A Tight Squeeze for the 1780–81 School Year

When we left the Boston selectmen yesterday, a town meeting committee had just told them that they’d heard the widow Rebecca Holbrook might have a room in her house suitable for teaching handwriting and arithmetic to 70–80 boys.

Since Widow Holbrook’s late husband and his brother had both been masters of the South Writing School, she would surely be willing to host scholars from that school while it was repaired after a fire, right?

The selectmen delegated two of their number, Gustavus Fellows and Tuthill Hubbard, to confer with Rebecca Holbrook. On 12 April they reported back “that Mr. [Samuel? Mrs.?] Holbrook was out of Town & they were of opinion that said Room would not accommodate the Schoolars of the South part of the Town, without very great expence.”

“Very great“ was the same level of expense that had prompted the selectmen to reject refitting the laboratory building as a school. With the war and wartime inflation both raging, the selectmen very much wanted to avoid spending a lot.

So the selectmen and town came to a decision about what to do with the South Writing School: nothing.

At least that’s how I interpret the record, which doesn’t include any moment of decision but shows the results. The boys appear to have been crowded into the town’s two other Writing Schools, on Queen Street and in the North End. The charred building was apparently left alone.

Normally in early July the selectmen led a big committee of officials and eminent male citizens on a visit to each of the schools. This was an end-of-school-year ritual, an occasion for the Writing School boys to show off their skills and for the Latin School boys to recite. The parents of the Latin School boys who were graduating after the full course of study (only about a third of those who had entered seven years before) joined the town notables for a dinner in Faneuil Hall.

I see no record of that ceremony in 1780—another likely sign of wartime austerity. The selectmen’s records say they visited the schools on 6 July, but there’s no list of invitees. That page left space for the count of boys in the South Latin School, North Latin School, Writing School on Queen Street, and North Writing School—but those spaces are blank. And the South Writing School wasn’t mentioned at all.

On 11 July 1781 the custom was back on, and the count was:

• South Latin School: 91 scholars
• North Latin School: 39
• Queen Street Writing School: 270
• North Writing School: 271

Back in 1773, the three Writing Schools held 674 students. Evidently Boston’s population was still low enough that all the Writing School boys could squeeze into two buildings.

But that population was growing. Inflation leveled off with the arrival of hard money from France. Bostonians wanted to go back to normal—even if that might cost a bit.

In May 1781 the town meeting authorized paying “Three hundred Pounds old Currency towards purchasing Repairs for South Writing School.” The next month, the selectmen reached an agreement with an experienced writing master to reopen that school, sixteen months after the fire.

John Vinal was moving back from Newburyport.

COMING UP: Vinal in the new republic.

“In Lieu of that Part of his Salary received annually from England”

New England’s Puritan heritage made those colonies less than welcoming for the Church of England.

There was an Anglican missionary organization called the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S.P.G.). It paid for ministers to visit Native American communities.

It also supplemented the salaries of ministers in New England on the assumption that their congregations were small and their work difficult.

The Rev. Edward Bass was one of those ministers. He was born in 1726 in Dorchester into a family that had arrived early in the English settlement of Massachusetts. He studied at Harvard College and spent a couple of years teaching and preaching in Congregationalist meetings.

But by 1752 Bass decided that he really belonged in the Church of England. He sailed to Britain to be ordained, returning to take up the pulpit of St. Paul’s church in Newburyport.

Twenty years later came the war. As quoted yesterday, news of the Declaration of Independence prompted the wardens and vestrymen of St. Paul’s to ask their minister to leave prayers for King George III and his family out of their services for the sake of the church. On 16 July 1776 the Rev. Mr. Bass agreed: “I think it incumbent on me for so important an end to comply with this request during the present state of our political affairs.”

Bass tried to walk a narrow line. He dropped the public prayers for the king but continued to support the Crown personally. When the Massachusetts Council ordered all ministers to read the Declaration of Independence to their congregations, he declined to declaim it from the St. Paul’s church pulpit but evidently allowed a lower church official to do so.

But already other Anglican ministers were complaining about Bass’s conduct. On 15 July 1775 the Rev. Dr. Henry Caner of King’s Chapel in Boston had written to the S.P.G.: “Mr. Bass has complied perhaps too far with the orders of the Rebels.”

