A New Schoolmaster for a New Town

In January 1764 the Massachusetts General Court passed a law allowing part of the town of Newbury to split off as the new town of Newburyport.

The new town held its first meeting on 8 February, choosing a clerk, selectmen, and other officials. The inhabitants also chose a committee to determine what schoolhouses the children needed. They decided to keep paying the masters of the Newbury grammar and writing schools for now.

In March that committee recommended:

that at least three large schools should be provided and maintained in sd. Town, viz: one Grammar school not far from the Revd. Mr. [John] Lowel’s meeting house, and two reading, writing & arithmetick schools, one of them adjoining to Queen street, Ordua Lane, or Bartlet’s Lane, preferring the latter, and the other adjoining or near Cross street or Elbow Lane.

That summer, the town bought some land on what is now Winter Street, beside Route 1, and started building a schoolhouse.

To oversee that school the selectmen hired John Vinal, usher of Boston’s South Writing-School. They offered him £80 per year, significantly more than he had been earning in Boston though less than what the bigger town’s schoolmasters earned. In addition, each pupil was to bring “two pistareens” to pay for firewood used during the year.

The selectmen announced: “Boys that can read in a Psalter will be received and carefully taught Reading, Writing & Arithmetick.” The school would meet 8 A.M. to noon and 1 to 4 P.M.

Vinal’s school opened on Monday, 5 November, with the Rev. Mr. Lowell and the selectmen present. Given that Newbury’s youth usually celebrated Pope Night with a big procession and bonfire, I imagine that student body was rather antsy that day.

John Vinal continued to look for ways to supplement his salary. The town needed to survey the “common and undivided land” near the Frog Pond, and in 1771 Vinal produced the map shown above, shared by History Newburyport. Around the pond it shows a burying-ground, a potash house, a ropewalk, a powderhouse, and a windmill.

TOMORROW: Vinal’s lessons.