Quite a while ago, one reader asked if I had written about Rochester’s schools and said she would be interested to read about them. I have written a few articles about some of the schools that are no longer in existence, but there’s always more to tell.
Long before schools were even considered, Rochester’s town fathers were concerned with churches, roads, mills of various types and other infrastructure that had to be put in place. But by 1704, the first movement to provide schools for the town’s children was considered. Minister Rev. Samuel Arnold was given a rate of ten pounds to support a teacher as well as the job of finding one (an English pound =240 pennies).
The next references to a school can be found in 1705. The selectmen discussed the need to “engage some able person to teach children and Youth to Reed and Right”. That able person would receive a wage of 2 shillings (a shilling = 12 pennies) along with “dyet washing and lodging”. However, there is nothing to show that any school was created at that time.
I’ll take a moment here to state the obvious. In colonial times the spellings of words were not standardized and those who wrote spelled words the way they thought that they sounded.
Going forward six more years to Sept. 5, 1711, “mrs. jane mashell” was hired at a salary of 12 pounds and it is questionable if she ever taught because three townsmen, “joseph Benson, john dexter and ichabod bury” (capitals and punctuation were also not standardized) made a protest against her being hired. They said that she was “not as the law directs”. Mary Hall Leonard wrote in her history that she believed their objection was not to her morals but to her qualifications.
After this, schoolmasters (all men) had to be examined and approved to be “qualified as the law directs”. According to Abraham Holmes, born in 1754, the qualifications were to be able to write legibly, read passably and know basic rules of arithmetic – so reading, writing and “rithmetic”. Reading through some of the town fathers’ documents makes me wonder who did the examining for competence. No doubt it was the current minister at the church, since the clergy were generally the most educated people in town.
The teacher salaries that began at 12 pounds for Mrs. Mashell rose over the years to sixteen, then twenty and finally thirty pounds, all with “dyet”. Early reference to school really refers to the schoolmaster who would travel around town to a building or home in one of the “five quarters in which the town was divided for educational purposes and wherever that was, would be the school. Lots would be cast to determine in which order school would be held in each section of town. While this system was set up, not every year saw schooling brought to any or every part of the community. Abraham Holmes wrote in his memoirs that he personally had no “benefit of a spelling book till after he was a man grown”.
Some of the schoolmasters employed by the town were William Griffith, Josiah Mashell (maybe he was Jane’s son) and Benjamin De La Noy (Delano). De La Noy was eventually paid 30 pounds, his dyet and also, given use of a horse.
In 1770, a vote was passed in town recommending that a grammar school be maintained and in 1789, the now state of Massachusetts passed a law allowing towns to divide themselves into school districts and Rochester adopted the district system in 1799. This ended the migratory system and over time one room schoolhouses were built throughout town. In these buildings one teacher would teach all the grades.
By Connie Eshbach