September is synonymous with “Back
to School” and with that comes the opportunity to share some education related
materials in our Collection Spotlight case. This month, our items take us to Federal Street in Boston in 1797, where we are highlighting materials
that represent two schools found on that street:
Memoir of Mrs. Rowson,
published in 1870 and about the founder of a girls school, and
Regulations
for the Government of the School in Federal Street, published in Boston in
1797. Both Mrs. Rowson’s school and the Federal School came to be not long
after Massachusetts passed “An Act To Provide For The Instruction Of Youth, And
For The Promotion Of Good Education” in 1789.
Schools in the 1790s would have been segregated by gender, and we know from the language of the
Regulations for the Government of the School in Federal Street that this was a school for boys. The small pamphlet is only sixteen pages long and includes thirty articles adopted for the governance of the school and pupils. A notation at the end reads that at a meeting of the proprietors on September 13, 1797 the articles were voted on and adopted. You may notice that some of them are marked with an asterisks, this indicates that these articles are permanent, and do not need to be voted on again in the future. We are displaying the pamphlet open to the two pages that include Articles 3 through 8, which primarily address appropriate school behavior. It appears that the Federal School was rather strict and the students were held to a high standard! Three of the articles are transcribed below:
Article VI: That Silence be
considered as an essential preliminary to the business of the day, and that no
conversation be permitted in the School, but such as immediately relates to it.
Article VII: That all kinds of
social or private Amusement, during the hours appointed for Study or
Instruction, be considered a transgression of the Rules.
Article VIII*: That any Scholar
who shall break a square of glass, or any of the furniture of the Academy, such
as desks, benches, &c. shall be required immediately to repair it; or, in
default, to pay twice the cost of such repairs.
We doubt that Articles VI and VII would be very popular with students today!
After reading through all the regulations, we tried to find additional information about the school. A search of Federal Street School or even “schools on Federal Street” did
not turn up any information. A stamp on the interior pages indicates that the State Library acquired this item on December 29, 1887, so with
that information we checked the section in the 1888 annual report that lists
additions to the collections, in case that listing included any identifying information.
Unfortunately, the annual report did not shed any light, as the pamphlets
listing simply reads “School in Federal Street, Regulations for the government
of the school. Bost., 1797.” It’s possible that this was a short-lived
institution, or not one that was formally established.
A school on Federal Street that we
could find a reference to is Mrs. Susanna Rowson’s Academy for Young Ladies,
which also dates to 1797. Susanna Rowson was born in England but immigrated to Boston at
age five; she was an actress, author, playwright, and an educator and early
proponent of education for females. Over the course of thirty years, she lived
in Canada, England, and Philadelphia before returning to Boston 1797. It was at
this time that she established the girls school on Federal Street, which was
the first of its kind in Boston. We’re displaying her memoir open to the page
that describes the school's first year:
On leaving the stage in the spring
of 1797, Mrs. Rowson, under the patronage of Mrs. Samuel Smith, began a school
in Federal street, and with but a single pupil, Mrs. Smith’s adopted daughter,
continued it for one whole term. She was known in Boston only as a novel
writer, as an actress – how could children be confided to her care? But the
light cannot be hid; her motto was "tant que je puis," and persevering steadily,
she came before the close of the scholastic year to number one hundred pupils
on her daily roll; and applications were received for more than she could
possibly accommodate.
The image of Susanna Rowson shown
above is also found in her memoir. The school relocated to Medford and Newton
before returning to Boston in 1809.
Beyond these two items, the State
Library holds an impressive collection of education focused materials, in part
because in its early days as a research library, it was under the care of the
Board of Education. From 1849 until 1893, the Secretary of the Board of
Education also served as the State Librarian. Check out the links below to read
about some of the items that we’ve shared in past years, click here to read
through an education timeline, and visit us from September 8 through October 7
to see these two items on display.
Elizabeth Roscio
Preservation Librarian