The war stopped the S.P.G.’s regular payment to Bass. On 25 Nov 1776, nine Newburyport men signed this pledge:

We the Subscribers of St. Paul’s Church in this town being truly sensible of the Distress which our worthy minister must suffer without some Relief in Lieu of that Part of his Salary received annually from England, and which the present unhappy Times prevent his obtaining, do promise to pay on Demand to Mr. John Vinal the several sums affixed to our Names to be by him delivered to the Rev. Mr. Bass.

The promised amounts ranged between £10 from Tristram Dalton and John Tracy to 18 shillings from Abram Gallisham. As for Vinal the schoolteacher and church warden, his signature doesn’t appear on this document. Perhaps he chipped in on his own, or perhaps his contribution lay in wrangling the contributions of others.

TOMORROW: Did that settle matters?

The “Doctrine of Projectiles” and Other Doctrines

On 10 Aug 1775, the Newburyport schoolmaster John Vinal wrote out the text of a new advertisement to appear in the next day’s Essex Journal and succeeding issues.

That was nearly four months into the war, and Vinal’s ad reflected that situation:

AT a Time when our Enemies are endeavouring our Ruin it is highly proper to qualify ourselves in the best Manner we can to defend our injured Country:

And as the Doctrine of Projectiles, or Art of GUNNERY is of such Importance that no Person should undertake the Direction of any Piece of Ordnance without a competent Knowledge of it, the Want of which has proved fatal to many:

The Subscriber therefore proposes to instruct those who may incline to attend four Afternoons in a Week, from five to seven o’Clock, or from eleven to one A.M. [sic] in the above Art at a very moderate Price

JOHN VINAL.

N.B. The Subscriber received his Knowledge of the above Art from a Gentleman who was an Engineer in the British Army the whole of the last War.

Newbury Port, August 10th, 1775.

In April and October 1776 Vinal went back to advertising private lessons for the “youth of both sexes” in the standard school subjects, not gunnery.

Vinal was also a warden of St. Paul’s, the town’s Anglican church, founded in 1711. On 16 July 1776 he, fellow warden Joseph Cutler, and eight vestrymen gave this letter to their minister, the Rev. Edward Bass (1726–1803):

Rev’d Sir;—

The Representatives of the United Colonies in America, having in Congress declared s’d colonies free and Independent States, and disavowed all Allegiance to the King of Britain and the service of the Church to which we belong, prescribing certain prayers, &c., to be used for s’d King, his Family & Government, We find ourselves under the necessity of requesting you to omit in your use of the Service all Prayers, Collects, or Suffrages which relate to the King, Royal Family, or Government of Great Britain, both as we would avoid great Inconsistency and as we value the welfare of the church, being assured that without such omission the Existence thereof would immediately cease.

Most of Boston’s Anglican clergymen had left with the British military, and others in Massachusetts were keeping a low profile. Bass had to worry about local opinion, his congregation, his sacred oaths—and his salary.

TOMORROW: A special collection.

“To open his EVENING-SCHOOL, as usual”

Isaiah Thomas and Henry-Walter Tinges launched the Essex Journal newspaper in Newburyport in 1773.

Among its advertisers was town schoolmaster John Vinal, offering private lessons in a broad range of subjects. His notice on 5 Oct 1774 said:

JOHN VINAL,
INTENDS to open his EVENING-SCHOOL, as usual at the NORTH-SCHOOL the 10th Instant, for Writing and the several practical Branches of the Mathematics, enumerated in a former Advertisement of his.

Alas, I haven’t found that “former Advertisement.” 

On 15 Mar 1775 Vinal was more expansive:

JOHN VINAL,
ACQUAINTS his Friends that he intends to begin his private School for Youth of both Sexes, on Monday the third of April next at 11 o’Clock A.M. in the room he improved the last Summer, nearly opposite Mr. Davenport’s Tavern, and from 5 to 7 o’Clock, P.M. at the Town School House for those who can best attend in the Afternoon.

N.B. The Said VINAL has a very genteel BOWFAT, with a Glass Door to dispose of, very cheap, for almost any Pay that will suit the Purchaser.

A what now?

A week later the same ad ran again except the item offered for sale was “a very genteel BUFFET, (commonly pronounced Bowfat,) with a Glass Door.”

Ah.

Dr. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary defined a buffet this way:

”Mr. Davenport’s Tavern” referred to the tavern started by William Davenport and inherited by his sons Anthony and Moses in 1773. Its sign showed Gen. James Wolfe, so it was also called the Wolfe Tavern.

