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PARISH EDUCATION IN 
 COLONIAL VIRGINIA 
 
 By 
 GUY FRED WELLS, Pu.D. 
 
 TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 CONTRIBUTIONS TO EpucaTION, No. 138 
 
 Published by 
 Ceachers College, Columbia GAnibersitp 
 New York City 
 1923 
 
ee ORCC 
 RAO RO YO We } 
 AV AOR 
 
 Copyright 1923 by Guy Fred Wells 
 
©cock 23 
 
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 The author of this study is indebted to Professor Paul Monroe for 
 suggesting its subject and for assisting in the work of locating sources 
 and organizing material. He is under obligation to several of the 
 ministers of the Episcopal Church in Virginia who aided in the search 
 for parish vestry books and gave access to those in their possession. 
 Acknowledgment should also be made of the courtesy of the librarian 
 at the Episcopal Theological Seminary at Alexandria, Virginia, in 
 making available for examination the collection of parish records in 
 her keeping. 
 
YOM 
 Pantene sei v 
 At I Gh Vy 7 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 
 
 WA RE GRA TIDES UIE re LANE AMAL OO A 1 
 Pe aristtith, COlOMALN VITOINIA |) cava; cls cay vinve aid ase oinrviass 3 
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INTRODUCTION 
 
 Public participation in education in England at the time of the 
 settlement of the American colonies consisted chiefly in the pro- 
 visions for instructing the poor which were made by the parishes as 
 the governmental organizations responsible for the care of dependents. 
 There was little uniformity of practice among the parishes, but it 
 was not unusual for one to supply a teacher, provide a school room, 
 pay for the tuition of poor children in a private school, or conduct a 
 workhouse in which instruction was given. In rare instances a school 
 was established and supported out of the rates. Probably no single 
 parish used all these means of aiding in the education of its poor 
 children, and many may have made no provision whatever, but the 
 use of parish funds for educational purposes was sufficiently common 
 to furnish the colonists in America with a definite precedent in public 
 support.! 
 
 With the English custom as a basis, the New England towns, 
 which had their origin in the parishes of the mother country, estab- 
 lished schools for all classes of children. Their action was due to 
 a combination of favoring circumstances, which besides the precedents 
 included the compact settlement in towns, an approximate equality 
 of status among the inhabitants, a uniformity of religious belief 
 which embraced the doctrine that all should be able to read the Bible, 
 and a relatively high average of intelligence. 
 
 The factors in the situation in New England which brought about 
 the establishment of public schools for all children did not exist 
 together in any other section of the country. In Virginia the social 
 and economic distinctions and the wide distribution of the population 
 made impossible the development of common schools, but a consider- 
 ation of the general conformity of ideas and institutions in the colony 
 to those in England makes it seem reasonable to presume that in 
 education the familiar custom of providing more or less adequately 
 
 1For a discussion of English precedents see Fish, C. R., ‘'The English Parish 
 and Education at the Beginning of American Colonization,’”’ School Review, 
 Vol. XXIII, p. 438. 
 
2 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 for the poor by means of organized public effort was followed, and 
 that as in England the parishes took most of the responsibility for 
 the work. 
 
 While there has hitherto been no systematic study of the matter, 
 various students of the history of colonial Virginia have found evi- 
 dences in the records showing that in fact the parishes made at least 
 a small provision for the education of poor children. The present 
 investigation has been undertaken with the purpose of determining 
 the nature of the educational means employed by the parishes and 
 of measuring the success of the efforts made. We shall be concerned 
 with a type of public education which, it may be assumed at the out- 
 set, was like that in England, but which was adapted to a greater 
 or less degree to suit the conditions peculiar to the colony. The fact 
 that the practice in Virginia was in some measure based on that in 
 England, whether there was close conformity or not, makes it desir- 
 able that we should gain an understanding of the English custom 
 before undertaking the study of the different educational means em- 
 ployed by the parishes in the colony. Accordingly, the study of 
 each type of activity will be prefaced by a consideration of English 
 precedent. In order that the data found in the sources may be in- 
 terpreted properly it is necessary first of all to examine into the 
 character of parish government. 
 
 2The following are typical statements concerning parish activity in education: 
 ‘‘The providence of the parish system is indicated in the appointed duty of the 
 vestrymen in binding out pauper children, to require by contract that they 
 should have three years’ schooling’? (Brock, The Colonial Virginian, p. 17). 
 “Every parish had its school’’ (Brock, p. 127). ‘‘And there werealso many free 
 schools, parish schools, and private schools” (Tyler, Williamsburg The Old Colonial 
 Capital, p. 112). ‘‘There was in 1646 a considerable amount of compulsory 
 primary education, much more than is generally supposed, since the records of it 
 have been buried in the parish vestry books’’ (Fiske, Old Virginia and Her 
 Neighbors, Vol. II, p. 246). 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PARISH IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA 
 
 The parish in colonial Virginia, like its English model, was a local 
 governmental institution which administered both church and civil 
 affairs without a distinction being made between the two fields of 
 activity in either law or custom.! Looking at the matter from the 
 standpoint of the present, the ecclesiastical activities of the parish 
 consisted in the control of church business and the oversight of be- 
 havior involving religious observances. The civil functions included 
 the care of the poor, the inspection of morals, and the management 
 of a number of more exclusively secular concerns like the procession- 
 ing of the bounds of lands and the counting of tobacco plants. Activ- 
 ity of the secular type was limited by the fact that the county was 
 also a local governmental unit, but probably the chief reason for 
 the parish not becoming a more important civil institution is that 
 the wide distribution of the population kept down the number of 
 community enterprises such as those with which the New England 
 town was concerned. 
 
 Consideration of the organization of parish government and the 
 functions of its officers may be based on selections from the statutes 
 appearing in the code of 1661-62 which remained in force without 
 essential change except by way of addition of certain civil obligations. 
 
 ActII. That for the making & proportioning the levyes and assessments for 
 building and repayring the churches, and chappells, provision for the poore, 
 maintenance of the minister, and such other necessary duties for the more orderly 
 manageing of all parociall affaires, Be 1t enacted that twelve of the most able men 
 of each parish be by the major part of the said parish chosen to be vestrymen out 
 of which number the minister and vestry to make choice of two churchwardens 
 yearly, as alsoe, in the case of death of any vestryman or his departure out of the 
 
 parish, that the said minister and vestry make choice of another to supply his 
 roome, and be it further enacied, that none shall be admitted to be of the vestry 
 
 1The New England town also had its origin in the English parish. In many 
 English parishes the vestry minutes show that in the 17th century it was the custom 
 to use the term ‘‘town meeting” instead of ‘‘vestry meeting’? (Webb, English 
 Local Government, p. 39). 
 
4 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 that doe not take the oath of allegiance and supremacy to his majesty and sub- 
 scribe to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. 
 
 Act III. That the churchwardens shall twice every yeare (viz.) in December 
 court and April court deliver a true presentment in writing of such misdemeanors 
 as to their knowledge, or by common fame have beene committed whilst they have 
 
 been churchwardens. 
 Here is given a list of moral and religious misdemeanors including 
 swearing, sabbath abusing, drunkenness, slander, and adultery. 
 
 Act XIV. And be it further enacied That the said churchwardens take care and 
 be impowered during their churchwardenship to keepe the churchin repaire 
 provide books and ornaments. . . and that they the said churchwardens doe 
 faithfully collect the ministers dues, cause them to be brought to convenient 
 places and honestly pay them, and that of all the disbursements and receipts they 
 give a true account to the vestry when by them required.? 
 
 THE RELATION OF VESTRY AND WARDENS 
 
 The above regulations do not indicate clearly the intended rela- 
 tion between the wardens and the vestry, for while the vestry was 
 made responsible for the election of the wardens and for “‘the more 
 orderly manageing of all parociall affaires,’’ the wardens were given 
 apparently independent obligations without any suggestion of their 
 subordination to the vestry except that they should submit their 
 accounts when called upon to do so. The probability is that the 
 legislators had in mind no definite theory of division of power, and 
 that in giving the wardens a status of apparent independence they 
 were moved merely by a knowledge of English custom and a consider- 
 ation of the necessity of having certain officers representative of the 
 parish and vestry who could be held directly responsible for the 
 execution of important functions more readily than the vestry as a 
 whole.’ 
 
 Whatever was the intention back of the laws, the important fact 
 is that in practice the vestries did not hesitate to assume the initiative 
 in the exercise of any of the functions of parish government and order 
 the wardens to take the action they determined upon, regardless of 
 the evident meaning of the law. As a typical instance showing the 
 control often exercised by the vestry over the wardens even in the 
 
 *Hening, Statutes at Large, II, pp. 43-45. 
 *In England the vestry was compelled to vote the taxes to defray expenses in- 
 curred by the wardens in the care of the church and the poor (Webb, English 
 
 Local Government, p. 39). 
 
The Parish in Colontal Virginia 5 
 
 conduct of minor church business which in law was given to the war- 
 dens, there is an order of the vestry of St. Mark’s Parish requiring 
 the wardens to buy two prayer books.4 The fact that the wardens 
 were chosen by their associates in the vestry, a close corporation, 
 and that the vestry was responsible for voting taxes, no doubt tended 
 to make them merely representative or executive officials. This does 
 not mean that they seldom exercised initiative or that they could not 
 be punished by the county court for failure to carry out their obliga- 
 tions as indicated in the law. It merely means that in practice they 
 were subject to vestry control, that what they did was with the 
 understood allowance of the vestry, and that they might be given 
 detailed directions or allowed considerable freedom. 
 
 THE VESTRY 
 
 The provision in the law of 1661-62 that the membership of the 
 vestry should be made up “‘of the most able men of each parish,” 
 while of little real force in itself, was generally adhered to under the 
 favoring circumstances of the situation, as is suggested by the fact 
 that practically all the prominent Virginians were at one time or 
 another and often for long periods members of the vestry in their 
 respective parishes.> <A typical case is that of George Washington, 
 who was elected to membership in the Truro Parish vestry in 1762.° 
 In the choice of twelve as the appropriate number of men to constitute 
 a vestry there is very probably a reflection of the practice followed 
 in certain parts of rural England in the seventeenth century, al- 
 though consideration was no douht given to the fact that this number , 
 secured adequate representation of the parish without making the 
 vestry so large as to be unwieldy.’ 
 
 ‘Slaughter, St. Mark’s Parish, p. 33. 
 
 5Truro Parish in Westmoreland County in its early history furnishes an ex- 
 ception to the general rule both as to qualifications and number of men in the 
 vestry. In 1744 there were sixteen men present at the vestry meeting, and in 
 that year Lawrence Washington sent a protest to the Assembly against the 
 vestry, complaining that they were not able to read and write and were not 
 otherwise qualified. Asa result the vestry was dissolved and a new body elected 
 (Hening, V, pp. 274-75; Slaughter, History of Truro Parish, p. 20). The record 
 of Kingston Parish in Gloucester County, which beginsin 1679, shows the attend- 
 ance at the vestry meeting of the vestrymen and ‘‘Inhabitants.”’ 
 
 6*1762, October 25th. Ordered, that George Washington Esqr. be chosen one 
 of the Vestrymen of this Parish in the room of William Pecke Gent. deceased”’ 
 (Slaughter, History of Truro Parish, p. 122). 
 
 ™Webb, in his English Local Government, p. 179, says: In the counties of North- 
 umberland and Durham we find the parish government, for the past three cen- 
 turies, normally in the hands of a body known as “The Four-and-Twenty”’ (or 
 
6 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 The vestry was made a self-perpetuating body by the regulation 
 in Act II, quoted above, which deals with the filling of vacancies, and 
 there was no deviation from this arrangement except when some 
 special circumstance like the changing of the bounds of a parish or 
 the illegal acts of the vestry made it necessary for the Assembly to 
 dissolve the vestry and to hold a new election. Bacon’s Assembly 
 in 1676 endeavored to change the custom by providing for the election 
 of vestrymen every three years, but the law enacted was repealed in 
 the following year upon Berkeley’s return to power, and the statute 
 of 1661-62 remained in force.* There is no evidence to show that after 
 Bacon’s time there was any protest against the system of parish 
 government which kept the control in the hands of an oligarchy, but 
 it must have seemed oppressive to many in the middle and lower 
 classes not represented in the vestry.1° While in England only a 
 
 occasionally, ‘‘The Twelve’’). . . .The number twelve seems to have been less 
 usual than twenty-four. It occurs in Durham, at Pittington, and Stainton; 
 and in Northumberland, at Haltwhistle; and at Bywell St. Andrew. 
 
