EDUCATION AND CHILD-LIFE
As soon as the little American baby was born in New Netherland, he was
taken to the church by his Dutch papa, and with due array of sponsors
was christened by the domine from the _doop-becken_, or dipping-bowl,
in the Dutch Reformed Church. New Yorkers had a beautiful silver
_doop-becken_ in 1695, and the church on the corner of Thirty-Eighth
Street and Madison Avenue has it still. It was made in Amsterdam from
silver coin and ornaments brought by the good folk of the Garden
Street Church as offerings. For it Domine Henricus Selyns, “of nimble
faculty,” then minister of that church, and formerly of Breuckelen,
and the first poet of Brooklyn, wrote these pious and graceful verses,
which were inscribed on the bowl:
“Op’t blote water stelt geen hoot
’Twas beter noyt gebooren.
Maer, ziet iets meerder in de Dorp
Zo’ gaet nien noÿt verlooren.
Hoe Christús met sÿn dierbaer Bloedt
Mÿ reÿniglt van myn Zonden.
En door syn Geest mÿ leven doet
En wast mÿn Vuÿle Wonden.”
Which translated reads:--
“Do not put your hope in simple water alone, ’twere better never to
be born.
But behold something more in baptism, for that will prevent your
getting lost.
How Christ’s precious blood cleanses me of my sins,
And now I may live through His spirit and be cleansed of my vile
wounds.”
This christening was the sole social or marked event of the
_kindeken’s_ infancy, and little else do we know of his early life. He
ate and slept, as do all infants. In cradles slept these children of
the Dutch,--deep-hooded cradles to protect from the chill draughts of
the poorly heated houses. In cradles of birch bark the Albany babies
slept; and pretty it was to see the fat little Dutch-men sleeping in
those wildwood tributes of the Indian mothers’ skill to the children of
the men who had driven the children of the redmen from their homes.
Children were respectful, almost cowed, in their bearing to their
parents, and were enjoined by ministers and magistrates to filial
obedience. When the government left the Dutch control and became
English, the Calvinistic sternness of laws as to obedience to parents
in maturer years which was seen in New England was also found in New
York.
“If any Child or Children, above sixteen years of age, and of
Sufficient understanding, shall smite their Natural Father or Mother,
unless provoked and forct for their selfe preservation from Death
or Mayming, at the Complaint of the said Father or Mother, and not
otherwise, they being Sufficient witness thereof, that Child, or those
Children so offending shall be put to Death.”
A few prim little letters of English children have survived the wear
and tear of years, and still show us in their pretty wording the formal
and respectful language of the times. Martha Bockée Flint, in that
interesting and valuable book, “Early Long Island,” gives this letter
written to Major Ephenetus Platt “at Huntting-town” by a little girl
eleven years old:--
EVER HONORED GRANDFATHER;
SIR: My long absence from you and my dear Grandmother has been not a
little tedious to me. But what renders me a Vast Deal of pleasure
is Being intensely happy with a Dear and Tender Mother-in-Law and
frequent oppertunities of hearing of your Health and Welfair which I
pray God may long Continue. What I have more to add is to acquaint you
that I have already made a Considerable Progress in Learning. I have
already gone through some Rules of Arithmetic, and in a little Time
shall be able of giving you a Better acct of my Learning, and in mean
time I am Duty Bound to subscribe myself
Your most obedient and
Duty full Granddaughter
PEGGA TREADWELL.
In the Lloyd Collections is a charming little letter from another Long
Island miss, ten years of age. The penmanship is elegant and finished,
as was that of her elders at that date.
