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EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS.

Amsterdam had a high reputation and drew its pupils from Albany, Delaware and Virginia. On the whole, however, the people of New Netherland were too much interested in trading with the Indians and in commerce with foreign parts, to give much regular attention to their educational institutions. After the Dutch New Netherland had become the English New York, in 1664, the schools grew in importance and in character, but no general school policy was established for some time. In 1702 a free grammar school was founded in the city of New York, and in 1732 a free school for teaching Latin, Greek and Mathematics was incorporated. In 1710 the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts established a charity school in New York in connection with Trinity church. A royal charter was obtained for a college in 1754. This institution was Kings College, which under the Republic became Columbia College.

In 1729. the first public library in New York was established in a room in the City Hall in Wall Street, the shelves of the library containing 1,622 volumes.* This was known as the Corporation Library until 1754, when it was merged in the New York Society Library which was founded in

that year.

New Jersey depended upon private schools, kept by clergymen in connection with their churches, nearly until

*Lamb, History of the City of New York, vol. i., p. 532.

the Revolutionary period. Pennsylvania provided for public schools as early as 1682 and in the middle of the next century the academy, which subsequently became the University of Pennsylvania, and also several denominational schools were flourishing. In 1731 the Philadelphia Library was founded, in 1743 the American Philosophical Society, and the University of Pennsylvania, in 1749–55, thus showing the rapid development of the Quaker commonwealth in scholarship and literary tastes. In these respects Philadelphia was far in advance of New York, and by 1750 her reputation for culture was second only to that of Boston and Cambridge. In 1685 the first printing press south of New England was set up in Philadelphia by William Bradford, who also in 1690 erected a paper-mill on the banks of the Schuylkill. Bradford's son, Andrew, after his father's removal to New York, maintained the press and also a bookstore, and in 1741 he began the publication of the American Magazine.

The zeal of the New Englanders for the education of their children was manifested at the very beginning of their colonial careers. Towns were no sooner determined upon than provision was made for a meeting house and a school house. From them came the first inspiration for public schools and particularly in Massachusetts and Connecticut was laid the foundation of the American public school system. They did not set up family

EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS.

schools or select schools or send their sons to be educated in England. They They established public or common schools, and their town records show that these were fixed town institutions supported by money from the common treasury, just as roads, bridges and protection from the Indians were provided for. Boston had a school before 1634 and the records of Salem, Dorchester, Cambridge, Hartford, Windsor, New Haven, Newport-in fact all the in fact all the towns of New England - show the adoption of the same general educational policy in the securing of local schools, before and independent of any wider colonial legislation on the subject. In Massachusetts in 1636, only six years after the settlement of Boston, the General Court appropriated £400 for the establishment of a college, and thus Harvard College came into existence. Town grammar schools were required by law under the act of the General Court in 1642. Before the end of the Seventeenth century several counties had set up endowed schools and after the middle of the next century academies came into existence.

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independent a system of elementary and secondary instruction was established. Parochial schools existed in New England at the beginning of the Eighteenth century, but there was

no

system of elementary public schools until after the Revolution.

Broadly speaking, throughout the colonial period, the educational systems and provisions were closely connected with the ecclesiastical systems of the individual colonies. In three colonies, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire, it was the legal duty of parents and towns to provide for the education of the children. Elsewhere education was mainly provided by clergymen, vided by clergymen, ecclesiastical bodies or by laymen, for the advancement of religious knowledge and training for the ministry.

Prior to 1764 six institutions for higher education had been established. These were: Harvard College in Massachusetts, in 1638;* Wil

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Everybody knows that the college of William and Mary is the oldest in the United States, after Harvard. It is not so generally known that the former was planned and all but established in 1622, eight years before Winthrop and his followers came to Massachusetts Bay. It is a just and wholesome pride that New England people feel in recalling the circumstances under which Harvard College was founded. Such an event is quite properly cited in illustration of the lofty aims and intelligent foresight of the founders of Massachusetts. But it should not be

*

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In Rhode Island education was left to individual and parental care until after the middle of the Eighteenth century. The educational policy and history of Connecticut was practically forgotten that aims equally lofty and foresight

identical with that of Massachusetts. Until the end of the first colonial century, the school laws of Massachusetts prevailed in New Hampshire, but immediately after that colony became

*

equally intelligent were shown by the men who from 1619 to 1624 controlled the affairs of Virginia. It is important to remember that this zeal for education, as well as the zeal for political liberty, was not confined to the Puritans."- Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, vol. i., pp. 234-235. It must also be remembered

174

RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS.

liam and Mary College in Virginia, in 1693; Yale College in Connecticut, in 1710; the College of New Jersey in New Jersey, in 1746; Kings College in New York, in 1751; the University of Pennsylvania in Pennsylvania, in 1755. From these came forth nearly all the educated men of that day. These colleges were essentially church institutions, and a large proportion of their students intended themselves for the ministry or for the practice of law, the first named profession calling the greater number. It was not until long after the Revolution that many college educated men sought other than those two professions.*

that it was the same Virginia Company which attempted to establish the college in Virginia that had given the Leyden Pilgrims the patent for the colony they were to establish, but that instead of landing within Virginia territory they were driven by a storm to the shores of Massachusetts. Thus,

Virginia, by the mere force of circumstances, was compelled to forego the pleasure of claiming the first college actually established in the United States.

* See Elsie W. Clews, Educational Legislation and Administration of the Colonial Governments, in Columbia University Publications (New York, 1899); John Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbours (Boston, 1897); Richard G. Boone, Education in the United States, in the International Education series, vol. ii. (New York, 1889); B. A. Hinsdale, Documents Illustrative of American Educational History, in Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1892–93, vol. ii. (Washington, 1895); A. D. Mayo, History of Education in the North Atlantic States, in Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1897-98, vol. i. (Washington, 1900); E. G. Dexter, A History of Education in the United States (New York, 1904); J. B. McMaster, A History of the People of the United States (7 vols., New York 1884-1910); P. A. Bruce, Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1896).

Let us now glance at the religious life. When the American pioneers began their journeyings to the New World, Europe had for a hundred years been engaged in the struggle for religious freedom. In England, France and Germany, Protestantism had become established, but complete independence in religious thought and forms of worship had yet to be won. Although the emigrants who came hither were actuated by different purposes, trade, adventure, religion, philanthropy,- all of them brought religion. In all instances their religion may not have been deep rooted, but nevertheless in some form or other it was existent.

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For the most part the colonists from England were members of the Established Church. The Puritans had not yet arrived at the point of separation from that ecclesiastical body, but the Pilgrims were already separatists. But it was the Protestantism of the Church of England which was brought, in the first place, to all the colonies save two. In Maryland, Roman Catholicism was the religion which the founders of that colony brought with them. In New Netherland, the Dutch had their Dutch Reformed Church and pastors.

In the first Virginia charter, 1606, it was set forth that the "Word and Science of God" should be preached "according to the rites and doctrines of the Church of England" and the first expedition brought out a minister

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1. ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, RICHMOND, VA. (Where Patrick Henry made his famous speech.)

2. BRUTON PARISH CHURCH, WILLIAMSBURG, VA., IN 1750. (The oldest church building now in use in America.)

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