aminda Fenn |
1829 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Female Fenn |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Another record I found was recorded by families
and there weren't any individual children named.
A list of the scholars residing in school district number 4
in the town of Shoreham on the first day of March 1818
John Larrabee8
Elijah Rowley6
Ransom Cummings3
Augustus Hanks4
George Cutting3
Timothy Larrabee4
Calvin Stewart 1
Harlet Thorn 5
Daniel Fenn 3
Reuben Bisbee 3
James Baker 6
Job Bodwell 1
45
Calvin Stuart district clerk
The father's name is listed with the number of children attending school.
One might not think these records too helpful. It helped me because I was able to identify family members that would lead to further research. Sometimes researching siblings will provide you with the information you need.
In the second example, one can see who attended school with the children. Did your ancestor marry a classmate? The Larrabee, Rowley, and Fenn families were tied together through marriages.
The further I get into researching my ancestors the more I look for unique records, like school records. I especially like the ones that list the children and father's name.
2Ibid
The Expansion of New England . Spread of New England Settlement and institutions to the Mississippi River, 1620-1865, Lori Kimball Mathews. 1936. Reprinted by New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2012
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