04 April 2022

School Days, School Days, Dear Old New England Rule Days

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.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.


1https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/massachusetts-passes-first-education-law.html#:~:text=Colonial%20Massachusetts%20was%20an%20agricultural,%2C%20writing%2C%20and%20basic%20arithmetic.

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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