We have, however, scant sources from which to learn of the life of
children in colonial New York. No diarist of Pepysian minuteness tells
of the children of New Netherland as does the faithful Samuel Sewall of
those of New England; no collections of letters such as the Winthrop
Papers and others recount the various items of domestic life. There
are none of the pious and garrulous writings of ministers such as
Cotton Mather, who in diary and various literary compositions give
another side of their life. We have no such messages from the colonial
Dutch. In whatever depended on the use of “a flourit pen,” posterity is
neither richer nor wiser for the Dutch settlers having lived. Nor were
their English successors much fonder of literary composition. Nothing
but formal records of churches, of courts, of business life, offer to
us any pages for study and drawing of inference. And from these records
the next hint of the life of these colonial children, sad to relate, is
to their discredit. The pragmatic magistrates kept up a steady prying
and bullying over them. In New Orange, in 1673, “if any children be
caught on the street playing, racing, and shouting previous to the
termination of the last preaching, the officers of justice may take
their hat or upper garment, which shall not be restored to the parents
until they have paid a fine of two guilders,” which, we may be sure,
would insure the miserable infants summary punishment on arriving home.
Matters were no better in New Amsterdam. One amusing complaint was
brought up against “y^e wretched boys” of that settlement, and by one
high in authority, Schout De Sille. One of his duties was to patrol
the town of New Amsterdam at night to see that all was peaceful as
befitted a town which was the daughter of the Dutch government. But the
poor _schout_ did not find his evening stroll altogether a happy one.
He complained that the dogs set upon him, and that tantalizing boys
shouted out “The Indians!” at him from behind trees and fences,--which
must have startled him sorely, and have been most unpleasantly
suggestive in those days of Indian horrors; and his chief complaint was
that there was “much cutting of hoekies” by the boys,--which means, I
fancy, playing of tricks, of jokes, of _hoaxes_, such as were played on
Hock-day in England, or perhaps “playing hookey,” as American boys of
to-day have been known to do.
As years passed on, I fear some of these young Dutch-Americans were sad
rogues. They sore roused the wrath of Albany legislators, as is hereby
proven:--
“Whereas y^e children of y^e s^d city do very unorderly to y^e shame
and scandall of their parents ryde down y^e hills in y^e streets of
the s^d city with small and great slees on the lord day and in the
week by which many accidents may come, now for pventing y^e same it
is hereby publishd and declard y^t it shall and may be lawful for any
Constable in this City or any other person or persons to take any slee
or slees from all and every such boys and girls rydeing or offering to
ryde down any hill within y^e s^d city and breake any slee or slees in
pieces. Given under our hands and seals in Albany y^e 22th of December
in 12th year of Her Maj’s reign Anno Domini 1713.”
In 1728 Albany boys and girls still were hectored, still were fined by
the bullying Albany constable for sliding down the alluringly steep
Albany streets on “sleds, small boards, or otherwise.”
Mrs. Grant, writing of about the year 1765, speaks of the custom of
coasting, but not of the legislation against it, and gives a really
delightful picture of coasting-joys, which apparently were then
partaken of only by boys. The _schepens_ and their successors the
constables, joy-destroying Sivas, had evidently succeeded in wresting
this pleasure from the girls.
“In town all the boys were extravagantly fond of a diversion that
to us would appear a very odd and childish one. The great street of
the town sloped down from the hill on which the fort stood, towards
the river; between the buildings was an unpaved carriage-road, the
foot-path beside the houses being the only part of the street which
was paved. In winter the sloping descent, continued for more than a
quarter of a mile, acquired firmness from the frost, and became very
slippery. Then the amusement commenced. Every boy and youth in town,
from eight to eighteen, had a little low sledge, made with a rope like
a bridle to the front, by which it could be dragged after one by the
hand. On this one or two at most could sit, and this sloping descent
being made as smooth as a looking-glass, by sliders’ sledges, etc.,
perhaps a hundred at once set out from the top of this street, each
seated in his little sledge with the rope in his hand, which, drawn
to the right or left, served to guide him. He pushed it off with a
little stick, as one would launch a boat; and then, with the most
astonishing velocity, precipitated by the weight of the owner, the
little machine glided past, and was at the lower end of the street
in an instant. What could be so delightful in this rapid and smooth
descent I could never discover; though in a more retired place,
and on a smaller scale, I have tried the amusement; but to a young
Albanian, sleighing, as he called it, was one of the first joys of
life, though attended by the drawback of walking to the top of the
declivity, dragging his sledge every time he renewed his flight, for
such it might well be called. In the managing this little machine some
dexterity was necessary: an unskilful Phaeton was sure to fall. The
conveyance was so low that a fall was attended with little danger, yet
with much disgrace, for an universal laugh from all sides assailed the
fallen charioteer. This laugh was from a very full chorus, for the
constant and rapid succession of this procession, where every one had
a brother, lover, or kinsman, brought all the young people in town
to the porticos, where they used to sit wrapt in furs till ten or
eleven at night, engrossed by this delectable spectacle. I have known
an Albanian, after residing some years in Britain, and becoming a
polished fine gentleman, join the sport and slide down with the rest.”
