“To accommodate the Youth of the South part of the Town with a School House”

As March 1780 began, the selectmen of Boston were looking for two new schoolmasters and one temporary schoolhouse.

Before the war, men tended to serve as schoolmasters for many years. There was more churn among the ushers, or assistant teachers—they probably had so little chance of advancement that they took jobs in other towns.

By 1780 the wartime economy was causing problems for everyone, but especially men who provided services in return for set salaries. The town provided extra grants (of paper money), but it also paid late, so the teachers were struggling.

William Bentley had taught at the North Latin School for three years, starting as usher in 1777 and becoming master in 1779. But on 23 Feb 1780 parents told the selectmen that he would leave “next Satturday.” A couple of years later Bentley became a minister in Salem, a job more to his liking. (He kept it for more than thirty-five years.)

Fortunately, the North Latin School usher, Aaron Smith, could keep the lessons going there. He and two other men immediately applied for the job of master. Furthermore, that public school was the smallest in Boston—only 39 boys attended as of July 1781.

On 8 March, Smith promised the selectmen that as master he would stay for at least twelve months, so the selectmen gave him the job. One problem solved! (Smith did serve through the end of the 1780–81 school year before leaving.)

The South Writing School presented a bigger difficulty. The night before the selectmen heard about Bentley’s departure, that schoolhouse had caught fire. Then Master Samuel Holbrook resigned, as described yesterday. I can’t be sure, but it looks like he took his usher with him.

There were probably over 150 boys attending the South Writing School—a drop from before the war, when the town routinely counted over 200, but still too many to let loose unsupervised on the town.

At the time, a schoolhouse was a large room with long desks and benches for all those boys. The master and usher needed their own desks, and the room needed a stove and a firewood supply, but that was about it. No chalkboards, bookshelves, or other special pedagogical equipment. The town just need to find a big room unoccupied during the day.

On the morning after the fire, the selectmen delegated two of their number, Nathan Frazier and Harbottle Dorr, “to apply to the Overseers of the Poor, for the use of the Workhouse Hall for Mr. Holbrooks Scholars.” At best that might have been a short-term remedy.

On 1 March, the selectmen added John Preston to that committee and sent them to ask whether the “Labretory” could become the new Writing School. After all, it was right next to the fire-damaged building.

A week later those selectmen reported:

That Colo. [William] Burbeck has the care of it at present for the use of the State—that he came in possession of it under Colo. [Thomas] Crafts—

that the Land on which it is built belongs to the Town, Major [Adino] Paddock building on it first—

That it will answer for a School, tho not without a very great expense to the Town in fitting it up in a proper manner.

So the town could demand the property back, kick out the artillerists in the middle of a war, and refit the building with a lot of money—which it didn’t have. Not a practical solution. 

On 13 March, Boston embarked on its annual town meeting to elect new officials. One item on that meeting’s agenda was “what is necessary to be done to accommodate the Youth of the South part of the Town with a School House.” Eventually, on 21 March, the meeting chose a committee to tackle that problem, headed by militia colonel Josiah Waters. John Preston wasn’t reelected as a selectman, but he was put on that committee, so he couldn’t escape the problem.

The schoolhouse committee submitted their first report on 24 March. It was “Recommitted,” or rejected, and the town meeting record doesn’t even say what they suggested. On 4 April they told the meeting:

That upon enquirey they had found that the Widow Holbrook had a Room which would accomodate about Seventy or Eighty Scholars, and that they were of Opinion that if this Room could be obtained it would be best to hire it for a School

This was Rebecca Holbrook, widow of the late Abiah Holbrook and sister-in-law of Samuel Holbrook. So she knew what a writing master needed in order to teach.

The town meeting quickly approved that idea and directed the selectmen “to agree with Mrs. Holbrook for said Room as they shall Judge for the Interest of the Town.”

TOMORROW: The cheapest solution.

“To serve the purpose of their party”

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been quoting letters to the newspapers of Litchfield, Connecticut, about papermaker Elisha Horton’s conversations with his employer, Julius Deming, around the election of 1804.

Horton stated in court and in the press that Deming told him to vote his conscience. Four other people said Horton had complained to them at the time that he was afraid to vote Republican out of fear Deming would fire him and/or shut down the paper mill.

What could make this situation more difficult? Religion! As I noted back here, Horton and his wife were founding members of Litchfield’s Methodist Episcopal Society.

A week after printing Horton’s letter about Election Day, the Federalist Litchfield Monitor evidently ran a piece arguing that the man’s “brethren, who are Methodists, believe him to be a pious, honest, sober citizen for they have proved him and known his ways…”

That 5 Feb 1806 issue of the Litchfield Monitor isn’t in the newspaper database I can access, if it survives at all. I’m quoting from the 5 March Witness, the town’s Republican newspaper.

That issue of the Witness published a letter from four men; one of them, John Stone, had already written to contradicting Horton’s account of 1804. Together those men certified “That said Horton for two years past, or more, has not been considered by the Methodist society in this town as a member of said society.”

The Litchfield Monitor responded on 12 March with two letters. The first said that Horton was being “assailed with all the malice of Democracy, because he was too honest to sell himself to the tools of Alexander Wolcott.” Those four Methodists had written about Horton’s church membership merely “to serve the purpose of their party.”

Alexander Wolcott (1758-1828) was the leader of Connecticut’s Republicans. That year he accused the Federalists of having “priests and deacons, judges and justices, sheriffs and surveyors, with a host of corporations and privileged orders, to aid their elections.” There was no love lost between the parties.

Then came a letter from Horton himself, declaring

Within two years last past, the Methodists…made application to me to become their Leader. . . . I told them that my business was such, that I could not conveniently attend their meetings on week day, and that my constitution would not admit of my being out so far from home in the night, &c.

I have repeatedly attended their Sabbath preaching, and have cast in my mite at their contributions, and had requested John Stone several years ago to call on me when there were any collections to be made.

Another of the certificate signers, Horton said, had carried his contribution to “a poor Methodist Preacher” in a distant town. He concluded:

I am grieved to the heart, to find that men can be so infatuated as to testify as they and others have done, with the notorious design, to wound my feelings, and to murder my reputation.—I do not write this to prejudice you against them, but to let you know how far I am innocent as to what they have testified.

Horton did not, however, attempt to directly deny what Stone and others had written about his dilemma in 1804.

It appears that everyone in Litchfield now knew the real situation. Horton felt dependent enough on Deming that not only had he stopped voting for Republicans, but he also refused to acknowledge feeling any pressure from Deming. This was, after all, before secret ballots.

Later in 1806, Deming sold the paper mill to the partnership of Federalist lawyer Aaron Smith, shopkeeper Timothy Peck, and Horton. After two years Peck and Horton bought Smith out. That evidently restored the papermaker’s political independence.

Life in Litchfield went on. The Federalists lost power nationally, then even in New England. Horton retired from the mill. The election of 1824 shook up the national parties, producing a new duality of Democrats and Whigs.

When Horton died in 1837, the Litchfield Enquirer praised him as a “revolutionary officer” and a veteran of the Boston Tea Party. It also said, “As in ’75, so in ’37, he was a zealous and staunch whig.”