Vinal’s eagerness to sell that genteel piece of furniture suggests a need for quick cash. Of course, he often seems to have wanted extra cash. But the spring of 1775 wasn’t the best time for selling a luxury item, especially one you didn’t know how to spell.

TOMORROW: War!

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.

John Vinal “continues to keep a private School”

Back in September I quoted John Adams’s account from 17 Apr 1764 of meeting a man who had taken the smallpox inoculation before him:

My Unkle [Dr. Zabdiel Boylston?] brought up one Vinal who has just recoverd of it in the natural Way to see Us, and show Us. His face is torn all to Pieces, and is as rugged as Braintree Commons.

That couldn’t have been very encouraging.

That man was John Vinal (1736–1823), the usher, or assistant teacher, at Boston’s South Writing School under Abiah Holbrook.

The Boston Athenaeum has a painting of Vinal, apparently copied from an earlier canvas around 1900. I’ll have to look for smallpox scars the next time I see it.

On 15 May Vinal petitioned the Boston town meeting “that an allowance may be made him, in consideration of the Straits and Difficultys he has been reduced to by means of the Small Pox.” After some debate the town voted to pay Vinal £15 on top of his usual salary of £50.

That was just one way Vinal augmented his town salary. Like other town teachers, he offered private lessons. As early as 1756 he advertised an evening school for adults. This 15 Sept 1760 Boston Evening-Post notice lays out his subjects:

John Vinal
Hereby gives Notice, that he intends an Evening-School will be opened as usual, at the South Writing School, the 29th of this Instant, where Persons may be taught Writing, Arithmetic, Algebra, &c. also Book-keeping, in so plain a Method, that any Person of a common Capacity, may in a short Time, at a small Expence, be able to keep his own Accompts with Exactness.

In the 3 Oct 1763 Boston Post-Boy Vinal promised to cover “Reading, Writing, Arithmetic vulgar and decimal, Navigation and several Branches of the Mathematics; also the Italian Manner of Bookkeeping.”

That still left some free hours of the day. The boys at the town schools went home for their midday dinners, and then again at the end of the day. Master Holbrook probably had his own private pupils come into the South Writing School at that time, so where did that leave Vinal?

He hustled over to a space that yet another teacher, Richard Pateshall, used for private lessons in “the Rudiments of the Latin Tongue” along with English reading, spelling, and arithmetic. While Pateshall was out, Vinal went to work teaching children, as shown in this 30 Apr 1764 Boston Post-Boy ad:

John Vinal,
Hereby gives Notice, that he continues to keep a private School, opposite William Vassall’s Esq; where Youth may be instructed in Reading, Writing and Arithmetic in the best Manner, from XI to XII o’Clock, A.M. and from V to VI o’Clock, P.M. Misses may also be taught Spelling. Those who send their Children, may depend upon their being faithfully instructed.

That ad appeared less than two weeks after Adams saw Vinal’s smallpox-ravaged face. A lesson the youth would never forget.

TOMORROW: Moving up.

“Swelled to three times his size, black as bacon”

Here’s another account of anti-epidemic measures from the Adams family papers, this one a 17 Apr 1764 letter from John Adams to his fiancée, Abigail Smith.

John had gone into Boston to be inoculated with smallpox under the care of Dr. Nathaniel Perkins, and he reported:

Messrs. Quincy’s Samuel and Josiah, have the Distemper very lightly. I asked Dr. Perkins how they had it. The Dr. answerd in the style of the Faculty “Oh Lord sir; infinitely light!” It is extreamly pleasing, says he, wherever we go We see every Body passing thro this tremendous Distemper, in the lightest, easiest manner, conceivable.

The Dr. meaned, those who have the Distemper by Inoculation in the new Method, for those who have it in the natural Way, are Objects of as much Horror, as ever.

There is a poor Man, in this Neighbourhood, one Bass, now labouring with it, in the natural Way. He is in a good Way of Recovery, but is the most shocking sight, that can be seen. They say he is no more like a Man than he is like an Hog or an Horse—swelled to three times his size, black as bacon, blind as a stone. I had when I was first inoculated a great Curiosity to go and see him; but the Dr. said I had better not go out, and my Friends thought it would give me a disagreable Turn.

My Unkle [Dr. Zabdiel Boylston?] brought up one [John] Vinal who has just recoverd of it in the natural Way to see Us, and show Us. His face is torn all to Pieces, and is as rugged as Braintree Commons.