Mrs. Grant tells of another interesting and unusual custom of the
children of Albany:
“The children of the town were divided into companies, as they called
them, from five to six years of age, until they became marriageable.
How those companies first originated, or what were their exact
regulations, I cannot say; though I, belonging to none, occasionally
mixed with several, yet always as a stranger, notwithstanding that
I spoke their current language fluently. Every company contained as
many boys as girls. But I do not know that there was any limited
number; only this I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company,
who were older, cleverer, or had some other pre-eminence among the
rest were called heads of the company, and as such were obeyed by the
others.... Children of different ages in the same family belonged to
different companies. Each company at a certain time of the year went
in a body to gather a particular kind of berries to the hill. It was
a sort of annual festival attended with religious punctuality. Every
company had a uniform for this purpose; that is to say, very pretty
light baskets made by the Indians, with lids and handles, which hung
over one arm, and were adorned with various colors. Every child was
permitted to entertain the whole company on its birthday, and once
besides, during winter and spring. The master and mistress of the
family always were bound to go from home on these occasions, while
some old domestic was left to attend and watch over them, with an
ample provision of tea, chocolate, preserved and dried fruits, nuts
and cakes of various kinds, to which was added cider or a syllabub;
for these young friends met at four and amused themselves with the
utmost gayety and freedom in any way their fancy dictated.”
From all the hints and facts which I have obtained, through letters,
diaries, church and court records, of child-life in any of the colonies
or provinces among English, German, Swedish, or Dutch settlers, I am
sure these Albany young folk were the most favored of their time. I
find no signs of such freedom in any other town.
It has been asserted that in every town in New York which was settled
under the Dutch, a school was established which was taught by a
competent teacher who received a small salary from the government,
in addition to his other emoluments; and that after the reign of the
English, begun in 1664, this public salary ceased, and many of the
towns were schoolless.
This statement is not confirmed by a letter of Domine Megapolensis
written from Albany in 1657. He says plainly that only Manhattan,
Beverwyck, and Fort Casimir had schoolmasters, and he predicts, as a
result, “ignorance, a ruined youth, and bewilderment of men’s minds.”
Other authorities, such as Mr. Teunis G. Bergen, state that this
liberality where it existed should be accredited to the Dutch church,
not the Dutch state, or Dutch West India Company. In truth, it was all
one matter. The church was an essential power in the government of New
Netherland, as it was in Holland; hence the West India Company and the
Classis of Amsterdam conjoined in sending domines with the supply of
burgomasters, and likewise furnished school-teachers.
When Wouter van Twiller arrived in 1633 with the first military
garrison for New Amsterdam, he brought also envoys of religion and
learning,--Domine Everardus Bogardus and the first pedagogue, Adam
Roelandsen. Master Roelandsen had a schoolroom assigned to him, and he
taught the youthful New Amsterdamites for six years, when he resigned
his position, and was banished from the town and went up the river to
Renssellaerwyck. I fear he was not a very reputable fellow, “people
did not speak well of him;” and he in turn was sued for slander; and
some really sad scandals were told about him, both in and out of court.