 8In 1757 the vestry of Dettingen Parish was dissolved and an election ordered 
 because the vestry had “‘been guilty of many illegal practices very oppressive to 
 the inhabitants’’ (Hening, VII, 145). 
 
 What was the general practice in conducting the parish elections cannot be 
 determined from the parish records. When Truro Parish was divided in 1765 
 what was in effect a primary was first held, and then later there was an election 
 in which those who had received the largest number of votes in the primary 
 were voted upon, each man being allowed to vote for twelve. The original record 
 of this election, now in the Congressional Library, was kept by George 
 Washington (Slaughter, History of Truro Parish, p. 44). 
 
 *Hening, II, 380. 
 
 10That the vestries were close corporations is the view generally held by writers 
 on Virginia colonial history, but Bruce, who is the leading authority on Virginia in 
 the 17th century, holds that in the early part of the colonial period the vestries 
 were elected at intervals by the inhabitants, and that this was the practice after 
 Bacon’s Rebellion down to the end of the 17th century at least. In his Imstd- 
 tutional History of Virginia in the 17th Century, Vol. I, p. 67, he says that before 
 Bacon’s time the vestries had assumed the power of cooption, but that after the 
 pacification of the Colony in 1677, ‘‘the power of self-perpetuation without popular 
 elections at intervals, to which apparently they had no real claim either in law or 
 custom, seems to have passed from the vestries.’’ He further states that ‘‘at 
 the end of the century, the vestries were chosen by the suffrage of the freeholders 
 and householders; but in the intervals between the elections of the entire body by 
 a popular vote’’ the vestrymen could fill the vacancies caused by death or re- 
 moval from the parish (p. 70), implying that it was the custom at the end of the 
 century to have occasional elections. 
 
 Beverley, writing on the situation at the end of the 17th century, says, ‘‘These 
 Vestries consist of twelve Gentlemen of the Parish, and were at first chosen by 
 the vote of the Parishioners; but upon the Death of any, have been continued by 
 the Survivors electing another in his place’’ (History of Virginia, p. 227). In 
 The Present State of Virginia, written by Hartwell, Chilton, and Blair in 1697, 
 it is stated that the vestries ‘‘have a power to continue themselves, for as one 
 dyes or removes out of the Parish, the remaining Vestrymen chuse another in 
 his room’’ (p. 65). 
 
 With reference to the law, to which Bruce refers as being opposed to the idea of 
 
The Parish in Colonial Virginia 7 
 
 relatively few paid parish taxes,!! in Virginia all freemen above the 
 age of sixteen were levied upon. 
 
 In the management of church affairs the vestry took care of the 
 matters delegated to it in the laws of 1661-62, which have been quoted, 
 and in addition it chose the minister and readers, bought and equipped 
 the minister’s glebe, and to a greater or less extent directed the 
 wardens in the exercise of the ecclesiastical functions delegated in 
 law to them. The chief civil responsibilities of the vestry were the 
 laying of the parish levy and the care of the poor. Each fall it voted 
 a tax to cover parish expenses, the larger share of which ordinarily 
 went to the payment of the minister and to poor support.” Although 
 in England the wardens with the overseers of the poor were the 
 responsible poor law officials with power to levy a rate for the poor 
 without vestry control, in Virginia they acted as representatives of 
 the vestry. Late in the colonial period a number of vestries estab- 
 lished workhouses for the care and employment of the poor.’ 
 
 There were laws enacted after 1662 specifically empowering the 
 wardens to bind out illegitimate children upon their own responsi- 
 bility and also poor, neglected children upon certificate from the 
 county court, but the vestry books show that wherever the vestries 
 
 a close vestry, it may be said that the law of 1661-62 above quoted gave lega 
 justification for cooption. It was this law which Bacon changed, and ifit had not 
 been the custom before he obtained control there would have been no occasion 
 for changing the law. That the close vestry was very common in England is 
 demonstrated by Webb (Exglish Local Government, pp. 175-76). After showing 
 that there were many variations in the organization of parish government in 
 England, he says with reference to the close vestry in certain counties, ‘It may 
 almost be described as the typical form of parish government in town and country 
 alike’ (p. 175). 
 
 As evidence that vestries in Virginia were not self-perpetuating after 1677, 
 Bruce refers to two cases, that of North Farnham Parish and a parish in North- 
 ampton County. He says, “In 1692 the justices of Rappahannock appointed a 
 day for the inhabitants of North Farnham Parish’ to assemble for a popular 
 election (p.68). In 1692 Rappahannock County was discontinued and Richmond 
 and Essex made out of it. This reorganization probably meant some change in 
 the boundaries of the parishes involved, and in any case it was the occasion for 
 the election. The special occasion for the election of a vestry in the parish in 
 Northampton County in 1691 was that two parishes wh.ch had existed separately 
 after 1642 were reunited in 1691 (Meade, Old Churches, I, p. 258). Itcanreadily 
 be seen that neither of the two cases mentioned serves as a basis for the view that 
 after 1677 the vestries were commonly chosen by popular election. 
 
 UWebb, English Local Government, p. 48. y 
 
 2The vestry books show that ordinarily the vestrymen were much interested 
 in the welfare of the indigent poor, but occasionally toward the end of the colonial 
 period records like the following appear: ‘‘Order’d That the Churchwardens do 
 let ean poor of this parish to the lowest bidder’’ (Bristol Parish Vestry Book, 
 p. 182). 
 
 See Chapter IV. 
 
8 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 wished they considered the cases and ordered the wardens to act in 
 accordance with their decision. This was justified by the general 
 principle that the wardens were subject to vestry control, and by the 
 fact that the vestry was responsible for the care of the poor and for 
 parish finances. The vestry also often ordered the apprenticing of 
 orphans, although the laws provided that this duty should be per- 
 formed by the county court. There was no statute giving the vestry 
 the right to provide out of parish funds for the schooling of poor 
 children, but this was occasionally done, and as in England, it is 
 probable that there would have been no legal interference if a vestry 
 had consistently made expenditure for the purpose. 
 
 One of the important duties of the vestry was to appoint men 
 every four years to go over the bounds of estates and renew the 
 marks. In some of the vestry books the record of processionings 
 takes up more space than any other item. A law of 1723 required 
 the vestries to divide the parishes into precincts and appoint men 
 in each to examine the growing tobacco and make certain that the 
 quality was being maintained. The highways were in charge of 
 county surveyors who were appointed by the justices, but the vestries 
 were enjoined to order the parishioners to supply men to aid the 
 surveyors. 
 
 The vestry books contain numerous illustrations of the fact that 
 in the exercise of civil functions the vestries went beyond the powers 
 specifically delegated to them in law. The vestry of St. Paul’s 
 Parish in Hanover County in 1707 built an almshouse; Bristol 
 Parish Vestry in 1732 ‘‘Order’d that a Causeway be Built from the 
 Ferry Landing to the Chanell on the South Side,” and in 1766 it fined 
 a man “for selling Corn by unlawful measure;’’!® the vestry of Upper 
 Parish in Nansemond County in 1769 paid ‘‘to Samuel Wallis for 
 schooling some poor children’ six pounds.” 
 
 The work of presenting cases of moral or religious delinquency was 
 generally left in the hands of the wardens, although there is sufficient 
 evidence to show that when it seemed advisable to the vestry it first 
 examined the facts of a case and then ordered the wardens to act as 
 it determined.!8 In St Peter’s Parish in 1734 the vestry took upon 
 itself not only the accusation but also the punishment of offenders 
 
 MHening, II, 101. 
 
 IMS. vestry minutes of St. Paul’s leis? for 1707. 
 ‘WBristol Parish vestry book, pp. 61, 
 
 17Upper Parish MS. vestry book, aii for 1769. 
 18Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia, I, 82. 
 
The Parish in Colonial Virginia 9 
 
 against church decorum and ordered the wardens to ‘‘cause a good 
 and substantial Pair of Stocks to be forthwith erected near the 
 Church-Yard Wall.’’!® Inthe eighteenth century there was generally 
 less concern over the misdemeanors listed in the law of 1661-62 than 
 there had been before,?® and the grand jury took from the parish 
 officials the responsibility for the more serious offenses.” 
 
 THE CHURCH WARDENS 
 
 It has been shown that in general the wardens acted as represen- 
 tatives of the vestry, and that the position of independence which 
 Acts XIII and XIV in the code of 1661-62 seemed to give them was 
 in practice not held, for it was always qualified by the right of the 
 vestry to direct them. In the ordinary course of events the wardens, 
 after their election in the fall meeting, collected the parish levy of 
 tobacco,” paid the parish servants and the people who had taken 
 care of the poor during the year just ended, and made other expendi- 
 tures which had been sanctioned by the vestry. They carried out 
 the orders of the vestry with regard to placing of the poor for the 
 year, ordered brought before them for indenturing the children whose 
 apprenticeship had been ordered by the vestry or court, and presented 
 to the county court the names of persons who were judged by them- 
 selves or the vestry to be presumably guilty of moral or religious 
 offense. Whatever other orders were made by the vestry with 
 regard to the repair or the equipment of the churches, chapels, or 
 glebe buildings, or any other matter were carried out. 
 
 During the course of the year the wardens extended aid to the 
 poor in cases of emergency for which provision had not been made. 
 At the spring vestry meeting in some parishes they made up their 
 accounts with the vestry. In preparation for the fall meeting at the 
 end of the year of service they prepared a list of parish expenses to 
 be submitted to the vestry, and either at this meeting or the one 
 held in the spring they probably turned over to the vestry clerk the 
 apprenticeship indentures and other contracts to which they had been 
 ~ 19St, Peter's Parish MS. vestry minutes, p. 170. 
 
 20See The Present State of Virginia, by Hartwell, Chilton, and Blair, p. 66; 
 Autobiography of Devereux Jarratt, p. 21; ‘Journal of Philip Fithian,’’ Amer. 
 Hist. Rev., V, p. 7 
 
 “Ingle, E., Local Institutions of Virginia, Johns Hopkins University Studies, 
 1885, p. 70. 
 
 2In some parishes, particularly toward the end of the colonial period, the ves- 
 tries appointed the county sheriff as parish tax collector. In St. Paul’s Parish in 
 
 1706 it was ‘“‘Ordered that Capt. Roger Thompson, high sheriff for the present 
 year of New Kent County, collect the parish Tob.’’ (MS. vestry minutes, p. 14). 
 
Io Parish Education in Colontal Virginia 
 
 a party. If the vestry or wardens were accused by the court of 
 some delinquency in carrying out the laws the wardens might be 
 called before the court to answer the charge. 
 
 SERVANTS OF THE PARISH 
 
 Each parish had as paid minor officers a vestry clerk, 
 one or more readers, and one or more sextons.?* The vestry clerk 
 kept the vestry records, and the sextons performed the duties usually 
 associated with their office. The parish church and each of the 
 chapels, which were built for the convenience of the parishioners living 
 in the outlying districts, had a lay reader to read the service in the 
 absence of the minister, who conducted service alternately in the 
 different places of worship.“ In indicating the custom in 1705, 
 Beverley said, 
 
 If a parish be of greater Extent than ordinary, it hath generally a Chapel of 
 Ease; and some of the Parishes have two Such Chapels, besides the church for the 
 greater convenience of the Parishioners. In these Chapels the Minister preaches 
 alternately, always leaving a Reader, to Read Prayers when he can’t attend 
 himself. 
 