This Contrast is forever before the Eyes of the whole Town, Yet it is said there are 500 Persons, who continue to stand it out, in spight of Experience, the Expostulations of the Clergy, both in private and from the Desk, the unwearied Persuasions of the select Men, and the perpetual Clamour and astonishment of the People, and to expose themselves to this Distemper in the natural Way!—

Is Man a rational Creature think You?—Conscience, forsooth and scruples are the Cause.—I should think my self, a deliberate self Murderer, I mean that I incurred all the Guilt of deliberate self Murther, if I should only stay in this Town and run the Chance of having it in the natural Way.

Smallpox continued to spread well into the age of photography, so there’s graphic documentation of how victims look when the blisters break out. I don’t recommend it.

The End of the Constitutional Telegraphe

When we left off with John S. Lillie on Tuesday, he was feeling triumphant about the election of Thomas Jefferson as President in 1800. His Constitutional Telegraphe newspaper had strongly supported the Jeffersonian party, though—given how Massachusetts had a favorite son in the race and was already awarding all its Electoral College votes to whoever won the state—that hadn’t actually affected the election.

But Federalists were still in power in New England. And Americans were still working out their understanding of a free press. In February 1801 Chief Justice Francis Dana convinced a jury to indict Lillie for printing an anonymous piece that called him “Lord Chief Justice of the Common Law of England” and cast other aspersions on his integrity. Dana had been trying to apply English libel law in Massachusetts as a way to stamp out “sedition.”

Lillie announced in his 18 February paper that he “prefers to remain for a short time incog.” Too short a time, since state authorities brought him to court in August. Lillie produced the handwritten essay he had published about Dana. People recognized the writing of John Vinal—I suspect this was the man born in 1761 who taught in Boston’s Writing Schools and not his namesake father.

Both Lillie and Vinal were tried in the spring of 1802. For his attorney Lillie had George Blake, who had published essays about the case in the Independent Chronicle and had just been appointed U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. Vinal had Harrison Gray Otis and John Quincy Adams. That team argued that handwriting wasn’t legal evidence—and indeed it wasn’t yet. So Vinal was acquitted for lack of proof.

There was no question, however, that Lillie’s name appeared on the Constitutional Telegraphe’s masthead. And the U.S. hadn’t established our current understanding of protected political speech. So Lillie was convicted of libel and sentenced to three months in jail and a $100 fine. At the end of March 1802, nineteen days into his term, he published an angry account of the proceedings from his cell and announced he was giving up the newspaper.

A printer named John Moseley Dunham took over, soon changing the paper’s title to the Republican Gazetteer. (The fad for Telelgraphe newspapers had passed.) Later it got new owners and became the Democrat. Dunham went into the ink business before moving to Ohio.

On 12 Oct 1803 Lillie wrote to President Jefferson, enclosing a bill for $4.50 for sending him the Constitutional Telegraphe for six months (October 1801 to April 1802). He explained:

When I was Editor of the News Paper called the Constitutional Telegraphe, I sent it on to you, as did Doctr. [Samuel S.] Parker, who was the original Editor of that Paper. I should not at this late period have thought of forwarding my Bill to you, which I have inclosed in this Letter, but for my misfortunes. I have suffered, Sir, very much in consequence of my too ardent zeal in the Republican cause, & am willing, if it should be necessary, still to suffer more, neither the neglect of my Republican friends, nor the contumely or contempt of my federal enemies, will, I trust, ever induce me to alter my political creed. Perhaps my zeal in the Republican cause when I edited the Telegraphe, made me rather imprudent; I certainly meant well, & my concience does not reproach me with an intention, to injure, either directly, or indirectly, the private character of any man. The distress of my family was great during my unfortunate imprisonment for a supposed libel on Judge Dana; at that time, two of my Children lay at the point of Death, particularly, the youngest, who has the honor to bear your name . . .

You no doubt will recollect Sir, that the Constitutl. Telegraphe, was, at one time, the only decided Republican Paper in this State. and if I know my own heart, when I became its Editor, I had no other view, than the good of my native Country, in the promotion of Republicanism in your Election to the Chief magistracy of the nation, and to this single point I exerted with pleasure all the abilities which I possessed, & had the inexpressible satisfaction to find the cause triumphant

Lillie got what look like federal patronage jobs in the U. S. Loan Office and the U.S. Bank. In 1802 he also inherited the “the old Franklin house on Milk Street”—the Benjamin Franklin birthplace—from his uncle. However, he enjoyed that house for only eight years before it burned down. Lillie died at age 76 in 1842.