Almanac Oddities

Yesterday’s New York Times reported on the New-York Historical Society’s project to “to catalog its 5,700 American almanacs, one of the nation’s most comprehensive collections.”

For 18th-century American families, two kinds of books were considered indispensable: Bibles and yearly almanacs.

Yet in the almanacs, the routine daily weather predictions were practically afterthoughts; essays, data charts, cartoons and advertisements dominated the pages. Each almanac also had an editorial viewpoint and mood, depending on the publisher’s personality and local market trends. . . .

A 1713 almanac from Rhode Island provides puzzling weather predictions like “suspicious.” . . .

Handwritten notes also appear in the historical society’s collection. After the Declaration of Independence was issued in 1776, a New Yorker predicts that “rivers of blood will flow.”

The N.Y.H.S. collection includes several almanacs not known to survive anywhere else.

As for the weather predictions in almanacs, those always struck me as problematic. Only within the past few years have we expected meteorologists to be able to forecast the next week’s weather with any accuracy. It’s hard to believe, therefore, that farmers actually expected almanac makers to describe the weather more than twelve months in advance.

On the other hand, the phases of the Moon, sunrise and sunset times, and high and low tides were eminently calculable for eighteenth-century scholars like Dr. Nathaniel Ames (whose work is shown above). And that information was useful for farmers, mariners, and many others. I think those were the parts of an almanac that buyers relied on. This article from Common-place describes the form.

Of course, all the almanacs written for a particular location would have had the same astronomical data. So the rest of the material was necessary to make one almanac stand out from the competition, or at least not fall behind. But I suspect smart almanac-maker promoted information that wasn’t so easy to test as weather predictions.

For 1773, for example, Boston schoolboy Joshua Green used an almanac that featured Israel Remmington, a boy “giant” from Hingham. The New England Historic Genealogical Society also owns the almanac Joshua’s father chose for that year, and it’s definitely less sensational.

Children’s Clothing Talk at Otis House, 13 June

On Thursday, 13 June, Historic New England will host a talk by Associate Curator Laura Johnson on “Skirts, Stays, and Skeleton Suits: Clothing Children in New England.” The lecture description says:

When did children wear corsets? When did boys stop wearing skirts and girls begin wearing pants? Learn about the surprising ways we clothed our children from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries at this illustrated lecture by Associate Curator Laura Johnson, using images of many interesting and rare items from Historic New England’s collection of children’s clothing and portraits.

Registration is required. Admission is $5 for Historic New England members, $10 for others. Johnson will start speaking at 6:00 P.M., and the venue is the society’s Otis House at 141 Cambridge Street in Boston.

And as long as this event is in one of Harrison Gray Otis’s houses, I’ll quote what his descendant Samuel Eliot Morison wrote about the clothing Harry wore as a boy in the 1770s:

Every year, on Guy Fawkes’ day, a new pair of leather breeches was given him, and reserved for “best” so long as the breeches of the previous vintage held out.

That November date seems to have been an Otis family tradition, not a general one. Joshua Green, Harry’s classmate at the South Latin School, recorded receiving a pair of leather breeches on 16 Mar 1773.

A Look at Cambridge’s Christ Church around 1781

One of my favorite schoolboys from Revolutionary Boston is Joshua Green (1764-1847) because he saved a lot of stuff from his youth that other men, and their families, threw away.

We have Joshua’s textbooks from the South Latin School, and his notes on how much those books cost him, and his notes on class ranking, and his almanac for the year 1773. Unfortunately, his papers were spread around among different libraries by his grandson, historian Samuel Abbott Green.

Only this month I learned that a few of Joshua Green’s architectural drawings from early in his college years are at Harvard. The thumbnail image here shows Cambridge’s Christ Church as it appeared around 1781, when it was thirty years old. (Today the congregation celebrates the building’s 250th anniversary.) Click here for the whole collection of drawings.

“Distinction of ye. different ranks of ye. Officers”

Just because a commander issues orders, as I’ve quoted Gen. George Washington doing over the past two days, that doesn’t mean everyone in the army follows them. They might not be able to, for one thing.