And some folk have also made very merry over the fact that he took in
washing, which was really one of the best things we know about him, for
it was not at all a disreputable nor unmanly calling in those times.
It doubtless proved a very satisfactory source of augmentation of the
wavering school-salary, in those days of vast quarterly or semi-annual
washings and great _bleeckeryen_, or laundries,--which his probably
was, since his bills were paid by the year.
A carpenter, Jan Cornelissen, tired of his tools and trade, left
Renssellaerwyck upon hearing of the vacant teacher’s chair in New
Amsterdam, went down the river to Manhattan, and in turn taught the
school for ten years. Jan was scarcely more reputable than Adam. He lay
drunk for a month at a time, and was incorrigibly lazy,--so aggravated
Albanians wrote of him. But any one was good enough to teach school.
Neither Jan nor Adam was, however, a convicted and banished felon, as
were many Virginian schoolmasters.
This drunken schoolmaster was only the first of many. Until this
century, the bane of pedagogy in New York was rum. A chorus of colonial
schoolmasters could sing, in the words of Goldsmith,--
“Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains
With grammar and nonsense and learning;
Good liquor I stoutly maintain
Gives genius a better discerning.”
Occasionally a certain schoolmaster would be specified in a
school-circular as a sober man; proving by the mentioning the
infrequency of the qualification.
As the colony grew, other teachers were needed. Governor Stuyvesant
sent to the Classis of Amsterdam for “a pious, well-qualified, and
diligent schoolmaster.” William Vestens crossed the ocean in answer to
this appeal, and taught for five years in one room in New York; while
Jan de la Montagne, with an annual salary of two hundred florins,
taught at the Harberg--later the Stadt-Huys--and occupied the position
of the first public-school teacher.
For years a project of building a schoolhouse was afloat. A spot had
been fixed upon, and some money subscribed. In 1649 the Commonalty
represented to the West India Company that “the plate was a long time
passed around for a common school which has been built with words,
for as yet the first stone is not laid.” In response to this appeal,
a schoolhouse was at last erected. Still another school was opened
by Master Hoboocken, who taught in the Governors’ bowery, where
Dutch-American children were already beginning to throng the green
lanes and by-ways. He was succeeded by Evert Pietersen, who was engaged
as “Consoler of the Sick, Chorister and Schoolmaster;” and all persons
without distinction were ordered not to molest, disturb, or ridicule
him in either of these offices, but to “deliver him from every painful
sensation.” Many of the other schoolmasters had filled similar offices
in the church and community.
This public school, maintained with such difficulty and so many rebuffs
through these early days, was successfully continued by the Collegiate
Dutch Church after the English possession of New York; and it still
exists and flourishes, as does the church. This should be a matter of
civic pride to every New Yorker. The history of that school has been
carefully written, and is most interesting to read.
Many other teachers were licensed to give private lessons, but these
public and private schools did not satisfy ambitious New Yorkers.
A strong longing was felt in New Amsterdam for a Latin School. A
characteristic petition was sent by the burgomasters and _schepens_ to
the West India Company:
“It is represented that the youth of this place and the neighborhood
are increasing in number gradually, and that most of them can read
and write, but that some of the citizens and inhabitants would like
to send their children to a school the principal of which understands
Latin, but are not able to do so without sending them to New England;
furthermore, they have not the means to hire a Latin schoolmaster
expressly for themselves from New England, and therefore they ask
that the West India Company will send out a fit person as Latin
schoolmaster, not doubting that the number of persons who will send
their children to such a teacher will from year to year increase until
an academy shall be formed whereby this place to great splendour
will have attained, for which, next to God, the Honorable Company
which shall have sent such teacher here shall have laud and praises.
For our own part we shall endeavor to find a fit place in which the
schoolmaster shall hold his school.”