 Although the reader’s primary function was to act as a minister’s 
 substitute in his absence or in case of vacancy in the ministerial office, 
 he sometimes, and perhaps usually, assisted in the performance of 
 the service when the minister was present. He also more or less 
 often kept the parish register of births, marriages, and deaths, took 
 immediate responsibility for the care of his chapel, and catechized 
 children and servants. As assistant his work was like that of the 
 parish clerk in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
 and in fact he was often referred to as ‘‘the clerk.’ A typical illustra- 
 tion of the use of the term “‘clerk’’ in reference to the reader is found 
 
 Occasionally the offices of vestry clerk, reader, and sexton were held by one 
 person. For instance in Bristol Parish in 1762 the vestry ordered the payment of 
 2400 pounds of tobacco as a year’s salary ‘‘To William Yarbrough Clk of the 
 Brick Church, Vestry and Sexton’”’ (Bristol Parish Vestry Book, p. 183). 
 
 *4In the early days parishes had only one reader, but in the eighteenth century, 
 as the number of chapels was increased, the larger and more populous among 
 them sometimes had as many as four. 
 
 **Beverley, Robert, History of Virginia, p. 226. 
 
 *6The parish clerk in England held an office “halfway between that of a curate 
 anda church menial.’’ In the 15th and 16th centuries he was commonly a cleric 
 whose main duty it was to serve as general assistant to the minister or priest. 
 He took a minor part in the church service, arrayed the shoulders of the minister 
 with the surplice, sometimes acted as bell-ringer, and performed other menial 
 duties. In the 17th century the position of parish clerk came to be filled more 
 and more often by an uneducated layman, and finally in 1739 the court definitely 
 held that he was a temporal officer (Webb, English Local Government, pp. 32-33). 
 
The Parish in Colonial Virginia II 
 
 in the following quotation from Hugh Jones’ Present State of Virginia. 
 
 The clerk in case of the minister’s death or absence has great business, and is a 
 kind of curate, performing frequently all of the offices of the church, except the 
 two sacraments and matrimony; ...In some places they read the lessons, 
 publish the banns, ec. when the minister is present, for his ease; which first may 
 not be improper in very hot weather, or if the minister be sick or infirm, if the 
 clerk can read tolerably well... .?7 
 
 Because of the fact that the reader was often referred to as ‘‘the 
 clerk,’”’ it has been understood by some that he was usually a trained 
 cleric or a young man studying for orders, and with this understanding 
 as a basis it has been assumed that during the week in his spare time 
 he acted as a public parish teacher. The possibility of his having 
 served as a teacher makes it necessary, in an inquiry into parish 
 educational activity, to examine somewhat carefully into his status. 
 In fact there is nothing to show that the reader or clerk was more 
 than an ordinary layman with some regular secular occupation, whose 
 work in conducting Sunday service or assisting the minister was a 
 minor interest. Bishop Meade, who made a most careful study of 
 the Church in the colonial period, makes no mention of the clerk as 
 a trained cleric except in three or four cases where the circumstances 
 were unusual and the arrangements temporary.*® One of the very 
 few cases which have been found is that of Nathaniel Eaton, the 
 first head of Harvard College, who came to Accomac after his dis- 
 missal from Harvard in 1639 and served there for a time as parish 
 clerk.?? 
 
 27 Present State of Virginia (1725), p. 67. Another typical illustration of the use 
 of the term is found in the diary of Philip Fithian (‘‘Journal of Philip Fithian,” 
 Amer. Hist. Rev., V, p. 294). Fithian said that it was customary for the gentle- 
 men to go into church in a body after the service had begun, and that he had 
 “known the clerk to come out and call them in to prayers.”’ 
 
 The only reference to the clerk or reader as a ‘‘parish clerk’’ found in the course 
 of the present study occurs in a memorandum of Governor Nicholson: ‘‘A small 
 encouragem’t to the Parish Clerk or reader may perhaps enable him to keep such 
 a school” (Va. Mag. of Htst. and Biog., VII, p. 157). 
 
 28Meade, Old Churches and Famzulies of Virginia. 
 
 22Wise, J. C., Early History of the Eastern Shore, p. 261. 
 
 The idea that there were in colonial Virginia many young clerics who might 
 be supposed to have acted as minister’s assistant is suggested in ‘A List of 
 Emigrant Ministers to America,’’ compiled by Gerald Fothergill from the books 
 of the Lords of the Treasury. The list contains the names of some 1200 men who 
 went to America between 1690 and 1811, each of whom received from the Treasury 
 20£ as passage money. In many cases the word “‘clerk’’ appears after the name of 
 a recipient, and it might be understood that where this occurs we have the name 
 of a man who was not an ordained minister, but one who, possibly as a deacon, 
 came over to act as a parish clerk or assistant to a minister. ‘‘Clerk’’ as used in 
 this connection, however, indicated only that the person to whom it was applied 
 belonged to the clerical profession. Following are illustrations of its use in this 
 
12 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 The moral qualifications of the reader are indicated in a law 
 appearing in the code of 1661-62: 
 
 That every parish not haveing a minister to officiate every Sunday make 
 choice of a grave and sober person of good life and conversation to read divine 
 service every intervening Sunday at the Parish church, when the minister 
 preacheth at any other place.*° 
 
 The ability to read acceptably was implied, and it is very probable 
 that in making a choice from among candidates who were orthodox 
 and morally qualified this was the distinguishing trait considered, as 
 is suggested by the following record from the Bristol Parish vestry 
 book: 
 
 Ordered that Nathaniell Parrott be Discontinued as Clerk of Sapponie 
 Chapple and That there be a publick Notice given for persons to appear at ye 
 ferry Chapple To Try for ye Same on Monday ye 19th of this Instant (Nov. 12, 
 1733). 
 
 The vestrymen were evidently ‘‘To Try” candidates to determine 
 their reading ability. There is no direct evidence showing what was 
 the custom in Virginia, but, as will be shown in Chapter II, it is very 
 probable that school-masters were often chosen as readers because 
 
 general sense. The church wardens of Elizabeth River Parish in Lower Norfolk 
 County in 1645, ‘‘exhibited there presentment against Mr. Thomas Harrison, 
 Clark (Parson of the Said parish) for not reading the book of common Prayer.” 
 (Lower Norfolk County Court Records, quotedin Lower Norfolk County Antiquary, 
 II, p. 12). Ina patent issued to Farnefold Nutt appears the following record: 
 “John Farnefold, clerk, by his last will gave one hundred acres for ye usef a 
 Free School’? (Northern Neck Land Book, quoted in Virginia Historical 
 Magazine, I, p. 216). Farnefold was minister in St. Stephen’s Parish from 1680 
 until his death in 1702 (William and Mary College Quarterly, XVII, p. 245). 
 In an act passed in South Carolina in 1710-11 provision is made for the support of 
 an aged minister—‘‘Whereas Atkin Williamson, Clerk, is grown so disabled with 
 age, sickness, and other infirmities, that he cannot any longer attend the duty of 
 his perpen functions. . . .’’ (Dalcho, History of the Episcopal Church in S. C., 
 p. 454). 
 
 Fothergill states that each man in his list was sent ‘‘to some definite cure,’’ 
 but it is impossible to determine from the existing lists of ministers serving in 
 Virginia just when each man took up his work. It can be shown, however, that 
 a number of the 39 “‘clerks’’ mentioned by Fothergill as going to the colony were 
 parish pastors within a year or two after passage money had been provided for 
 them. The following are typical cases: 
 
 “Richard Squire, clerk,’’ sailing after Nov. 30, 1702, was minister in St. Peter’s 
 Parish, New Kent County, in 1703 (Meade, I, 385). 
 
 “Yates [probably Robert Yates], clerk,” sailing after Jan. 3, 1689-99, was 
 minister in Christ Church Parish, Middlesex County, in 1699 (Meade, I, 359). 
 
 ‘Patrick Falconer, clerk,” sailing after April 29, 1710, was minister in Hungar’s 
 Parish in Northampton County in 1712 (Meade, I, 258). 
 
 “‘James Robertson, clerk,’’ sailing after Jan. 15, 1717-18, was a minister in 
 Virginia in 1719 (Meade, II, 393). 
 
 _ It is certain in view of the above facts that the term ‘“‘clerk’’ was used by the 
 Treasury recorder in its general sense to indicate a cleric. 
 s°Hening, II, 46-47. 
 
The Parish in Colonial Virginia 13 
 
 they possessed the requisite qualifications and because they were 
 interested in the stipend attached to the position. 
 
 THE NUMBER AND SIZE OF THE PARISHES 
 
 In general the institution of new parishes followed the growth and 
 spread of population. In 1649 it was reported that there were twenty 
 churches in the colony, and there were probably as many parishes. *! 
 In 1697 there were fifty parishes,* and at the end of the colonial 
 period approximately ninety had been organized.*? 
 
 The parishes varied much in size; some embraced two large 
 counties, while others took up only one-third or one-half of a small 
 county. As the density of population increased the larger parishes 
 were reduced in size. The best description of the situation with 
 respect to the size and population of the parishes at any time appears 
 in a report to the Bishop of London made by the ministers in 1724.*4 
 Although only twenty-nine were reported upon, those for which the 
 facts were given were in general the older, smaller parishes. The 
 average area was approximately four hundred and ten square miles, 
 with an average population of somewhat over two hundred families. 
 Variations in size were between fourteen hundred and one hundred 
 square miles, and in number of families between four hundred and 
 thirty and seventy-eight. 
 
 THE PARISH RECORDS 
 
 The official records of the parish government were kept in the 
 “vestry book,’”’ which contained the minutes of the vestry meetings, 
 the record of the processionings of the bounds of lands, and some- 
 times the copies of the apprenticeship contracts to which the wardens 
 were a party. There was also a “register” in which the minister or 
 reader recorded births, marriages, and deaths, but this held nothing in 
 regard to governmental activity. 
 
 The minutes of the vestry meetings, kept by the vestry clerk, show 
 the conclusions reached by the vestry with reference to the various 
 matters which came before it, without there being any indication 
 of the votes or the considerations which moved the vestry to act. 
 It is usually impossible to tell which items of business were brought 
 up by the wardens and which by other members of the vestry, there 
 
 314 Perfect Description of Virginia (1649), Force Historical Tracts, II, p. 8. 
 Hartwell, Chilton, and Blair, The Present State of Virginia, p. 64, 
 
 33 eade, Old Churches, Pare is 
 
 Perry, Historical Collections, I, pp. 261-312. 
 
14 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 seldom being a record of the wardens’ reports to the vestry. Most 
 of the minutes are in the form of orders to make expenditures in pay- 
 ment of parish obligations and to provide for the poor in appropriate 
 ways. Aside from the list of expenditures, the minutes record the 
 number of tithables each year, the tax rate, the names of the members 
 present, the appointment of officers, the arrangements made for 
 constructing or repairing parish buildings, and directions given the 
 wardens concerning the apprenticing of poor children. Occasionally 
 there is a report of a committee, a petition to the Assembly, or the 
 record of a fine received. 
 
 In England the wardens’ account books constitute a most impor- 
 tant source of information concerning parish government in the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,®* but in Virginia the subjection 
 of the wardens to vestry control and the fact that most of their work 
 was in execution of the vestry’s orders made it unnecessary to have a 
 permanent record of their activities except that contained in the 
 vestry book. The apprenticeship indentures in the cases of children 
 bound out by order of the vestry were ordinarily given to the vestry 
 clerk for preservation or record. ‘This was sometimes, and probably 
 commonly, the case where the indentures were made out “upon 
 certificate’ from the county court. 
 
 After the dissolution of parish government and the separation of 
 church and state at the end of the colonial period, the vestry books 
 were no longer used for recording civil business except in several 
 cases where the overseers of the poor continued the accounts recording 
 payments for the support of the poor, but the vestries of some of the 
 Episcopal churches which were organized on the new basis kept up 
 in the old books the record of church transactions. The chief practi- 
 cal value of the colonial vestry books in the succeeding years was 
 in the aid which the record of processionings gave in the establishment 
 of land claims. Bishop Meade, who, when in pursuit of his study of 
 Episcopal Church history in Virginia, made a systematic attempt to 
 locate the vestry books, said in 1857, ‘“The vestry books from which 
 I could have gotten much, and some of which I have seen, are, for 
 the most part, either lost, or fallen into the hands of persons who use 
 them for the establishment of land claims or bounties.’”” The books 
 of which he obtained possession were deposited at his death in the 
 
 Webb, English Local Government, pp. 7, 114. 
 