Did all the officers of the Continental Army besieging Boston rush to put different colors of cockades in their hats? Did they train all sentries in how to recognize the different ranks of generals and aides-de-camp? All we can say for sure is that the word of the insignia went out in the general orders.

And got fairly widely disseminated. Schoolboy Joshua Green, whose family had left Boston for Westfield, wrote this in his almanac opposite the page for July 1775:

Distinction of ye. different ranks of ye. Officers in ye. Continental Army undr. Genl. Washington.

For ye. General a black cockade & a broad scarlet ribbon from ye. left shoulder to ye. right hip but being under ye. coat is seen only across his breast.

Major General a blk cockade wth. a purple ribbon as above.

Aid de camps, a blue.

Colo:, Lt: Colo:, & Major a scarlet cockade.

Captains a yellow cockade.

First & Secd: Lieuts: a green

Joshua’s notes weren’t accurate for the generals’ ribbands, and he left out the brigadier rank entirely. But he got the cockade colors for junior officers correct, and we can take “scarlet” to mean colonels and majors were seeking out something brighter than just “red or pink.”

Another observer who tried to record the system was Benjamin Thompson (shown above). In November 1775, he had sailed into British-occupied Boston from Newport after months of hanging around behind the American lines. He sat down to summarize all the intelligence he had gathered, including:

The marks of distinction among them are as follows, viz.:—The Commander-in-Chief wears a wide blue ribbon between his coat and waistcoat, over the right shoulder and across the breast; Major Generals a pink ribbon in the same manner; Brigadier Generals a [blank] ribbon; and all Aids-du-camp a green one; all Field Officers wear red, pink, or scarlet cockades; Captains, yellow or buff cockades; and Subalterns, green ones.

Even Thompson couldn’t remember that special distinction between major and brigadier generals.

TOMORROW: And how did the system work when it came time for a battle?

Steal Not This Book for Fear of Shame

Yesterday folks at the Seth Kaller firm in New York sent me a link to their catalog of the early American documents related to Boston now for sale. (Click on “Boston Catalog” at the webpage linked above.) They’ll be at the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair on 16-18 November.

One item that caught my eye was a copy of Brady and Tate’s New Version of the Psalms of David, printed in Boston in 1765 and signed as shown here: “John Hancock’s / Thou shalt not Steal Saith the Lord.”

Hancock’s inscription reminded me of similar warnings I’d seen in textbooks from the South Latin School, which the merchant had attended starting in 1745. For example, in 1774 Joshua Green signed his copy of the Accidence, the beginners’ textbook, and two years later he added:

Hic liber pertinet [This book belongs to] Josua Green
Steal not this book for fear of shame
For in it is the owner’s name 1776

Other surviving eighteenth-century schoolbooks are also inked with multiple signatures and dire warnings against theft. Charles Chauncy (who had entered the same South Latin School in 1712) was straightforward in a history of Rome: “Steal this book if you dare.” He grew up to be Boston’s senior Congregationalist minister.

Inside a Greek-Latin text that school required of older students, Peter Oliver (entered school 1719) warned in Latin, “Here I place my name, since I don’t want to lose this book; If anyone steals it, he will be hanged by the neck.” Appropriately, he grew up to be the last royal Chief Justice of Massachusetts.

With all those warnings in all those books, you might think that pre-Revolutionary Boston suffered from a wave of textbook and hymnal theft. But no newspaper, court records, or memoir of schoolboy life mentions that problem. And I doubt there were many thieves who could read a warning in Latin anyway.

Rather, I think the schoolboys’ signatures and inscriptions simply showed their pride of ownership. Even upper-class children had few possessions of their own, but the scholars’ Latin textbooks not only belonged to them but signified their place in society.

As for why one of Boston’s richest merchants was still signing a book that way years after he graduated, I couldn’t say. But for $85,000 you can own that book yourself.