The desired “gerund-grinder”--to use Tristram Shandy’s word--was soon
despatched. The fit place was found,--a good house with a garden. He
was promised an annual salary of five hundred guilders. Each scholar
also was to pay six guilders per quarter. But Dr. Curtius’s lines fell
in difficult places; he could keep no order among his Latin-school
pupils, those bad young New Amsterdamites, who “beat each other and
tore the clothes from each other’s backs,” and he complained he was
restrained by the orders of parents from properly punishing them. (I
may say here that I have not found that New York schoolmasters were
ever as cruel as were those of New England.) A graver matter to honest
colonists was his charging a whole beaver-skin too much per quarter to
some scholars, and soon he was packed back to Holland. His successor, a
young man of twenty-two, who had been tutor to Stuyvesant’s sons, had
better luck, better control, and a better academy; and New Amsterdam
to “great splendour was attained,” having pupils from other towns and
colonies, even from so far away as Virginia.
The relations between church, school, and state were equally close
throughout all New Netherland. Thus, in 1661, Governor Stuyvesant
recommended Charles De Bevoise as schoolmaster for Brooklyn; and
when Domine Henricus Selyns left the Brooklyn church, Schoolmaster
De Bevoise was ordered to read prayers and sermons, “to read a
postille” every Sabbath until another minister was obtained. He was
also a _krankebesoecker_, or comforter of the sick. Even after the
establishment of English rule in the colony, the connection of Dutch
church and school was equally close. When Johannis Van Eckellen was
engaged by the Consistory of the Dutch church in Flatbush in October,
1682, as a schoolmaster for the town, it was under this extremely
interesting and minute contract, which, translated, reads thus:--
ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT made with Johannis Van Eckellen, schoolmaster
and clerk of the church at Flatbush.
1st. The school shall begin at eight o’clock in the morning, and go
out at eleven o’clock. It shall begin again at one o’clock and end at
four o’clock. The bell shall be rung before the school begins.
2nd. When the school opens, one of the children shall read the morning
prayer, as it stands in the catechism, and close with the prayer
before dinner. In the afternoon it shall begin with the prayer after
dinner, and close with the evening prayer. The evening school shall
begin with the Lord’s Prayer, and close by singing a Psalm.
3rd. He shall instruct the children in the common prayers and the
questions and answers of the catechism, on Wednesdays and Saturdays,
to enable them to say their catechism on Sunday afternoons in
the church before the afternoon service, otherwise on the Monday
following, at which the schoolmaster shall be present. He shall
demean himself patient and friendly towards the children in their
instruction, and be active and attentive to their improvement. 4th.
He shall be bound to keep his school nine months in succession, from
September to June, one year with another, or the like period of time
for a year, according to the agreement with his predecessor, he shall,
however, keep the school nine months, and always be present himself.
CHURCH SERVICE.
ART. 1st. He shall be chorister of the church, ring the bell three
times before service, and read a chapter of the Bible in the church,
between the second and third ringing of the bell; after the third
ringing he shall read the ten commandments and the twelve articles
of Faith, and then set the Psalm. In the afternoon, after the third
ringing of the bell, he shall read a short chapter, or one of the
Psalms of David, as the congregation are assembling. Afterwards he
shall again set the Psalm.
ART. 2nd. When the minister shall preach at Brooklyn or New Utrecht,
he shall be bound to read twice before the congregation a sermon from
the book used for the purpose. The afternoon sermon will be on the
catechism of Dr. Vander Hagen, and thus he shall follow the turns of
the minister. He shall hear the children recite the questions and
answers of the catechism, on that Sunday, and he shall instruct them.
When the minister preaches at Flatlands, he shall perform the like
service.
ART. 3rd. He shall provide a basin of water for the baptisms, for
which he shall receive twelve stuyvers, in wampum, for every baptism,
from the parents or sponsors. He shall furnish bread and wine for the
communion, at the charge of the church. He shall furnish the minister,
in writing, the names and ages of the children to be baptized,
together with the names of the parents and sponsors; he shall also
serve as a messenger for the consistories.