The Parish in Colonial Virginia I5 
 
 library of the Episcopal Seminary at Alexandria.** In 1880 Bishop 
 Slaughter, then historiographer of the diocese of Virginia, made a 
 report to the council of the Episcopal church showing the results of 
 his systematic endeavor to locate the vestry books then in existence. 
 He reported the location of nineteen of them, most of which were at 
 Alexandria.*’ Since 1880 other vestry books have been found, making 
 a total of thirty-six. Only those of Henrico Parish and Bristol 
 Parish have been printed. Except in the course of the present study 
 no recent systematic attempt has been made to locate the records 
 or to study them as a whole. 
 
 Below is a list of the vestry books the existence and location of 
 which are known. It represents nearly half of the parishes in exist- 
 ence in the latter part of the colonial period and all sections of the 
 colony. Only four contain a record of parish activities before 1700. 
 
 Albemarle in Sussex County, 1741-1784; Episcopal Seminary, Alexandria. 
 
 Antrim in Halifax, 1752-1817; Alexandria. 
 
 Augusta in Augusta, 1747-1780; County Clerk’s office, Staunton. 
 
 Blissland in New Kent, 1721-1787; Alexandria. 
 
 Bristol in Prince George, 1720-1789; library of Rev. Churchill Gibson; 
 reprint edited by C. G. Chamberlayne. 
 
 Bruton in James City; original destroyed; Church Review and Ecclesiastical 
 Register, VIII, 1855-1856, gives extracts from records from 1674 on. 
 
 Camden in Pittsylvania, 1767-1777; Mrs. M. E. Clement, Chatham, Vir- 
 ginia. 
 
 Christ Church in Lancaster, 1739-1786; Alexandria. 
 
 Christ Church in Middlesex, 1663-1787; Alexandria. 
 
 Cumberland in Lunenburg, 1747-1784; Alexandria. 
 
 Dettingen in Prince William, 1748-1802; Alexandria. 
 
 Elizabeth City in Elizabeth City, 1751-1780; Rev. C. B. Bryan, Petersburg. 
 
 Elizabeth River in Norfolk, 1749-1761; County Clerk’s office, Norfolk. 
 
 Frederick in Frederick, 1764-1816; Alexandria. 
 
 Fredericksville in Louisa, 1742-1787; Alexandria. 
 
 Henrico in Henrico, 1730-1773; in possession of vestry of St. John’s Church, 
 Richmond; reprint in Wynne’s Historical Documents from the Old Dominion. 
 
 Hungar’s in Northampton, 1634-1700; County Clerk’s office, Eastville, 
 Virginia; 1754-1780, Episcopal Church rectory, Eastville. 
 
 King William in Powhatan (later Henrico), 1707-1750; Miss Lelia Walker, 
 Ft. Estell, Kentucky; translation from French, in which the record was 
 kept, in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, XI, XII, XIII. 
 
 Kingston in Mathews, 1679-1796; Alexandria. 
 
 Lexington in Amherst, 1779-1880; Alexandria. 
 
 Linhaven in Norfolk, 1723-1779; copy in hands of Rev. C. B. Bryan, Peters- 
 burg. 
 
 % Virginia Magazine of History, Ill, p. 85. 
 yeah of the 85th Annual Council of the Episcopal Church in Virginia, pp. 
 
Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 Lower Parish, Nansemond County, 1749-1784; County Clerk’s office. 
 Newport in Isle of Wight, 1724-1776; Isle of Wight County Court House, 
 Isle of Wight, Virginia. 
 
 Petsworth in Gloucester, 1677-1793; copy in possession of Virginia Historical 
 Society, Richmond. 
 
 St. Andrew’s in Brunswick, 1746-1782; office of County Clerk, Lawrence- 
 ville. 
 
 St. George’s in Spottsylvania, 1726-1800; Episcopal rectory, Fredericksburg. 
 St. James in Goochland, 1744-1860; Alexandria. 
 
 St. Mark’s in Culpeper, 1730-1778 (record for 1753-7 torn out); Alexandria. 
 St. Paul’s in Hanover and New Kent, 1755-1774; Alexandria. 
 
 St. Peter’s in New Kent, 1686-1759; Alexandria. 
 
 Shelburne in Loudon, 1771-1805; Alexandria. 
 
 South Farnham in Essex, 1739-1780; Rev. W. N. Meade, Tappahannock. 
 Stratton Major in King and Queen, 1729-1775; Alexandria. 
 
 Truro in Fairfax, 1732-1782; Mt. Vernon. 
 
 Upper Parish in Nansemond, 1744-1793; Alexandria. 
 
 Wicomico in Northumberland, 1703-1795; Alexandria. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THREE TYPES OF PARISH EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY 
 
 ENGLISH PRECEDENTS 
 
 There was never in England a systematic scheme of parish educa- 
 tion but in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries many of the parishes 
 as units of church and civil government participated in one way or 
 another in the work of educating their children. The types of educa- 
 tional activity which have been distinguished are the establishment 
 and support of a parish school, provision of a school building or room, 
 the payment of tuition fees for the education of parish childrenina 
 private school, apprenticeship, administration of an endowed school, 
 and provision of instruction in a workhouse. While the amount of 
 activity along the lines indicated has not been exactly determined, 
 it is evident that the colonists in America had definite precedents for 
 public participation in education in the custom of the English par- 
 ishes.!. The fact that the English parish was transplanted to Virginia 
 and continued without essential change naturally leads to the pre- 
 sumption that its educational practices were followed to a greater or 
 less degree in the colony. A knowledge of the practice in the 
 mother country therefore gives some direction in the attempt to 
 discover what was done in Virginia. 
 
 In the present chapter we shall consider three types of parish 
 educational activity—establishment and support of a school, pro- 
 vision of a school building, and payment for tuition of poor children 
 in private schools—leaving for later chapters the other kinds of effort 
 which have been mentioned. 
 
 The most common form of parish school in England in the six- 
 teenth and the early part of the seventeenth century was that con- 
 
 1The English parish records have not been systematically examined with the 
 purpose of determining educational practices. De Montmorency, in his State 
 Interference in English Education, page 191, states a view with regard to the 
 matter which is held by various authorities: ‘A systematic search of vestry 
 records and the accounts of churchwardens and overseers would most probably 
 show some very remarkable facts in relation to education.” 
 
 17 
 
18 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 ducted by the parish clerk who was then usually a clerical assistant 
 of the minister.2, In 1571 the Bishop of York enjoined that within 
 his diocese, 
 no parish clerk be appointed against the good will of the parson... and 
 that he endeavor himself to teach young children to read, if he is able so to do.’ 
 
 Leach accepts the view expressed by a writer at the end of the 
 seventeenth century that it was one of the understood duties of the 
 parish clerk “‘to instruct children in reading and writing and re- 
 hearsing the catechism.’ Watson refers to Mulcaster’s statement, 
 “if the chancel have a minister the belfry hath a master,’’® and inter- 
 prets it to mean that parish clerks often acted as schoolmasters and 
 that they sometimes used the belfry as a schoolroom. Where it was 
 assumed that teaching was a regular duty of the clerk he was not paid 
 for the service, which accounts for the general lack of reference to 
 his work in the vestry books and the wardens’ accounts. Occasion- 
 ally, however, there is record of payment. For instance the parish 
 of St. Michael in Cornhill in 1569 paid ‘‘the clerk yt teacheth chyldren 
 Boiss ie 
 
 Some of the parishes employed a person who had no official con- 
 nection with the church to teach their children. Occasionally in 
 addition to the teacher a parish provided the school building or 
 room, thus maintaining a public school in the modern sense except 
 for the fact that the arrangements were made primarily for the poor. 
 It was probably a more common practice, however, to hire a teacher 
 who conducted the school in his or her own school room. In 1636 
 the wardens and vestry at Cartmel ordered ‘That Christopher 
 Barrow come to teach school at the ancient wages.’” 
 
 The vestry minutes of a Westminster parish contain the following 
 record: 
 
 Sunday, the 18th of Decr. 1681—The Peticon of Thomas Jordan praying that he 
 may be settled and continued in the Imployment of instructing the parish Poore 
 Children being this day read was laid aside. .... 
 
 In Jordan’s place Judith Smith was hired, 
 
 *When in the seventeenth century it became customary to appoint laymen, 
 often uneducated, to the position of clerk it is probable that teaching as one of the 
 functions of the office was discontinued. 
 
 SAtchley, C., The Parish Clerk, p. 21. 
 
 ‘Leach, A. F., Article on church schools in Monroe’s Cyclopedia of Education. 
 
 5English Grammar Schools to 1660, p. 154. 
 
 yee C. R., “The English Parish and Education,” School Review, XXIII, 
 p. ; 
 
 "Fish, above citation, p. 446. 
 
Three Types of Parish Educational Activity 19 
 
 as a fit person to undertake the Teaching of the said Poore children which was 
 accordingly conferred upon her.’ 
 
 The Leeds Parish vestry provided for the maintenance of a free 
 school at the beginning of the eighteenth century. At about the 
 same time St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields set up a school in which poor 
 children were maintained and taught.!2 The Woolwich vestry in 
 1731 had under its control a schoolmaster."! 
 
 In numerous cases a parish provided a schoolhouse for a private 
 teacher. At Eltham in 1635 the parish built a school building.” 
 At Ashburton in 1573 the minister paid “‘x s. iii d. for the occupation 
 of the church house . . . for the keeping of scule there.’ The 
 church wardens’ accounts of Minchinhampton for 1651 record pay- 
 ment “for stones and making the chimnie in the chansell for the 
 scogie, 1 
 
 It seems to have been a common practice for parishes to pay for 
 the tuition of poor children in private schools. In 1622 the justices 
 of Aylesham and Reipham in Norfolk County ordered, 
 
 That poore children be put to Schoole to knittinge and spinninge dames, and 
 the churchwardens and Overseers of the poore to paie the School dames their 
 wages, where the parents are not able. 
 
 In 1628, at Dorchester, it was, 
 
 agreed that henceforth there shall be paid to the schoolmaster of the said new 
 school founded in Holy Trinity Parish 12 d., every quarter for every poor child 
 of the three parishes of this borough that shall be placed at school with him by 
 the overseers of the poor ... to be paid by the overseers every one of them for 
 the poor of their own parish.!6 
 
 The church wardens’ accounts at Darlington for 1653 and 1655 
 contain the following items: ‘‘Edward Holmes a poor scholar at the 
 Petit School for half-year’s teaching 3 s. 3 d.”; “Roger Jewett one 
 quarter’s wage for learning a boy 1/ -’”: ‘‘Dame Seamer for her 
 wages for teaching a boy one year 4/-”; ‘‘Ralph Hall for 3 lads one 
 quarter 4/ -’; Mr. Swinburne for learning John Wilson’s children 
 and Giles’ daughter’s child 7/ -.”!” The vestry of a parish in the 
 
 8DeMontmorency, State Interference in English Education, p. 191. 
 
 8Webb, English Local Government, p. 50. 
 
 Wihid., p. 236. 
 
 Hibid., p. 131. 
 
 2Lysons, Environs of London, p. 417. 
 
 BFish, “The English Parish and Education,’’ School Review, XXIII, 443, 
 MTbid., p. 443. 
 
 Leonard, English Poor Relief, p. 332. 
 
 16Rish, p. 448. 
 
 Watson, English Grammar Schools, p. 158. 
 
20 Parish Education 1n Colonial Virginia 
 
 city of Westminster in 1671 paid a school dame two shillings, six 
 pence a week for three weeks “‘for teaching the parish children.’’!® 
 In the parish of Stepney, Limhouse Hamlet, in 1732 the children in 
 the parish workhouse were ‘‘sent to a school in the Neighborhood, 
 at the Publick charge’ until eight years of age.!® 
 
 In whatever form the educational interest of the parish in Eng- 
 land expressed itself, the activity undertaken had as its primary 
 purpose the provision of facilities for the instruction of the poor. 
 It is likely, however, that in few cases were the provisions sufficient 
 to secure the education of all the poor children in a locality. 
 