The South Latin School Closes for War

Yesterday I quoted Harrison Gray Otis on his first day at the South Latin School in Boston. Today I quote his memory of his last day under Master John Lovell, which was the memorable morning of 19 Apr 1775.

In the morning about seven, Percy’s brigade [i.e., the British reinforcement column] was drawn up extending from Scollay’s building [underneath the J.F.K. Federal Building] thro’ Tremont Street nearly to the bottom of the Mall [on the Common], preparing to take up their march for Lexington.

A corporal came up to me as I was going to school, and turned me off to pass down Court St. which I did, and came up School St. to the School-house. It may well be imagined that great agitation prevailed, the British line being drawn up only a few yards from the School-house door.

As I entered School I heard the announcement of “deponite libros” and ran home for fear of the regulars.

Here ended my connection with Mr. Lovell’s administration of the School. Soon afterwards I left town and did not return until after the evacuation by the British in March, 1776.

“Deponite libros”—“Put down the books”—was the way the Latin School masters traditionally ended the school day.

By that evening, Boston was under siege by the provincial militia. On 24 April, Harry Otis’s classmate Joshua Green, Jr., wrote in his diary: “Bro’t my books home from Latin School”—by then it was clear that school would be closed for a while. (Joshua’s diary was published by a descendant in Facts Relating to the History of Groton, Massachusetts, volume 2, of all places.)

Two weeks later, the Greens left Boston to stay with relatives in Westfield. At the same time, the Otis family went to Barnstable, where Harry’s grandfather had a large estate. Most other wealthy families who adhered to the Patriot cause also departed, leaving the Loyalists.

Among those Loyalists were Master Lovell and most of his relations. But his son and assistant, James, was a Patriot. With his wife pregnant and himself suffering from diarrhea, he felt he couldn’t leave. Instead, he arranged for some of their older children to go out, and tried to make himself useful to the provincials. In August, Nathaniel Appleton quoted James Lovell as saying that a return to teaching would be “spending his time idlely schooling the children of a pack of Villains.”

But by that point James Lovell no longer had much choice about where he would spend his time. In late June, after the Battle of Bunker Hill, the military authorities had put him in jail on suspicion of spying for the rebels. Chroniclers say that in March 1776 the Lovell family sailed from Boston to Halifax on one ship, Master John as a passenger and James as a prisoner. The Latin School on School Street reopened later that year without them.

Latin School Entrance Exam

Master John Lovell (shown here, in an image from the 1886 Catalogue of the Boston Public Latin School) didn’t let just any child into Boston’s South Latin School in the decades before the Revolutionary War. No, a child had to be male and white. He had to be old enough—usually seven years old. He had to read English already. And it helped to be prompt.

Harrison Gray Otis (1765-1848) recalled the admission process in a letter he wrote to a Boston newspaper in 1844, which was quoted in the Catalogue:

I perfectly remember the day I entered the School, July, 1773, being then seven years and nine months old.

Immediately after the end of [Harvard] Commencement week, I repaired, according to the rule prescribed for candidates for admission to the lowest form [i.e., the youngest class], to old Master Lovell’s house, situate in School Street, nearly opposite the site of the old School House. I was early on the ground, anticipated only by Mr. John Hubbard, who lived near—it being understood that the boys were to take their places on the form in the same routine that they had presented themselves at the house.

The probationary exercise was reading a few verses of the Bible. Having passed muster in this, I was admitted as second boy in the lowest form.

Throughout their scholastic career, the boys were seated according to their class rank. That made it clear to them and everyone else how well they were performing. Thus, ambitious young Harry Otis kept careful track of his ranking, and might have resented John Hubbard for living close enough to Master Lovell’s house to get an early lead.

In fact, lists kept by Master Lovell and his son and by classmate Joshua Green, Jr., show that Harry was initially ranked third or fourth, behind an unidentified Lovell, Hubbard, and Samuel Taylor. But by the end of 1773 “H. G. Otis” was at the head of his form, and probably stayed there until the Revolution began.