ART. 4th. He shall give the funeral invitations, and toll the bells,
for which service he shall receive, for persons of fifteen years of
age and upwards, twelve guilders; and for persons under fifteen, eight
guilders. If he shall invite out of the town, he shall receive three
additional guilders for every town; and if he shall cross the river to
New York, he shall have four guilders more.
SCHOOL MONEY.
He shall receive for a speller or reader in the day school three
guilders for a quarter, and for a writer four guilders.
In the evening school, he shall receive for a speller or reader four
guilders for a quarter, and for a writer five guilders.
SALARY.
The remainder of his salary shall be four hundred guilders in wheat,
of wampum value, deliverable at Brooklyn Ferry; and for his service
from October to May, two hundred and thirty-four guilders in wheat, at
the same place, with the dwelling, pasturage, and meadow appertaining
to the school to begin the first day of October.
I agree to the above articles, and promise to observe the same to the
best of my ability.
JOHANNIS VAN ECKELLEN.
Truly we have through this contract--to any one with any powers
of historic imagination--a complete picture of the duties of the
schoolmaster of that day.
When the English came in power in 1664, some changes were made in
matters of education in New York, but few changes in any of the
conditions in Albany. Governor Nicholls, on his first visit up
the river, made one significant appointment,--that of an English
schoolmaster. This was the Englishman’s license to teach:--
“Whereas the teaching of the English Tongue is necessary in this
Government; I have, therefore, thought fitt to give License to John
Shutte to bee the English Schoolmaster at Albany: and upon condition
that the said John Shutte shall not demand any more wages from each
Scholar than is given by the Dutch to their Dutch Schoolmasters. I
have further granted to the said John Shutte that hee shall bee the
only English Schoolmaster at Albany.”
The last clause of this license seems superfluous; for it is very
doubtful whether there was for many years any other English teacher
who eagerly sought what was so far from being either an onerous or
lucrative position. Many generations of Albany children grew to manhood
ere the Dutch schoolmasters found their positions supererogatory.
Women-teachers and girl-scholars were of small account in New York in
early days. Girls did, however, attend the public schools. We find
Matthew Hillyer, in 1676, setting forth in New York that he “hath kept
school for children of both sexes for two years past to satisfaction.”
Dame-schools existed, especially on Long Island, where English
influences and Connecticut emigration obtained. In Flushing Elizabeth
Cowperthwait was reckoned with in 1681 for “schooling and diet for
children;” and in 1683 she received for thirty weeks’ schooling, of
“Martha Johanna,” a scarlet petticoat,--truly a typical Dutch payment.
A school bill settled by John Bowne in Flushing in 1695 shows that
sixpence a week was paid to the teacher for each scholar who learned
reading, while writing and ciphering cost one shilling twopence a week.
This, considering the usual wages and prices of the times, was fair pay
enough.
We have access to a detailed school bill of the Lloyd boys in 1693,
but they were sent away from their Long Island home at Lloyd’s Neck to
New England; so the information is of no value as a record of a New
York school; but one or two of these items are curious enough to be
recounted:--
£ _s._ _d._
1 Quarter’s board for boys 9 7 6
Pd knitting stockings for Joseph 1 4
Pd knitting 1 stocking for Henry 6
Joseph’s Schooling, 7 mos. 7
A bottle of wine for His Mistris 10
To shoo nails & cutting their har 7
Stockins & mittins 3 9
Pd a woman tailor mending their cloaths 3 3
Wormwood & rubab for them 6
To Joseph’s Mistris for yearly feast and wine 1 8
Pair gloves for boys 2 6
Drest deerskin for the boys’ breeches 1 6
Wormwood and rhubarb for the boys and a feast and wine for the
schoolmistress, albeit the wine was but tenpence a bottle, seems
somewhat unfair discrimination.