 THE PRACTICE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 PARISH READERS OR CLERKS AS TEACHERS 
 
 It was indicated in Chapter I in the discussion of parish officers 
 and their functions that the readers or clerks who served in the 
 Virginia parishes were laymen corresponding to the English parish 
 clerks of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was further 
 pointed out that they sometimes taught elementary schools. Should 
 we understand that they taught school as a recognized part of their 
 service to the parish, thus reflecting the earlier English practice which 
 has been described, or that they engaged in teaching as a purely private 
 undertaking? 
 
 There was nothing in the law defining the duties of the readers 
 which suggests that they should conduct schools for secular instruc- 
 tion, and outside of the law there is little direct evidence bearing on 
 the matter. The readers no doubt ordinarily possessed the simple 
 qualifications required of teachers of reading and writing schools, 
 that is, they were orthodox, they were “‘of good life and conversation,” 
 and they could read and write. That in the minds of the people of 
 the time they commonly met the requirements for teachers is shown 
 in contemporary writings. In 1696 Governor Nicholson made out 
 a list of topics which he wanted Commissary Blair to take up with 
 the authorities in England. One had to do with the “‘great scarcity 
 of Ministers and Schoolmasters,’”’ another with the development of 
 towns. In reference to towns and the provision of schools the fol- 
 lowing memorandum appears: 
 
 If towns go forwards that a schoolmaster be maintained in every town at 
 18Webb, English Local Government, I, p. 50. 
 194m Account of Several Workhouses, p. 68. 
 
Three Types of Parish Educational Activity 21 
 
 least for teaching to read English and writing. A small encouragem’t to the 
 Parish Clerk or reader may perhaps enable him to keep such a school.?° 
 
 In Hugh Jones’ account of conditions in Virginia in the first part 
 of the eighteenth century there is a similar reference to the possession 
 of teaching qualifications by the readers, although there is an indica- 
 tion that some may not have had the capacity: 
 
 In most parishes are schools (little Houses being built on Purpose) where are 
 taught English and Writing; but to prevent the sowing of the Seeds of Dissention 
 and Faction it is to be wished that the Masters or Mistresses should be such as are 
 approved or licensed by the Minister and Vestry of the Parish or justices of the 
 County, the Clerks of the Parishes being most proper for this Purpose or (in 
 case of their incapacity or refusal) such others as can best be procured.”! 
 
 Although the statements quoted above show sufficiently well that 
 the readers were commonly looked upon as having the qualifications 
 for teaching, they show that it was not a regular custom for them to 
 engage in the work, for if it had been there would have been no occasion 
 for the propositions made. In various writings on colonial education 
 in Virginia, however, it is asserted that the readers taught. Bruce 
 says that in the seventeenth century, ‘“‘The readers . . . very frequently 
 performed the duties of teachers in countryside schools.” Maddox 
 says that the clerks of the parishes ‘‘were undoubtedly a main source 
 of supply of elementary school teachers.’’ He assumes, mistakenly, 
 that the clerk or reader was a cleric, and says that ‘‘in the main he 
 must have had more time and necessity to devote to teaching than 
 had the minister himself.’’* The inference logically drawn from 
 these and similar statements is that the readers taught school because 
 the work naturally devolved upon them as parish servants who 
 possessed the requisite qualifications and who had time for the work 
 left over after caring for their regular church duties. Neither Bruce 
 nor Maddox, however, offers any direct evidence showing that a 
 reader ever taught. That the view implied in the statements of 
 the authors quoted is mistaken is shown conclusively by the fact 
 that in the vestry books there is no reference to the work of readers 
 as teachers, and by the fact that in the reports on schools made to 
 the Bishop of London by the ministers in 1724 there is nothing said 
 concerning the matter.” 
 
 If the parish clerk was not by virtue of his office a teacher in a 
 
 20Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, VII, p. 157. 
 "Hugh Jones, Present State of Virginia, 1724, p. 70. 
 2Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia, I, p. 338. 
 %Maddox, The Free School Idea in Virginia, pp. 105-106. 
 Perry, Historical Documents, 1, pp. 262-318. 
 
22 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 parish school, what was the relation, if any, between the functions of 
 clerk and teacher? There is no direct evidence showing any custom- 
 ary connection in Virginia, but the practice in that colony may be 
 assumed to have been like that in North and South Carolina. Brick- 
 ell, in his Natural History of North Carolina, written in 1737, states 
 in reference to church practices in the colony that ‘‘They seldom have 
 orthodox Clergymen,”’ but that ‘The want of these Protestant clergy, 
 is generally supply’d by some School Masters’’ who serve as readers.” 
 A similar custom was sometimes followed in South Carolina. In St. 
 John’s Parish in that colony the settlers “had raised a Log-house 30 
 feet by 20, for a place of worship, and allowed their Schoolmaster a 
 small salary, to read for them, on Sundays, the Liturgy of the Church, 
 anda Sermon.” In St. Mark’s Parish in South Carolina the parish- 
 ioners ‘“‘used to meet on Sundays and have the Service of the Church 
 read to them by a Layman. This duty generally devolved on the 
 Schoolmaster of the place.’’” The fact seems to have been that 
 schoolmasters were more or less often chosen to be readers because 
 they had the necessary qualifications and because their work as 
 reader did not interfere with their regular occupation. This state- 
 ment no doubt applies as well to Virginia as to the Carolinas.?8 It is 
 evident that the schools conducted by the clerks or readers were not 
 parish affairs. It may be stated here that not only is there no evi- 
 dence indicating that the clerks as parish servants taught school, but 
 there is nothing in the sources to suggest that a parish ever employed 
 a schoolmaster with the understanding that he was to devote his 
 whole time to the instruction of parish children. That is, there were 
 no schools the teachers of which were supplied by the parishes. 
 
 PARISH MINISTERS AS TEACHERS 
 
 In connection with the study of the parish clerks as teachers it is 
 appropriate to give some consideration to the educational work of 
 the ministers even though it is evident that what they did does not 
 
 **Brickell, Natural History of North Carolina, p. 365. 
 
 *6Dalcho, F., History of the Episcopal Church in South Carolina, 1820, p. 271. 
 
 *7Dalcho, p. 324. 
 
 *8T wo known cases of teachers in Virginia who were readers or parish clerks are 
 those of Frederick Upp and William Cheeke. Upp in 1759 was ‘‘reader in the 
 church on the Fork’’ in Augusta County. He agreed with some of the parish- 
 ioners to keep school for six months at the rate of twelve shillings and a bushel of 
 wheat for each child, but he was made a better offer by people in another parish 
 and accepted it (Stanard, Colonial Virginia, p. 275). Samuel Cabell of Nelson 
 County went to school ‘‘in 1769, to William Cheeke, the parish clerk’’ (Brown, 
 The Cabells and Their Kin, p. 145). 
 
Three Types of Parish Educational Activity 23 
 
 come within the scope of parish educational activity. The fact that 
 ministers sometimes instructed boys in the better class families is 
 brought out in various writings dealing with educational history in 
 Virginia, the general view being that it was the common practice. 
 W. G. McCabe in an essay on Virginia schools before the Revolution 
 says that throughout 
 
 the whole colonial period, such education as existed was almost entirely in the 
 hands of parsons who on their glebes, or, if unmarried, at the houses of the great 
 land owners, conducted what were known as ‘Parsons Schools.’29 
 
 Bruce expresses the view that the majority of the persons keeping 
 neighborhood schools ‘‘were, throughout the seventeenth century 
 drawn from the circle of clergymen, who thus endeavored to increase 
 their income.’’*° In speaking of the education of John Marshall, 
 who was taught by a young Scotch deacon, Beveridge says that the 
 parsons “always were teachers as well as preachers.’’*! 
 
 The statements concerning the educational work of the ministers 
 in Virginia are usually generalizations based on certain well-known 
 cases of those who, toward the end of the colonial period, prepared 
 for college boys who later became leading men, and the source of 
 information most commonly used is Bishop Meade’s Old Churches 
 and Families of Virginta.. The original sources are for the most part 
 fragmentary in character and widely scattered, and in the absence of 
 any official state or church records dealing with the subject main 
 dependence has been placed in this study upon Bishop Meade’s work 
 and the biographies of eminent Virginians. 
 
 In the examination of writin’s which give information regarding 
 the ministers’ activity as teachers, references have been found to 
 sixteen different pastors who taught a school or tutored in the homes 
 of the planters. These men may be taken up in order of the time of 
 their service. 
 
 The first’ minister who served as a teacher to whom reference 
 has been found is Rev. James Wilson who was employed in 1658 by 
 some of the inhabitants of Elizabeth River Parish to instruct their 
 children.*? No details regarding his work appear. A letter written 
 in 1722 tells of the employment of a young divine as tutor, probably 
 in York County: 
 
 We have not had a schoolmaster in our neighborhood until now in five years. 
 ~ 29M cCabe, W. Gordon, Virginia Schools, p. 8. 
 
 39Bruce, Institutional History, I, p. 332. 
 
 31Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall, Tovrea 
 Bruce, Institutional History, I, p. 33. 
 
24 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 We have now a young minister living with us who was educated at Oxford, 
 took orders and came over as assistant to Rev. Kemp at Glocester. That 
 parish is too poor to keep both, and he teaches for his board. He teaches Sister 
 Susie and me, and Madam Carter’s boy and two girls... .% 
 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Churchill stated in her will, drawn up in 1716, 
 that she desired that ‘“Mr. Bartholomew Yates undertake the instruc- 
 tion of my son in his own house in Latin and Greek.’’** She provided 
 that Mr. Yates was ‘‘to be given two of the best beeves and four of 
 the best hogs, over and above what he shall demand for teaching and 
 board.’”’ Mr. Yates was pastor in Christ Church Parish, Middlesex 
 County, in 1724, and he probably was in 1716. 
 
 “In 1740 Rev. James Marye opened a school in Fredericksburg 
 to which in course of time went Washington, Madison, and Monroe.*® 
 The Rev. Wm. Douglas in 1748 or 1749 ‘‘came over [from Scotland] 
 as a teacher in the family. of Colonel Monroe, of Westmoreland, 
 father of President Monroe who was one of the pupils, as was also 
 Mr. Jefferson afterwards, in Goochland.’’* 
 
 Rev. Archibald Campbell kept a school in Westmoreland County 
 at the middle of the eighteenth century, and “‘it may also be true, as 
 tradition further reports, that General Washington and Thomas 
 Marshall, father of the Chief-Justice, and perhaps Colonel Monroe 
 and Mr. Madison, all of whom were born in this region, may at one 
 time have been scholars of Mr. Campbell.’”®” When John Marshall 
 was a boy the minister in Leeds Parish, James Thompson, lived in 
 the Marshall home for a year and taught the older children. ‘‘During 
 his trial year the young Scotch deacon returned Thomas Marshall’s 
 hospitality by giving the elder children such instruction as occasion 
 offered....’’38 James Madison received his early training in the 
 school of Rev. Donald Robertson, a pastor in King and Queen County: 
 
 His novitiate was passed at a school of much reputation in the County of 
 King and Queen, conducted by an erudite Scotchman of the name of Donald 
 Robertson. In this school he was instructed mainly in the Greek, Latin, French, 
 and Spanish languages. ... After leaving the school of Mr. Robertson, young 
 Madison prosecuted his studies at home, under the tuition of the Rev. Thomas 
 Martin, the established minister of the parish, who lived, at the time, in the 
 family at Montpelier.*9 
 
 Pryor, Mrs. Roger A., The Mother of Washington and Her Times, p. 29. 
 34Stanard, Colonial Virginia, p. 276. 
 
 33Meade, Old Churches, I, p. 458. 
 
 38Tbid., p. 458. 
 
 ‘81Ibid., II, p. 158. 
 