Jonathan Homer (1759-1843) had a different reason to feel miffed about this admission process because the Lovells turned him away, probably for being too young:

At the age of six and a half years, I was sent to master John Lovell’s Latin School. The only requirement was reading well; but, though fully qualified, I was sent away to Master [John] Griffith, a private teacher, to learn to read, write and spell.

Homer returned to the South Latin School the next year, went on to Harvard, and became a minister in Newton, where Homer Street starts (or ends) at the site of his church.

The Lessons of Writing School

Having discussed what Boston’s Latin School boys were studying, I now turn to the bigger question: what the larger crowd of Writing School boys were taught. Boston had three public Writing Schools, one on Bennet Street in the North End, one on West Street near the Common, and one in what later became Scollay Square. Together they contained four times the number of boys as the two Latin Schools in 1770.

The main subject at the Writing Schools was—no surprise—writing. Writing five-paragraph essays? Writing book reports or short stories or political essays? Nope. Literally, the main lesson plan was learning to write beautifully with a quill pen.

As Ray Nash stated in American Writing Masters and Copybooks: History and Bibliography Through Colonial Times, published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1959:

The writing master was ready to show him [the scholar] how to hold the pen properly between fingers and thumb, how to sit correctly at the desk, where to place the paper or ruled writing book in front of him.

Then came the demonstration of the strokes of the letters in due order, of the letters themselves, and eventually of the letters joined into words and the words arranged in improving sentences that are still remembered in the pejorative term “copybook maxims.”

The master wrote the model for the lesson at the top of a fresh page in the learner’s writing book—this was called setting the copy. It was then the pupil’s business to reproduce the copy as nearly as he could, studying each thick and thin, every curve and join, line after line to the bottom of the page under correction of the master.

Much of the master’s time was occupied in the making and mending of pens.

Diderot’s Encyclopédie offers us illustrations of the proper posture and tools for writing and how to cut a quill pen.

For their advanced students, the Writing School masters copied elaborate pages from books, particularly George Bickham’s Universal Penman, published in London in installments in the early 1740s. Here are two large examples of Bickham’s model pages, both on the theme of writing itself. You can also view a bunch of smaller Bickham page images from Davidson Galleries, and two more examples from DK Images.

Above is a facsimile of a smaller Bickham production, The Young Clerk’s Assistant, or Penmanship made easy. This edition has been reprinted by Sullivan Press, which makes a specialty of the paperwork forms and manuals of the Revolutionary War. The title page alone shows how many styles of handwriting which a gentleman and/or businessman was expected to know.

The 1748 edition of George Fisher’s The American Instructor, published by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, included five styles of writing:

• “the Italian Hand”: slanted, flowing, with spiral flourishes
• “the secretary Hand”: upright, thick, old-fashioned
• “An easy copy for Round Hand”: slanted but thicker, with less pronounced flourishes
• a “Flourishing Alphabet”: all capital letters
• a neat style of printing

With all correspondence conducted by handwritten letters, all financial accounts kept by hand, and no practical way to copy documents but to rewrite them, a man in business did a lot of writing. Furthermore, if that man had pretensions to be a gentleman, his handwriting, like the way he dressed and carried himself, was supposed to show effortless grace and propriety. Therefore, smooth, clear handwriting was a valuable skill in colonial American society.

Boston’s Writing Schools also taught the “ciphering,” or arithmetic, that young businessmen would need to know, such as long division, “vulgar fractions,” “the rule of three,” “tare and trett,” “single fellowship,” &c. Thanks to the Georgia state government, we can page through a copybook created by Thomas Perry, Jr., in 1793, which lays out many mathematical processes in a flourishing hand. (At the end of Perry’s book are examples of another thing Writing School students probably practiced copying: exemplary business documents. As far as I can tell, the boys were never encouraged to compose anything original.)

Many Boston boys who dropped out of a Latin School started going to a Writing School instead; that was the path traveled by Samuel Breck. Others, such as William Molineux, Jr., and Thomas Handysyd Perkins, seem to have spent their entire scholastic careers in Writing Schools, preparing for the business world.

