Norwalk After Two Hundred & Fifty Years

The real object of the society is to foster patriotism by encouraging the study of United States history and the Constitution and to preserve memorials of local history and historical relics of every town in the land, thereby stimulating public pride and leading to public improvement in everv communitv. 218 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF EDUCATION IN NORWALK DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (By A. Blanchard.) ORWALK has a New England inheri- tance in matters of education. The vote at the town meeting, held May 29, 1678, to hire a school master on "as reasonable terms as possible to teach all the childring in the towne to lerne to rede and write" was but fol- lowing the precedent of other Con- necticut towns, for this general instruction was in strict conformity to the laws of the colony. In 1686 the town voted to hire a school master for a quarter of a year at the rate of thirty pounds a year to be paid by the inhabitants of the town according to their lists of estate. The select- men had the hiring of the teacher, and were also instructed to "hire a house for that use and fit it with conveniences for schooling." In 1699 we come to some primitive ideas in school architecture, when the town votes to build a school-house. The requirements are that the edifice shall be "in length twenty foot ; the breadth then of eighteen foot and at least six foot be- tween joynts." In the following year, January, 1700, there is a record that deserves to be transcribed in full: "The town by a major vote determines to have two schools attended and kept for the year ensuing, one at ye south end of ye town and ye other at ye north end ; and ye two respective school houses now in being, in ye winter time. And ye summer school at ye south end and at ye school house on west side of the river. And ye countv money shall be divided according to lyst of ye military lyne." In 1719 it was voted that the winter school should be kept half of the time at the old school- house and the other half at the new schoolhouse at the north end of the town. Such are the meager references to the public schools as gleaned from Hall's Ancient Historical Records of Norwalk. They form a fitting introduction to the sub- ject of this paper. The detailed history of the different 214 schools will naturally find a place in the papers devoted to the several districts and need not be repeated here ex- cept where necessary to a clear understanding of the his- tory of the town as a whole. The beginning of the century finds the public schools of Connecticut under the management of school societies. In 1795, 1798 and 1799 laws were passed by which parishes and societies under this new name were invested with the entire con- trol of the schools to the exclusion of the towns which, as such, had nothing to do with school affairs. Our concern, then, is not with the town, but with the First School Society of Norwalk. A brief and incomplete record of this society is contained in the School Society's Committee's Book, which is preserved in the office of the town clerk. The record begins Tan. 1, 1799, and the first financial entry in the book is a charge of $1.25 for the book itself Entries are made in this book down to 1847, covering a period of forty-eight years, and these records are authority for some of the statements in the present paper. Stephen Lockwood, Taylor Sherman and Ebenezer Phillips were the first committee of the new society. Within its jurisdiction were the Poplar Plains, Saugatuck and Down Town school districts. In 1810 the number had increased to five by the addition of the North East and Old Well districts to those already named. During the next thirty years, there was great deterioration in the public schools of Connecticut. In the last decade of this period their condition had become deplorable. A report on the Norwalk schools, published in the Connecticut Common School Journal for January and February, 1839, presents anything but a flattering picture of the educational advantages offered to the children of the town by the public schools sixty years ago. The schools figuring in this report were those in the Old Well, Flax Hill, South Center, North Center, Down Town, Pudding Lane, North West, Over River and North East districts. The best that can be said about this exposure is that the conditions here were similar to those which obtained in the state at large and that other towns were as remiss as Norwalk. The re- port takes up the districts one by one and goes into the details of enumeration, school attendance, location and condition of school buildings, school grounds, studies pursued and the text books in use. Schoolhouses were usually built close upon the public highways in uni- formly unattractive places. A plot of ground unfit for 215 anything else was good enough for a school. Of the people of one district the report says: "Those who pos- sess or control suitable lands for locating a schoolhouse will neither sell them nor suffer a building to stand on the highway opposite." The schoolhouses, with few exceptions, were poor specimens of architecture and construction. Referring to one building with two rooms, the language of the report is: "A school is kept overhead, and the lowness and indistinctness of the voices which was witnessed, is believed to be owing in part certainly, to the usage of keeping the voices of the pupils suppressed in order that the schools may not hin- der each other.'" School rooms were poorly furnished. There was multiplicity instead of uniformity in text books. Twenty-one different reading books were in use. in the schools of the town. An equal diversity of books was found in other branches of study. A point not noticed by the report, but a very noticeable one, is the entire neglect of the higher studies. In the gloom and discouragement of this picture of the public schools two generations ago appears one ray of light. The writer lakes occasion to say a good word for the teachers, pro- nouncing them "unusually well qualified, but hindered in their work through the carelessness, or wilfulness of parents and masters." It is not surprising that the pub- lic schools were in ill repute and poorly attended. In 1838. out of 9.41 children of school age, only 319 were in common schools, "leaving," as the report says, "622 or nearly two-thirds of the whole, without benefit from the public money." The total expenses of the schools amounted to about $3,500, or eleven dollars for each registered pupil. Considering the value of money in those days, the poor schools cost enough to have been much better than they were. The taxpayer of that time was not especially interested, for little of his money went to pav the expenses of the public schools. The period we have been considering was low water mark for the public schools of Connecticut. This con- dition was no sudden lapse, but in its origin dates back to the beginning of the century, and even earlier. The legislation, already referred to, which transferred the control of the schools from the town to school societies, proved injurious rather than helpful to the cause of popu- lar education. There was a decline of interest in the public schools, for which the large school fund of the state was doubtless in great measure responsible. The 216 tendency was to lessen school expenses and bring them within the public funds and, as far as possible, escape taxation. With only 319 children in the public schools of the 941 enumerated in Norwalk, what educational advantages were offered to the 622 who were "without benefit from the public money"? In the absence of strin- gent truant laws, many children must have grown up with very meager schooling. Parents who were anxious that their children should have an education and who realized the serious deficiencies of the common schools, had a resource, if their means permitted, in patronizing private schools. These institutions now sprang up and flourished, as never before or since. The records of such schools, from the nature of things, are rarely preserved, so that data concerning them are very difficult to obtain. Elementary schools were established, flourished and passed away, leaving no visible traces that they had ever existed. The records of schools for more advanced scholars are also lacking, but we find occasional allusions to them in books and the public prints, increasing in frequency as we come down towards the middle of the century, when these slight sources of information are supplemented by the recollection of persons still living. Timothy D wight, then ex-President of Yale, in his travels in New England and New York, published in 1822, referring to Norwalk, says that an academy was established there some years ago, but was afterwards given up. An academy, which stood on "The Green" m Norwalk, and belonged to the First Congregational church, flourished for a time, having for its principal Prof. Hawley Olmstead and Edwin Hall, afterwards pastor of the church. An Episcopal academy was con- ducted after the date of Dr. Dwight's book and was dis- continued about 1829. Such are the meager details of these earlier schools, as the writer has had an oppor- tunitj to gather them. A school about which more data are obtainable is the South Norwalk Academy, later known as the Nor- walk Academy, the change in name showing an evident desire to have it recognized as a town institution. An advertisement dated Nov. 5, 1844, states that arrange- ments had been made "to convey students in a covered carriage from Norwalk borough to the academy for two cents each time, amounting to one shilling a week. This academy was a private enterprise undertaken by citizens of the town, who elected trustees from among their own 217