 38Beveridge, Life of John Marshall, I, p. 52. 
 
 39Rives, Life of Madison, p. 10 
 
Three Types of Parish Educational Activity 25 
 
 As will be shown later, the minister of Elizabeth River Parish in 
 Norfolk County in 1762, Alexander Rhonnald, had been previously 
 master of a charity school in a neighboring county. The school was 
 very probably the Eaton School, an endowed institution which will 
 be considered in the following chapter. 
 
 Rev. Jonathan Boucher, who is perhaps the best known of the 
 Virginia colonial schoolmasters, conducted a boarding school first in 
 Hanover Parish and then in St. Mary’s Parish from 1762 until 1774. 
 He says in a letter to Washington, who placed his step-son in the 
 school, 
 
 I had now also increased my number of boys to nearly thirty, most of them the 
 sons of the first condition in the colony. They all boarded with me, and I wholly 
 superintended them myself, without any usher, for two years. 
 
 Nicholas Cabell attended the, 
 
 classical school of Rev. James Maury of Albemarle, of the Parson’s Cause fame 
 from May, 1767, to May 1769, in which year Mr. Maury died. Thomas Jefferson 
 Bishop Madison, John Taylor or Carolina, Dabney Carr, the elder, and numerous 
 other distinguished men were educated by Mr. Maury.*! 
 
 “ 
 
 Another dominie noted for his inspiring use of the rod, was the Rev. John 
 Cameron, D.D., a graduate of King’s College; Aberdeen, who came over to 
 Virginia from Scotland in 1770, and long taught a select classical school in Lunen- 
 burg County, where he was also minister of the parish.” 
 
 In 1771 a young minister who was seeking appointment to a parish 
 advertised in the Williamsburg Gazette that he intended to teach 
 school as well as serve as pastor, and he probably carried out his 
 intention. i 
 
 To the Publick:—A clergyman of the Church of England, a sober young man, 
 with a good character, would serve as a minister to a Church in any of his Majesty’s 
 Plantations, upon Trial, on reasonable terms. He proposes to teach Ladies and 
 Gentlemen the French, Latin, Greek, and English Languages, Book-keeping by 
 double entry, Algebra, Geometry, surveying, Mechanicks, Fortification, Gunnery, 
 Navigation, and the use of the Globes and Maps, after a natural, easy, and con- 
 cise method, without Burthen to the Memory. For particulars, Letters directed 
 (postpaid), to the Reverend W. S., to the care of the Reverend Thomas Smith, 
 Rector of Cople Parish in Westmoreland, Potowmack, Virginia, will have proper 
 answers as soon as possible.* 
 
 The diary of Col. William Cabell contains the following entry for 
 November 7, 1775: 
 
 10D etters from Jonathan Boucher to George Washington, p. 5. 
 4iBrown, Alexander, The Cabells and Their Kin, p. 145. 
 “McCabe, W. G., Virginia Schools, pp. 11-12. 
 
 8William and Mary College Quarterly, VII, p. 178. 
 
26 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 The Rev. Robert Buchan began his school at my house, and all my children 
 are put under his tuition.” 
 
 Bishop Meade quotes a statement that the Rev. James Maury 
 Fontaine kept a school when he was minister in Ware Parish.*® 
 
 The above completes the list of ministers who taught school of 
 whose work record has been found. Doubtless there were others and 
 we are justified in concluding that the practice was fairly common. 
 There are various facts, however, the consideration of which shows 
 that the custom was not universal. Bishop Meade had a compre- 
 hensive acquaintance with the possible sources of information con- 
 cerning the colonial ministers’ work, and he undoubtedly would have 
 found others among them who taught if in fact the larger share of 
 them followed the practice. The clergy in Virginia petitioned Gov- 
 ernor Andros in 1695 for anincrease in their salaries, and the petition 
 was sent on to the Burgesses, who refused to comply with the request 
 because they thought the salaries then paid were sufficient, consider- 
 ing the fact that the ministers also received certain perquisites. The 
 ministers’ reply contained the following statement: 
 
 As to our considerable Perquisites, wee beg leave to inform your Excell’y 
 that wee have noe Perquisites but for marriages and a few funeral Sermons, 
 and that by a computation wee have made of the Perquisites of the generality 
 of our Parishes, wee find that they do not amount communibus Annis to above 
 five pounds per annum.‘* 
 
 If it had been the regular custom at the time for the ministers 
 to teach school, there probably would have been some reference to 
 this work as a source of income. Neither Robert Beverley nor Hugh 
 Jones in their accounts of conditions in the colony at the beginning 
 of the eighteenth century make reference to the work of ministers 
 as teachers, although they give particular attention to education. 
 In 1724 the Bishop of London sent to the ministers in Virginia a set 
 of questions inquiring about conditions and practices in the parishes, 
 to which twenty-nine replied.” In response to the question con- 
 cerning education no one made reference to his teaching school al- 
 though private schools are mentioned. It is likely that, as the above 
 statements concerning individual pastors suggest, it was more com- 
 mon toward the end of the colonial period for the ministers to act 
 as teachers or tutors than it had been previously. The general 
 
 “Brown, The Cabells and Thetr Kin, p. 191. 
 
 . Meade, Old Churches, I, p. 328. 
 46Anderson, J. S. M., History of the Colonial Church, I, p. 603. 
 “Perry, Historical Collections, I, pp. 262-318. 
 
Three Types of Parish Educational Activity 27 
 
 advance of culture and the growth in importance of William and 
 Mary College were factors creating a demand for the Latin instruc- 
 tion which the ministers could give. 
 
 PAYMENT BY THE PARISH FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF POOR CHILDREN 
 
 Although it seems to have been a fairly common custom in England 
 to make expenditures out of parish funds for the education of poor 
 children in private schools, the parishes in Virginia did not adopt the 
 practice. An examination of practically all of the extant vestry 
 books shows only five cases. ‘The minutes of the meeting of the Pets- 
 worth Parish vestry in October, 1713, contain the following entry: 
 
 Dr. to Ezekiell Smith for keeping and schooling Jane Halloway — 800 
 
 to Wm. Anderson for keeping and schooling Mary Launlings—500.‘8 
 
 The figures given indicate the number of pounds of tobacco paid. 
 In 1744 the vestry of Fredericksville Parish in Louisa County paid 
 Richard Farmer eight pounds and ten shillings for providing for the 
 support of a girl until she should become eighteen years of age and 
 for giving her ‘“‘two years schooling to learn it to read.”’ The Albe- 
 marle Parish vestry in 1748 ‘Ordered that the Church Wardens do 
 pay out of the Fines in Their Hands for one Year’s Schooling of a 
 child of a certain Frances Copeland, a Woman under Low Circum- 
 stances.’’*° In 1771 the vestry of Wicomico Parish paid for the in- 
 struction of a poor child.*° 
 
 The small number of cases where expenditure was made for the 
 education of poor children makes it impossible to attach any positive 
 significance to the action taken except that it shows that the vestries 
 thought they possessed the right, possibly because of English custom, 
 to make outlay for the education of individual children. If it had 
 seemed desirable to the local. governments, a general practice of 
 educating poor childern in private schools at parish expense could 
 have developed. 
 
 PARISH PROVISION OF SCHOOL BUILDING 
 
 It was not the custom for the parishes of colonial Virginia to 
 provide schoolhouses for the free use of masters to induce them to 
 conduct schools. The only case found is mentioned in the record 
 of Linhaven Parish in Princess Anne County. In the minutes of the 
 
 48MS. copy of Petsworth vestry book, p. &6. 
 49Albemarle Parish MS. vestry book, April 12, 1748. 
 50Wicomico Parish vestry book, p. 57. 
 
28 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 vestry meeting in this parish held March 2, 1736 the following entry 
 appears: 
 
 On the motion of Col. Anthony Walke that the old Church woo’d be a con- 
 venient place to make a public school off for instructing children to learning, 
 that liberty might be given for ye applying it to that purpose, ye vestry taking the 
 said proposall also being of the opinion that after it is made commodious ‘twould 
 be an encouragement to induce a master constantly toattend thereon; Do there- 
 fore unanimously Resolve that ye said Church be, and it is hereby given for the 
 use aforesaid, and to and for no other use or purpose whatsoever.*! 
 
 The vestry of Elizabeth River Parish in Norfolk County allowed 
 Mr. James Pasteur to take the bricks and timber of the old church 
 to build a house, presumably a schoolhouse, on the ‘“‘school land.’’™ 
 The land had probably been given to the parish for school purposes. 
 
 It is clear that with negligible exceptions the parishes in colonial 
 Virginia did not aid in the education of their children by establishing 
 schools, by paying for instruction in private schools, or by furnishing 
 community school buildings. We shall next consider the endowed 
 type of parish school the operation of which did not require public 
 expenditure.* 
 
 SIMS. Vestry Minutes of Linhaven Parish, March 2, 1736. A similar case ex- 
 cept that the court took the action is found in the records of Essex County: 
 
 At a Court held for Essex Co. Feb. 10, 1704. On the motion of Capt. Robert 
 Coleman, It is considered by the Court that the Old Prison standing at Hobses 
 Hole Tappahannock be appropriated to the use of a Schoole house, and to no 
 other use whatsoever. (Essex County, Order Book, 1703-08, p. 147). 
 
 At a Court held for Essex August 1705. The Petition of Richard Cooke 
 Keeper of the School at Hobbs Hole to have liberty to live in the sd School house 
 is Referd to the consideration of the next Court. (William and Mary College 
 Quarterly, Ser. 2, I, p. 142, contributed by Clayton Torrence). 
 
 2Vleade, Old Churches, I, 276. 
 
 The following note concerning educational provisions among the German 
 and French settlers in Virginia may be added here. 
 
 In the German settlement at Germanna, in Orange County, a school was 
 established shortly after 1739 of which the pastor was the regular teacher. The 
 Germans here were allowed to have their own religious parish organization sepa- 
 rate from the official parish. The facts concerning the school are given by 
 Schuricht, in his German Element in Virginia, page 75: 
 
 In 1739 Rev. Stoever travelled to Germany in order to raise money for building 
 a church, a parsonage with schoolrooms, and to establish a library. The in- 
 struction in school afterwards was given by the venerable parson himself and it 
 comprised religion, reading, writing, and arithmetic. 
 
 In Rockingham County in 1769 a parish school was established by the Germans 
 worshipping at the Peaked Mountain Church, but the minister here was apparent- 
 ly not the teacher. The arrangement under which the school was operated 
 as indicated in the following statement is of interest. 
 
 “Agreement between the Reformed and Lutheran Congregations Worshipping 
 in the Peaked Mountain Church; Rockingham County, Virginia, 
 
 October 31, 1769 
 
 We have established it as a union church, in the use of which the Lutherans and 
 their descendants as well as the Reformed and their descendants, shall have equal 
 share. But since it is necessary to keep in repair the church and the schoolhouse 
 
Three Types of Parish Educational Activity 20 
 
 and support the minister and schoolmaster, therefore, we have drawn up this 
 writing that each member sign his name to the same and thereby certify that 
 he will support the minister and schoolmaster and help to keep in repair the 
 church and schoolhouse as far as lies in his ability. Should, however, one or 
 another withdraw himself from such Christian work (which we would not suppose 
 a Christian would do), we have unitedly concluded that such a one shall not be 
 looked upon as a member of our congregation.” 
 
 Asa penalty for failure to help in support of the church and school it was agreed 
 that those who should withdraw themselves from the work should pay for a 
 baptism two shillings, six pence, and for communion or confirmation five shillings 
 (Wayland, A History of Rockingham County, Virginia, p. 61). 
 