There is an excellent list of the clothing of a New York schoolboy of
eleven years given in a letter written by Fitz-John Winthrop to Robert
Livingstone in 1690. This young lad, John Livingstone, had also been in
school in New England. The “account of linen & clothes” shows him to
have been very well dressed. It reads thus:--
Eleven new shirts
4 p^r laced sleves
8 plane cravets
4 cravets with lace
4 stripte wastecoats with black buttons
1 flowered wastecoat
4 new osinbrig britches
1 gray hat with a black ribbon
1 gray hat with a blew ribbon
1 dousin black buttons
1 dousin coloured buttons
3 pr gold buttons
3 pr silver buttons
2 p^r fine blew stockings
1 pr fine red stockins
4 white handkerchiefs
2 speckled handkerchiefs
3 pair gloves
1 stuff coat with black buttons
1 cloth coat
1 pr blew plush britches
1 pr serge britches
2 combs
1 pr new shoees
Silk & thred to mend his clothes.
In 1685 Goody Davis taught a dame-school at Jamaica; and in 1687 Rachel
Spencer died in Hempstead, and her name was recorded as that of a
schoolmistress. In 1716, at the Court of Sessions in Westchester, one
of the farm-wives, Dame Shaw, complained that “a travelling woman
who came out of y^e Jerseys who kept school at several places in Rye
parish, hath left with her a child eleven months old, for which she
desires relief from the parish.”
It is easy to fancy a vague romance through this short record of the
life of this nameless “travelling woman” who, babe in arms, earned a
scanty living by teaching, and who at last abandoned the school and the
child whose birth may, perhaps, have sent her a nameless wanderer in a
strange country,--for “the Jerseys” were far away from Rye parish in
those days.
There was a schoolmistress in Hempstead at a later date. She was old
in 1774. I don’t know her name, but I know of the end of her days. The
vestry allowed her forty shillings, “to be dealt out to her a little
at a time, _so as to last her all winter_.” She lived through that
luxurious winter, and died in 1775. Her coffin cost twelve shillings,
and Widow Thurston was paid six shillings for digging the grave for
her old crony and gossip. Schoolmistresses were not many on Long
Island,--can we wonder at it? Had this dame been one of the penniless
church-poor in a Dutch community (which Hempstead was not), she would
probably have had forty shillings a month instead of a winter, and a
funeral that would have been not only decent in all the necessities
of a funeral, but a triumph of prodigality in all the comforts and
pleasures of the mortuary accompaniments of the day, such as wine, rum,
beer, cakes, tobacco, and pipes.
The “book-learning” afforded to colonial girls in New York was
certainly very meagre. Mrs. Anne Grant wrote of the first quarter of
the eighteenth century:--
“It was at that time very difficult to procure the means of
instruction in those island districts; female education was, of
consequence, conducted on a very limited scale; girls learned
needlework (in which they were indeed both skilful and ingenious)
from their mothers and aunts; they were taught, too, at that period
to read, in Dutch, the Bible, and a few Calvinistic tracts of the
devotional kind. But in the infancy of the settlement few girls read
English; when they did, they were thought accomplished; they generally
spoke it, however imperfectly, and few were taught writing.”
William Smith, the historian of New York, writing during the year 1756
of his fellow townswomen, and of education in general in New York,
gives what was doubtless a true picture of the inelegance of education
in New York:--
“There is nothing they [New York women] so generally neglect as
Reading, and indeed all the Arts for the improvement of the Mind, in
which I confess we have set them the Example. Our Schools are in the
Lowest Order, the Instructors want Instruction, and through a long,
shameful neglect of the Arts and Sciences our Common Speech is very
corrupt, and the Evidences of a Bad Taste both as to thought and
Language are visible in all our Proceedings publick and private.”
One obstacle to the establishment and success of schools and education
was the hybridization of language. New Yorkers spoke neither perfect
Dutch nor good English. It was difficult in some townships to gather an
English-speaking jury; hence, naturally, neither tongue could be taught
save in the early and simpler stages of education. It was difficult
for those little Dutch-men who heard Holland-Dutch spoken constantly
at home to abandon it entirely and speak English in the schools. The
Flatbush master (himself a Dutchman, but bound to teach English)
invented an ingenious plan to crowd out the use of Dutch in school.
