The advent of the Friends, in 1682, contributed to our civilization more aggressive and more intelligent people than the earlier settlers, whose political and social importance at once began to wane. The supersensual worship and high ethical ideals of the Friends bespoke an educated people, for the highest moral culture is most intelligible to the educated. Nearly all could read and write. Many of them were learned men. Penn himself had studied at Oxford and on the Continent.

DUKE OF YORK'S PROVISIONS FOR EDUCATION.

Provisions had already been made for education by the English authorities, who ruled the region from 1664 to 1682, when the province fell into the hands of Penn; for, among the laws of the Duke of York, we find the following, dated 1676:

The Constable and Overseers are strictly required frequently to Admonish the Inhabitants of Instructing their Children and Servants, in matters of Religion and the Lawes of the Country, And that the Parents and Masters do bring up their Children and Apprentices in some honest Law full Calling Labour or Employment. And if any Children or Servants become rude, stuborne or unruly refusing to hearken to the voice of their Parents or Masters, the Constables and Overseers (where no Justice of Peace shall happen to dwell within ten miles of the said Town or Parish) have power upon the Complaint of their Parents or Masters to call before them such an Offender and to inflict such Corporal punishment as the merrit of their fact in their Judgement shall deserve, not excepting ten Stripes, provided that such Children and Servants be of sixteen years of age.'

PENN'S PROVISIONS FOR EDUCATION.

Penn's Frame of Government, written in England in 1682, contains the following provisions for education in the New World:

*

Twelfth. That the Governor and Provincial Council shall erect and order all publick schools and encourage and reward the authors of useful sciences and laudable inventions in the said Province. * And, fourthly, a committee of manners, education and arts, that all wicked and scandalous living may be prevented, and that youth may be successively trained up in virtue and useful knowledge and arts.

Among the laws agreed upon in England was one laying the basis for industrial education:

Twenty-eighth. That all children within this Province of the age of twelve years, shall be taught some useful trade or skill, to the none may be idle, but the poor may work to live, and the rich, if they become poor, may not want.3

Penn's last lines to his wife and children, as he embarked for America, show how dear to his heart was education, as well as the system he advocated. Of the education of his children he writes feelingly:

For their learning be liberal. Spare no cost for by such parsimony all is lost that is saved; but let it be useful knowledge, such as is consistent with truth and godliness, not cherishing a vain conversation or idle mind, but ingenuity mixed with

Duke of York's Book of Laws, 19, 20.

Charter and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania, 95, 96. 3 Ibid., 102.

industry is good for the body and mind too. I recommend the useful part of mathematics, as building houses or ships, measuring, surveying, dialling, navigation; but agriculture is especially in my eye; let my children be husbandmen and housewives; it is industrious, healthy, honest, and of good example.'

THE FIRST LEGISLATION IN THE COLONY.

The first general assembly, which convened at Chester, December 4, 1682, soon after the arrival of Penn, accepted the frame and body of laws which Penn had prepared and printed in England, including the educational provisos already quoted. But, in addition, the assembly now passed the "Great Law," consisting of seventy-one chapters, of which Chapter LX contains the following remarkable provision:

That the Laws of this Province, from time to time, shall be publisht and printed, that every person may have the knowledge thereof; And they shall be one of the Books taught in the Schools of this Province and territorys thereof. 2

This clause leaves no room to doubt that the Friends contemplated the immediate establishment of public schools throughout the province and the three lower counties, as Delaware was then called.

The second assembly, which convened at Philadelphia on the 10th of March, 1683, passed the following additional laws relating to education: (1) The governor and provincial council were ordered to "erect and order all public schools," and to the former, together with one-third of the latter, was entrusted the "care of the management" of the "good education of youth."

(2) Universal education was contemplated in the requirement that persons having charge of children should have them instructed in reading and writing before they were 12 years of age, or pay a fine of £5 for every sound child.

(3) Children were to be taught "some useful trade or skill ”—clearly an anticipation of modern industrial education.