 At the beginning of the eighteenth century French Huguenots made a settle- 
 ment in King William Parish on the south side of the James River in what was 
 then Henrico County. The parish government was in their hands and the record 
 was kept in French until 1750. The activity of the parish government as shown in 
 the vestry record was essentially like that in other parishes, except that there is no 
 indication that the vestry and wardens bound out children as apprentices. 
 What they did with reference to schools has not been determined. The only 
 allusion to schools in King William Parish which has been found in the course of 
 this study is that made by Bishop Meade. He says, 
 
 “Even the little establishment of Huguenots at Manakintown, whose compact 
 settlement so favoured education, and whose parentage made its members to 
 desire it, was so destitute, that about this time (1724) one of their leading men, a 
 Mr. Sallie, on hearing that the King was about to establish a colony in Ireland for 
 the Huguenots, addressed him a letter begging permission to be united to it, 
 saying that there was no school among them where their children could be edu- 
 cated’’ (Meade, Old Churches, I, p. 190). 
 
CHAPTER IIT 
 ENDOWED PARISH SCHOOLS 
 
 ENGLISH PRECEDENTS 
 
 In the reign of Elizabetha number of free elementary schools were 
 established in England by gifts similar to those upon which the 
 grammar schools were founded, and in the seventeenth century en- 
 dowed schools of this type became common.! Between 1660 and 1730 
 no less than 905 non-classical endowed schools were set up. Some 
 and probably many of these institutions were parish schools, that 
 is, the founders either gave them directly to the parishes or pro- 
 vided that the wardens or vestry should administer them for the 
 good of parish children. For instance, in St. Olave’s Parish in 
 Southwark in 1561 the church wardens were ordered to receive 
 moneys from the executors of an estate to set up a free school and 
 choose a schoolmaster to teach children to write, read, and cast 
 accounts.’ 
 
 Whatever is the general explanation of the great interest in the 
 education of the poor which was shown in England by the many 
 gifts for the founding of schools, no doubt in the colonies the same 
 interest was felt; and where there was no development of common 
 public schools or of church schools which provided for the poor we 
 should expect to find that benevolent men followed the English 
 custom and established free schools by endowment. It is well known 
 that in fact there were in colonial Virginia, as in the other southern 
 colonies, a number of such institutions and that some were in con- 
 trol of the parishes. It is the purpose in the present chapter to 
 determine the number, character, and service of the endowed parish 
 schools in Virginia, and as far as may be to ascertain what share they 
 constituted of all the endowed schools in the colony. 
 
 1 De Montmorency, State Interference in English Education, pp. 189-90; state- 
 ment based on the Digest of Schools and Charities for Education reported to 
 Parliament in 1842. 
 
 Watson, English Grammar Schools, p. 150. 
 
 30 
 
Endowed Parish Schools ae 
 
 ENDOWED PARISH SCHOOLS IN) VIRGINIA 
 
 The official records from which information concerning the en- 
 dowed parish schools of colonial Virginia may be gained are the 
 minutes of the vestry meetings, the county court records, the Acts 
 of the Assembly, and the reports on educational conditions in 1724 
 which were made to the Bishop of London whose diocese embraced 
 the colonies. The number of extant vestry books, the period they 
 cover, and the character of their contents have been indicated. In 
 the colonial statutes are found several Acts of incorporation which 
 give the essential provisions in the wills of the founders of certain 
 schools and show something of the operation of the institutions. 
 The court records of wills and orders give evidence regarding bequests 
 and the management of schools. With small exception the volumi- 
 nous court records have not been printed, and only those in print and 
 the published extracts dealing with schools have been used in the 
 course of the present study. The reports of 1724, although brief, are 
 the best contemporary source of information concerning schools asa 
 whole in the colony at any one time, and in a number of instances 
 they help in interpreting data relating to those established in the 
 years before the survey was made. They also furnish a means of 
 checking up on material found in other sources. The contemporary 
 writings of an unofficial type which refer to endowed schools in the 
 colony are few and they add but little to the facts supplied by the 
 public records. Because of the bearing of the facts in the reports of 
 1724 on the period preceding that year rather than on that which 
 follows, consideration will first be given to the schools founded in 
 the earlier period. 
 
 ENDOWED PARISH SCHOOLS ESTABLISHED BEFORE 1724 
 
 The question asked of the parish ministers in Virginia by the 
 
 Bishop of London was, 
 Have you in your Parish any Public School for the instruction of youth? 
 If you have, is it endowed? and who is the Master? 
 
 3Perry, W.S., Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church, 
 I, p. 261. Theinquiry of the Bishop embraced questions concerning religious and 
 social conditions in the colony, so that for each of the 29 parishes from which 
 replies were received there is a fairly good description of the situation. The same 
 survey was made in Maryland and Connecticut. The parishes in Virginia which 
 were reported upon were the following: Westminster (location undetermined), 
 St. Paul’s in Hanover County, James City in James City County, Bristol in 
 Prince George, St. Peter’s in New Kent, Westover in Charles City, Hungars in 
 Northampton, Newport in Isle of Wight, Stratton Major in King and Queen, 
 Wilmington (location undetermined), Blissland in New Kent, York Hampton in 
 
32 Parish Education 1n Colonial Virginia 
 
 A typical reply) from a parish where there was no public school 
 is the following from St, Peter’s Parish in New Kent County: 
 
 We have no Public Schools but some private, wherein children are taught to 
 read, write; etc.4 
 
 The Bishop’s inquiry does not indicate what he meant by ‘“‘public 
 school,’ but it is evident that the ministers understood the term to 
 signify simply a school which was not operated privately for gain, 
 and in effect this meant a school open without charge to at least some 
 of the children of the community in which it was located, with support 
 coming from endowment, occasional gifts, or taxation.’ That is, 
 the term was an inclusive one under which the ministers might list 
 any kind of free school; in fact, however, all the public schools re- 
 ported in 1724 were endowed. In taking up the endowed parish 
 schools we may consider separately each parish in which one was 
 reported. 
 
 Elizabeth City Parish in Elizabeth City County 
 
 The minister of Elizabeth City Parish reported in 1724 that in 
 his parish, 
 
 There are two schools endowed, though very meanly, whereof John Mason 
 and Abram Paris are teachers. There is also a very good private school where, 
 besides reading, arithmetic and writing, Latin and Greek are very well taught, 
 whereof William Fyfe, a man of good life and conversation is master.® 
 
 The endowed schools referred to were two which had been founded 
 in the seventeenth century upon the bequests of Benjamin Syms and 
 Thomas Eaton. The earliest reference to the Syms School, which 
 
 York, Christ Church in Lancaster, South Farnham in Essex, Petsworth in Glou- 
 cester, Lawn’s Creek in Surry, Washington in Westmoreland, Elizabeth City in 
 Elizabeth City, Upper Parish in Isle of Wight, Christ Church in Middlesex, 
 Bruton in James City, Accomako in Accomac, St. Stephen’s in King and Queen, 
 Henrico in Henrico, Southwark in Surry, Abingdon in Gloucester, St. Mary’s 
 in Essex, Overwharton in Stafford, St. Anne’s in Essex. 
 
 4Tbid., p. 269. 
 
 ‘While it is clear that the ministers in 1724 all agreed in their understanding of 
 ‘‘public school’ as meaning a free school, the term was sometimes used in the 
 later colonial period, at least, in application to a purely private institution oper- 
 ated for profit and public only in the sense that public patronage was desired. 
 An illustration of this use is found in the following advertisement appearing in the 
 Williamsburg Gazette in 1771: 
 
 ‘“‘John Bruce, M. A., has opened a Publick School over against the Church, at the 
 head of Cumberland Street, Norfolk, and proposes to teach the Greek, Latin, and 
 English Languages, Navigation, Bookkeeping, Arithmetick, Mathematicks; 
 where those who choose to favor him with the Instruction of their Children, may 
 depend on all due attention being paid their education.’’ (Quoted in William and 
 Mary College Quarterly, VII, p. 178). 
 
 SPerry, W. S., Historical Collections, I, p. 294. 
 
ay 
 
 Endowed Parish Schools 33 
 
 was established first, is in an Act of 1642-437 confirming the donor’s 
 will which was drawn up in 1634-35.8 Syms provided that two hun- 
 dred acres of land in the county and parish of Elizabeth City which 
 he owned, together with the milk and increase of eight milch cows, 
 should be given, 
 
 for the maintenance of a learned, honest man, to keep upon the said ground a free 
 
 school for the education and instruction of the children of the adjoining parishes 
 of Elizabeth City and Kiquotan. 
 
 The will further declared it to be the desire of Syms, 
 
 that the justices of the peace of the said county of Elizabeth City, with the 
 minister and churchwardens of the said parish of Elizabeth City, should see his 
 will justly and truly performed, and further declared his will to be, that when 
 there should be a sufficient increase of the said cattle, part of them should be sold, 
 and the money raised by such sale, laid out in building a schoolhouse, and that the 
 residue of the said increase, after the schoolmaster should have a sufficient stock, 
 should be applied towards repairing the said house, and maintaining poor children, 
 or decayed or maimed persons.? 
 
 It appears from the fact that the will was confirmed in 1642-43 
 that Syms had died shortly before, so that the date of his bequest 
 may be set as early as 1641.1° The sanctioning of the will in 1642-43 
 made the property available at that time, and probably the school 
 was put in operation shortly thereafter. It was certainly running 
 before 1647, for the author of A Perfect Description of Virginia, 
 which was written in that year, said in reference to it, 
 
 I may not forget to tell you we have a Free-School, with two hundred Acres of 
 Land, a fine house upon it, forty milch Kine, and other accommodations to it: 
 the Benefactor deserves perpetual memory: His name Mr. Benjamin Symes, 
 worthy to be Chronicled, other petty schools also we have." 
 
 The school is again referred to in a court record of 1693 which shows 
 that it was then in operation, as presumably it had been in the preced- 
 ing years, and that the schoolhouse was kept up. It was ordered that, 
 
 Robert Crook Schoolmaster of Symmes School be allowed and paid for his 
 charges in repairing ye school House two old cows in lieu thereof.” 
 
 THening, I, p. 2652. 
 8The will is apparently not in existence, but its date and terms are given in an 
 Act incorporating its trustees passed in 1753 (Hening, VI, p. 389). 
 *Hening, VI, p. 389 
 — 10Syms was apparently the first man to provide in his will for the endowment 
 of an American school, but the bequest made upon his death was antedated by 
 that of John Harvard by three years. 
 
 —UA Perfect Description of Virginia, Force Historical Tracts, II, p. #6.!5 
 
 2Quoted by Lyon G. Tyler in William and Mary College Quarterly, VI, p. 74. 
 The court records of Elizabeth City County for the years previous to 1689 are not 
 in existence. While in the early years of the existence of the Syms School there 
 was a schoolhouse separate from the dwelling, it seems that at the middle of the 
 
34 Parish Education,in Colonial Virginia 
 
 The court record shows that in 1699 Crook resigned and that a 
 new master was ‘appointed. The\next reference to the Syms School 
 which has been found appears in an advertisement in the Williams- 
 burg Gazette of March 12, 1752: 
 
 Notice is hereby given, that Symmes’ Free School, in Elizabeth City County, 
 will be vacant on the 25th of March, a tutor of a good character, and properly 
 
 qualified may meet with good encouragement by applying to the Trustees of the 
 Said School. 
 
 N.B. The Land Rent of the said School is 31£ per Ann., besides Perquisites.¥ 
 
 At this time, and possibly long before, it was the custom to rent 
 the Syms farm, reserving only the plot on which was located the 
 master’s dwelling in which the school was kept. When the farm 
 was leased in 1760 ‘‘one acre at the southwest corner’ with buildings 
 was reserved, and apparently this was the location of the school. 
 
 In 1753 the trustees of the school were incorporated by the As- 
 sembly with the intention, indicated in the act of incorporation, of 
 enabling the justices of the peace of the county of Elizabeth City, and the minister 
 and churchwardens of the parish of Elizabeth City, in that county, to take and 
 hold certain lands devised by the will of Benjamin Sym, for a free school, and 
 other charitable uses. 
 