He carried a little metal token which he gave each day to the first
scholar whom he heard use a Dutch word. That scholar could promptly
turn the token over to any other scholar whom he likewise detected in
using Dutch, and he in turn could do the same. Thus the token passed
from hand to hand through the day; but the unlucky wight who chanced to
have possession of it when the school day was over was soundly whipped.
In default of “spilling,” as one master wrote in his receipts, and in
which he was somewhat shaky himself, he and all other colonial teachers
took a firm stand on “cyphering.” “The Bible and figgers is all I
want my boys to know,” said one old farmer. When the school session
opened and closed, as we have seen in Flatbush, with prayer and praise,
with catechism every day, and special catechising twice a week, even
“figgers” did not have much of a chance. All the old Dutch primers that
I have seen, the _Groot A B C boeks zeer bekwaam voor de yongekinderen
te leeren_, contain nothing (besides the alphabet) but religious
sentences, prayers, verses of the Bible, pious rhymes, etc.; and dingy
little books they are, not even up to the standard of our well-known
New England Primer.
Though the Dutch were great printers of horn-books, I do not find that
they were universal users of those quaint little “engines of learning.”
If used in Dutch-American schools, none now survive the lapse of two
centuries; and indeed only one can be found in a Holland museum. Mr.
Tuer, the historian of the horn-book, states that there is one in the
museum at Antwerp, printed by H. Walpot, of Dordrecht, Netherlands, in
1640; and a beautiful silver-backed Dutch horn-book in the collection
of an English clergyman at Coombe Place, England; and a few others in
public libraries that are probably Dutch. Dutch artists show, by their
frequent representations of horn-books in paintings of children, that
the little _a-b-boordje_ was well known. In the “Christ blessing Little
Children,” by Rembrandt, the presentment of a child has a horn-book
hanging at his side. In several pictures by Jan Steen, 1626-79,
horn-books may be noted; in one a child has hung his horn-book on a
parrot’s perch while he plays. In 1753 English children used horn-books
in New York as in the other provinces, for they were advertised with
Bibles and primers in the New York newspapers at that time.
Printed arithmetics were rarely used or seen. Schoolmasters carried
with them carefully executed “sum-books” in manuscript, from which
scholars copied the sums and rules into small blank-books of their own.
One, of a Gravesend scholar in 1754, has evidently served to prove the
pupil’s skill both in arithmetic and penmanship. The book is prefaced
by instructive aphorisms, such as “Carefully mind to mend in every
line;” “Game not in school when you should write.” The wording of the
rules is somewhat curious. One reads:--
“Rule of Bartar, which is for exchanging of ware, One Commodity for
another. This Rule shows the Merchants how they may Proportion their
Goods so that neither of them may sustain loss. Sum. Two Merchants
A. and B. bartar. A. hath 320 Dozen of Candles @ ⁴⁄₆ per Dozen; for
which B. giveth him £30 in Cash and y^e Rest in Cotton @ 8d per lb. I
demand: how much Cotton B. must give A. more than the £30 in Cash.”
As commerce increased and many young men sought a seafaring life,
navigation was taught, and advanced mathematics. In 1749 the notice
of a Brooklyn “Philomath” on Nassau Island shows that he could teach
“Arithmetick vulgar and decimal; Geometry plain and Spherical;
Surveying, Navigation in 3 kinds, viz: Plain Mercator and Great
Circle Sailing, Astronomy, and Dialling.” Thus did this Philomath
meet the demand of the day. In 1773 the Flatbush Grammar School was
taught by John Copp, who also took scholar-boarders, who “have the
advantage of being taught geography in the winter evenings, with many
other useful particulars that frequently occur to the teacher,” which
seems to present a rather melancholy picture when we reflect on the
other particulars of good coasting and skating that then were around
Flatbush, on the _Steenbakkery_ for instance, which, doubtless, would
frequently occur on winter evenings to the scholar-boarder.