The

(4) Force, if necessary, was to be used to. execute the law." terms of this provision make it one of the strongest laws for compulsory education ever passed. Ten years later it was abrogated by William and Mary, but was subsequently (1693) reënacted by Governor Fletcher; and there is no evidence of a second formal repeal.

4

Governor Markham's Frame of Government, granted in 1696, contains educational provisions similar to those already enumerated.5

ENOCH FLOWER'S SCHOOL.

The comprehensive and intelligent provisions made by the founders and early assemblies furnished a solid foundation for that educational

1 Wickersham, 33.

2 Charter and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania, 123. This law was abrogated by William and Mary in 1693.

3 Ibid., 142; Wickersham, 39, 40.

Charter and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania, 238.

5 Ibid., 251.

superstructure which the colonists were authorized and destined to erect. Their first attempt to establish a school, December, 1683, is described in the "Minutes of the Provincial Council," in the following quaint words:

The Gov' and Provll Council having taken into their Serious Consideration the great Necessity there is of a Scool Master for ye Instruction & Sober Education of Youth in the towne of Philadelphia. Sent for Enock flower, an inhabitant of the said Towne, who for twenty Year past hath been Exercised in that care and Imploym in England, to whom having Communicated their Minds, he Embraced it upon these following Terms: to Learne to read English 4 by the Quarter, to Learne to read and write 63 by ye Quarter, to learn to read, Write and Cast accot 8 by ye Quarter; for Boarding a Scoller, that is to say, dyet, Washing, Lodging, & Scooling, Tenn pounds for one whole year.

Enoch Flower is said to have come from Corsham, Wiltshire, England. He opened his school, the first English school in the province, in October, 1683, in a dwelling built of pine and cedar planks.2

THE PUBLIC

GRAMMAR

SCHOOL-GEORGE KEITH AND THOMAS

MAKIN.

The council which established this school also had in view a higher school, for it was proposed on the 17th of the 11th month, 1683, "that care be Taken about the Learning and Instruction of Youth, to Witt: a Scool of Arts and Sciences."

The "Friends' Public School," now known as the "William Penn Charter School," probably had its origin in a "public grammar school" which was established in 1689, incorporated in 1697, and confirmed by a fresh patent in 1701, the powers of which were extended in 1708 and 1711.

The design of the school is thus set forth in the preamble to the charter:

Whereas the prosperity and welfare of any people depend, in great measure, upon the good education of youth and their early introduction in the principles of truo religion and virtue, and qualifying them to serve their country and themselves by educating them in reading, writing, and learning of languages, and useful arts and sciences suitable to their sex, age, and degree, which can not be effected in any manner so well as by erecting public schools for the purposes aforesaid, etc.33

The charter provided that all children and servants should be “Instructed: the rich at reasonable rates, and the poor to be maintained. & schooled for nothing." George Keith, then a Scotch Friend, but later a bitter foe to Friends, was the first teacher. "His salary for officiating in this school, was fifty pounds per annum, with a house for his family to live in, a school-house provided, and the profits of the school

1 Vol. 1, 36; Watson, 1, 287; Wickersham, 41.

2 Minutes of the Provincial Council, 1, 38; Wickersham, 41; Proud, History of Pennsylvania, 1, 345.

3 Bowden: History of the Society of Friends in America, 11, 34.

* Minutes of the Provincial Council, 1, 499.

beside for one year." His usher, or assistant, was Thomas Makin (Meakins or Meaking), who appears to have kept a "ffree school in the town of philadelphia," as early as 1693,2 for in that year the council required him to "procure a certificate of his abilitie, Learning & diligence, from the Inhabitants of note in this towne," after which it gave him a "Licence" to teach. This is perhaps the first instance of a teacher's public school certificate in the history of the country. Thomas Makin was a Latin scholar of some repute and wrote a Latin poem "descriptive of Pensylvania in 1729." In November, 1733, he fell into the Delaware River while attempting to draw a pail of water, and was drowned.3

CHRISTOPHER TAYLOR AND OTHER SCHOOLMASTERS.