Even for the boys left in Latin School, good handwriting was such an important skill that they often took writing lessons during their midday dinner breaks or at the end of their school days. Such Latin School boys as John Hancock, Joshua Green, and Harrison Gray Otis took such private lessons from writing masters.

And boys weren’t the only young people who needed good handwriting. Upper-class women were expected to write neatly, too. Anna Green Winslow was one girl who attended Master Samuel Holbrook’s private writing lessons, at least when the weather was good.

Joshua Green Begins in the Accidence

A Boston 1775 reader asked to know more about the difference between the two types of public schools in colonial Boston that I mentioned on Monday: Latin Schools and Writing Schools. Since the town apparently saw more value in the Latin or grammar schools, to judge by what it paid the schoolmasters, I’ll start with those.

On 26 July 1773, Joshua Green, Jr., wrote in his diary, “I enter’d at Latin School & began in ye. Accidence.” In fact, he began studying the copy of the Accidence shown right here, printed in Boston in 1766. He wrote his name in the upper right corner. (I think I found this image years ago in Pauline Holmes’s Tercentenary History of the Boston Public Latin School). Joshua was about nine years old, and some of his classmates were only seven.

This textbook was often called “Cheever’s Accidence” after Ezekiel Cheever (1614-1708), who had taught in New England grammar schools for seven decades. However, it was probably assembled by Cheever’s last usher, or assistant teacher, Nathaniel Williams. Williams succeeded his mentor in 1708, and the first edition appeared on the market in 1709. With revisions, it continued to be printed until 1838.

And what an exciting read the Accidence was, too:

A Noune is the name of a thing that may be seen, felt, heard or understand. As the name of my hand in Latin, is Manus: The name of an house, is Domus: The name of goodnesse, is Bonitas.

Of Nounes some be Substantives, and some be Adjectives. A Noune Substantive is that standeth by him selfe, and requireth not an other worde to be joyned with him: as Homo, a Man: and it is declined with one article: as Hic magister, a Maister: or else with two at moste: as Hic & haec parens, a Father or Mother. A Noune Adjective is that can not stand by him selfe, but requireth to be joyned with an other worde: as Bonus, good: Pulcher, faire. And it is declined either with thre terminations: - as Bonus, bona, bonum: or els with thre articles: as Hic haec & hoc Foelix, Happy. Hic & haec levis, & hoc leve, Light.

A Verbe is a parte of speche, declined with mode and tense, and betokenenth dooying: as Amo, I love: or suffering: as Amor, I am loved: or beeying: as Sum, I am.

That’s not necessarily the text as Joshua would have seen it in 1773; it comes from this site from Holy Cross College on the teaching of Latin in the 1600s and 1700s. But it no doubt has the same flavor. Pedagogical technique at the time involved a great deal of reciting aloud and memorization.

In September, Joshua moved on to “Nomenclator,” then “Corderius.” Eventually Latin School lessons consisted of “making verses,” or translating back and forth. Scholars in the top two classes (or forms) at the school studied the rudiments of Greek. All this was to prepare the boys for Harvard College, and particularly for the ministry. Creating a supply of Puritan ministers was, after all, why the Massachusetts Bay colony had founded Harvard and required all towns above a certain size to provide some sort of public schooling for their boys. Nevertheless, by the 1700s most Harvard graduates were going into law, medicine, or business, not the pulpit.

The Latin School curriculum left out a lot of interesting and useful subjects:

• science
• math
• history (besides what was in Caesar and other Latin writers)
• geography (One Latin School graduate recalled, “I never saw a map, except in Caesar’s Commentaries, and did not know what that meant.”)
• handwriting
• literature or composition in English
• other languages
• business
• art and music

The upshot was that if a boy wasn’t doing well enough at a Latin School to go on to Harvard or another college, there was almost no value in remaining at that school at all. It was a highly impractical education. In the two decades before the Revolutionary War, only one-third of the boys who entered Boston’s South Latin School finished all seven years. Notable grammar-school dropouts included Benjamin Franklin, Henry Knox, Henry Pelham, and Samuel Breck.