Enoch Flower's school, organized in 1683, and the Friends public school, opened in 1689, were established as has been stated, under the auspices of the government of the province, and were therefore public schools; but others were at the same time instituted by private effort. Christopher Taylor, an excellent classical scholar and Quaker minister, founded a school on Tinicum Island before 1686, the year of his death, and referred to the island as "Tinicum, alias College Island." Christianus Lewis, a schoolmaster from Dudley, Worcestershire, England, came to Philadelphia in January, 1683, but nothing is known concerning his subsequent life. In 1692 Benjamin Clift was engaged to teach school for one year in Delaware County, Pa., and at the expiration of the term was reëlected for the same time. The Dutch and German Friends, in 1701, established a school at Germantown, and chose as schoolmaster Francis Daniel Pastorius, who had probably taught in Philadelphia five years before. Pastorius was famous for his learning, being master of seven or eight languages as well as a scientist and philosopher.

THE SEPARATION OF DELAWARE FROM PENNSYLVANIA AND ITS EFFECTS ON EDUCATION.

The year 1702 marks the separation of Delaware from Pennsylvania, and warns us henceforth to confine our attention to the former State alone. No records have been found throwing light upon the educa 'Proud, 1, 345, 363. Janney's History of the Friends, II, 389.

2 Minutes of Provincial Council, 1, 344.

*Proud, 344, 345; Watson, 1, 287; Wickersham, 41-43; Janney, III, 71-73. These contain sketches of early Philadelphia schools. The Pennsylvania Gazette of November 29, 1733, announces Makin's death thus: "On Monday evening last Mr. Thomas Meakins fell off a wharf into the Delaware, and before he could be taken out again was drowned. He was an ancient man, and formerly lived very well in this city teaching a considerable school, but of late years was reduced to extreme poverty."

Wickersham, 81, 82, and Bowden, п, 34, 35, are the authority for the facts concerning Taylor, Lewis, Clift, Pastorius, and their schools.

tional history of the Friends in Delaware during the period immediately after the separation. Their first school was established at Wilmington in 17481 by some of the first Friends who settled there, and has maintained a continuous existence to the present time. The fact is that there were probably few Quakers within the limits of the State before that date, and they were chiefly confined to the northern part.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century Swedes, Dutch, and English dwelt side by side in peace, and unconsciously began that welding process, traceable in many families of the State, which has resulted in the typical Delawarean of to-day. Many national characteristics were surrendered at the inexorable behest of fate. Intermar

riage opened the door to interchange of customs; and schools in com. mon heralded the common schools of the succeeding century. Thus far we have considered the educational development of those elements out of which the State was constructed. Henceforth we are to treat them as a composite whole, regardless of racial differences, and to trace the evolution of education in Delaware as a complete body politic.

THE PRESS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

The press, always an educator for good or ill, exerted considerable influence in our early history. Delaware was the last, except Georgia, of the thirteen colonies into which printing was introduced. Before 1761 the laws were printed in Philadelphia. James Adams, a native of Ireland, was the only printer who settled in Delaware before 1775. He learned the art of printing in Londonderry, and when of age came to Philadelphia, where he was employed for seven years by Franklin and Hall. In 1760 he established a press in Philadelphia, and removed it the following year to Wilmington, Del. In 1762 he began to publish The Wilmington Courant, but, for want of encouragement, it was abandoned at the end of six months. This was the first and only newspaper in the State before the Revolution. He printed for the government, and although his business was not extensive, he acquired considerable property. "Several works on religious subjects came from his press, and he published one or more almanacs annually, and bound and sold books." Upon the approach of the British army in 1777 he removed his printing materials and family to the vicinity of Doylestown, Pa., and there printed an almanac, but nothing else. After the British evacuated Philadelphia in 1778, he returned with his press to Wilmington, and in 1787 commenced the publication of another paper, entitled The Wilmington Courant, which lived for two or three years. In 1789, in conjunction with his son, Samuel, he published the Delaware and Eastern Shore Advertiser. He died near the close of 1792, at the age of 63, leaving four sons and two daughters. Two of

See sketch of the Friends' school, on West street, near Fourth street, Wilmington, p. 43. 2 Scharf, 1, 451.