 After giving the terms of Syms’ will the Act goes on to state that 
 “the charitable intentions of the said Benjamin Sym, the donor, 
 hath not been effectually fulfilled,” and that it was the desire of the 
 Assembly to incorporate the trustees ‘‘to the end that the said 
 charity may be more beneficial for the future.’’ In just what way 
 Syms’ intentions had not been carried out is not stated, but the Act 
 implies that lessees were in arrears of rents, that damages had been 
 “sustained by occasion of not repairing the houses’’ on the land, 
 _ and that the master of the school may have assumed a vested right 
 
 eighteenth century at least the school was kept in the master’s dwelling. Section IV 
 of an Act of 1753, incorporating the trustees, provides that they should use the rents 
 in part for the purpose of “‘erecting and keeping in repair a sufficient school- 
 house for his [the master’s] dwelling.’’ (Hening, VI, pp. 389-92). 
 
 3A bound volume containing the issues of the Williamsburg Gazette for 1752 is 
 in the New York Public Library. The perquisites referred to in the advertise- 
 ment, as suggested in a rental contract made in 1760, consisted in the use of four 
 cows and the combined school building and dwelling. The use and increase of the 
 cattle belonging to the school were given with the land, the schoolmaster after 
 1760 having the use of four cows which were pastured for him. In 1760 the school 
 herd Vin of ‘eleven head of black cattle’? (The Syms-Eaton Free School, 
 p. 14). 
 
 MRrom an indenture appearing in Elizabeth City County records, quoted in 
 The Syms-Eaton Free School, pp. 13-15. 
 
 lbHening, VI, 390. 
 
Endowed Parish Schools 35 
 
 in his position without control by the trustees. The Act allowed the 
 trustees, 
 
 to nominate and appoint when, and often as they shall think good, such persons 
 as they shall approve of, to be master of the said free school. . . .And the said 
 trustees and the Governors, and their successors for the time being, shall and may 
 have full power and authority to visit the said free school, and to order, reform, 
 and redress all disorder and abuses in and touching the government and dis- 
 posing of the same, and to remove the said master, as to them, or the greater part 
 of them, shal] seem just, fit, and convenient. 
 
 It seems probable that the trustees in the preceding period of the 
 school’s history had exercised little oversight, so that a precedent 
 had grown up which made it necessary for those in charge of the 
 school in 1753 to ask for legislative action in order that they might 
 regain control. The inaction of the trustees is indicated by the lack 
 of records showing regulation from 1699 to 1752. While the title 
 of the Act of incorporation suggests that the chief end sought by 
 incorporation was the delegation of the right to control the school 
 lands, the fact that the rental in 1760,!° seven years after the in- 
 corporation, was the same as in 1752, as shown by the advertisement 
 quoted above, indicates that the main purpose was to allow the 
 trustees to regain control of the management of the school and per- 
 haps to make clear their responsibility in the matter. In any case 
 it is evident that for a considerable period the school was not care- 
 fully managed. 
 
 After 1753 there is no reference to the Syms School in the sources 
 examined except in the lease of 1760 referred to, but there is no 
 reason for thinking that it was not in continuous operation during 
 the remainder of the colonial period. Considering the long period 
 during which the school was in existence, the data giving information 
 concerning it are relatively few, and we can tell little directly from 
 the records with regard to its real character. It is evident, however, 
 that it was a free endowed school controlled by a board of trustees 
 composed of county and parish officials, the participation of parish 
 officers making it appropriate to consider it as one among a number of 
 institutions of a similar general type which were purely parish 
 affairs. 
 
 Besides the Syms School there was in Elizabeth City Parish in 
 1724 another endowed institution known as the Eaton Free School, 
 which was founded on the bequest of Thomas Eaton in compliance 
 
 16Rental indenture, county clerk’s office, quoted in The Syms-Eaton Free School, 
 pp. 13-14. 
 
36 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 with his will drawn up in 1659. This was one of the two endowed 
 schools to which the minister of the parish referred. The character 
 of Eaton’s gift and his intention with reference to its use are shown 
 in the following extract from the will. 
 
 I have for the maintenance of an able Schoolmaster to educate and teach the 
 children borne within the said county of Elizabeth City. ... 
 
 Given, granted, assigned, set over and confirmed and doo by these presents 
 give, grant, assign, set over and confirm after the time of my decease for the use 
 aforesaid, Five hundred acres of land, whereon the said Free School shall be 
 kept, . .. Two negroes... Twelve Cows and two Bulls, Twenty hogs, [here is 
 given a list of household utensils as a part of the grant] to have and to hould the 
 said land with all other the premises before mentioned for the use afores’d, with 
 all ye male increase thereof, for ye maintenance of the said schoolmaster such one 
 as by the Commissioners, Mynister & churchwardens whom I doo nominate 
 and appoint as trustees in trust for the ordering and settling thereof from time to 
 time shall be thought fit, and I, the said Thomas Eaton do further order and 
 appoint that no free education bee allowed but to such children as shall be borne 
 within the said county.!’ 
 
 The Eaton School was in all likelihood opened shortly subsequent 
 to the donor’s death, which probably occurred not long after 1659. 
 It was certainly in operation some time before 1692, for in that year 
 the court record shows that the trustees required that a man who had 
 served as master previous to that time should provide food and 
 clothing for an old slave given in the bequest whom he had neglected 
 to care for properly: 
 
 Whereas Mr. Ebenezer Taylor, late schoolmaster of Eaton’s free-school, his 
 time being expired & having had ye Benefitt and p’quisetts thereof, It is thought 
 reasonable yt a negroe woman belonging to ye sd schoole should be cloathed at 
 ye charges of ye sd schoolemaster. .. .18 
 
 There are brief references to the Eaton School in the court records 
 for 1693 and 1695. The record for 1697, showing the appointment 
 of a teacher, indicates that instruction was given at that time in 
 “oramer learninge’”’ as well as in English: 
 
 Mr. George Eland with consent of this court is elected Schoolmaster of Eaton’s 
 free school & he is to continue in place as he shall be approved of from year to 
 year Teaching all such children in English and gramer learninge as shall be sent 
 to him yt are belonging to this county, and he is to have all such p’quisettes and 
 p’fitts as is belonging to ye s’d schoole.!® 
 
 In 1699 part of the Eaton farm was rented for a period of twenty- 
 one years, the lessee agreeing to pay two hundred pounds of tobacco 
 
 William and Mary College Quarierly, XI, pp. 19-20. 
 
 Tbid., p. 74. The earliest record book of Elizabeth City County begins with 
 the year 1689. 
 
 19Tbtd., p. 74. 
 
Endowed Parish Schools 37 
 
 per year, plant one hundred apple trees, and build, apparently for 
 the master, ‘‘one substantial thirty-foot dwelling house.’’° The land 
 had been leased some time previous to 1699 which makes it appear that 
 from an early date it was the custom to rent the farm, the master 
 receiving the income and the use of the dwelling and schoolhouse. 
 
 The record for 1720 contains the following statement showing 
 that the Elizabeth City Parish vestry had taken a part in controlling 
 the school property even though according to the terms of the will 
 it had no right in the matter: 
 
 Upon compl’t made by Henry Irvin gent ag’t Jno Curle about Eaton’s free 
 schoole land of waste being made of the timbers, it is ordered that the Clk, bring 
 s’d Eaton’s will and Deed to next court concerning the premises and a copy of the 
 vestry ord’r whereby Curle hath the land granted to him.”! 
 
 In 1725 the school land was rented with the understanding that 
 in return for the use of the property the lessee should provide a 
 schoolmaster, thus relieving the trustees of their responsibility: 
 
 Upon the motion of William Tucker setting forth that he is willing to take the 
 school Jand and provide a schoolmaster, it is ordered that the said Tucker have 
 possession of the said land with this proviso and condition, that he constantly 
 keep and provide a schoolmaster to teach children in said land.” 
 
 The extracts from the records of 1720 and 1725 given above sug- 
 gest that the trustees were not exercising proper care in managing 
 the school and its property. As a means of eliminating any doubt 
 about their power and obligation the Assembly in 1730 passed an 
 Act allowing them “‘to take and hold certain lands given by Thomas 
 Eaton to charitable uses and to lett leases thereof.’’?% 
 
 Notwithstanding the passage of the Act of 1730 the management 
 of the Eaton property did not improve, as is shown in an Act of 
 incorporation enacted in 1759 entitled ‘‘An Act for the better regulat- 
 ing Eaton’s Charity School.’’*4 In the Act it is stated or directly 
 implied that part of the lands had not been profitable “‘the trustees 
 having neglected to let the same,” that ‘“‘some of the leases were 
 either lost or in the custody of the tenants who would not produce 
 them,’ that waste had been committed on the lands without the 
 recovery of damages, and that there had been breach of contract by 
 the lessees in not building and planting on the farm according to the 
 
 20Court record, June 19, 1699. Quoted in The Syms-Eaton Free School, p. 11. 
 1William and Mary College Quarterly, VI, p. 74. 
 
 Court record, Nov. 17, 1725. Quoted in The Syms-Eaton Free School, p. 11. 
 *Hening, VII, pp. 317-18. 
 
 *Hening, VII, pp. 317-19. 
 
38 Parish Education tn Colonial Virginia 
 
 terms of the leases. A partial explanation of the inaction of the 
 trustees, according to a statement in the Act, lay in the fact that 
 they doubted their authority, although this could not explain neg- 
 ligence in renting the land or loss of the leases, and in view of the 
 provisions of the Eaton will and the Act of 1730 it does not seem that 
 it could have been the real reason for failure to act in the cases of the 
 other matters mentioned. The real explanation for the facts in- 
 dicated seems to have been quite clearly that the trustees for a long 
 period neglected their trust so that abuses grew up. If in fact the 
 trustees had looked upon their lack of power as the reason for inaction 
 they could have asked for and secured their incorporation long before 
 1759. 
 
 The Eaton School trustees not only were negligent in the manage- 
 ment of the school land, but, as is shown in the following excerpt from 
 the Act of incorporation, they were careless in at least one important 
 particular in carrying out their duty in the management of the school. 
 
 And whereas the said foundation hath been abused, by admitting a great 
 number of children into the said school, whose parents are well able to pay for 
 their education: For remedy whereof, Be it, enacted by the authority aforesaid, 
 That no person shall enjoy the benefit of the said charity-school without the con- 
 sent of the master, for the time being except such poor children as the said trustees 
 
 and governors and their successors, or the greater part of them, shall from time 
 to time declare to be the proper objects of the pious founder’s charity. 
 
 The above paragraph suggests that the trustees had allowed the 
 children of the well-to-do to attend the school and that they had 
 either excluded the poor for whom it was founded or had allowed a 
 custom to grow up which kept them out. There is evidence in the 
 following quotation from a letter written in 1762 by the pastor of 
 Elizabeth River Parish in Norfolk County pointing to the conclusion 
 that the trustees were directly responsible for the abuse. 
 
 I had a charity school in a neighboring county where the Gentlemen’s children 
 were many years educated, and the objects of charity disdained, till I was obliged 
 to leave the school, and lodge a Complaint in the Assembly, which has pre- 
 vented the Grandees to reign longer, but from that time, they use me with the 
 most invidious Terms of Ill nature for my pains.*6 
 
 While the extract from the letter does not absolutely establish 
 the fact that the minister who wrote it was referring to the Eaton 
 School, a comparison between it and the paragraph from the Act 
 quoted above makes it seem fairly certain that such was the case. 
 
 *Hening, VII, p. 320. 
 
 **Letter of Alexander Rhonnald to Rev. Dr. John Waring, Sept. 27, 1762; 
 Bray MS., Box II, Minute Book B, p. 189. Found by W. W. Kemp. 
 
Endowed Parish Schools 39 
 
 The county in which the Eaton School was located was “‘a neighboring 
 county,’’ and there is no reference in the statutes to a legislative 
 attempt to correct an abuse of the kind indicated except in the case 
 of the Eaton School. Evidently when the minister who wrote the 
 letter was master of the school he had endeavored without success to 
 get the trustees to admit the poor so that he had to appeal to the 
 Assembly. The Act no doubt restored the school to its original 
 purpose, although it apparently allowed the master to take in some of 
 the better class in cases where they obtained his consent. 
 
 There seems to be no further reference to the Eaton School or 
 the official records until after the end of the colonial period except in 
 an entry in the Elizabeth City Parish vestry book of 1772 showing 
 parish indebtedness in an amount the record of which is obliterated 
 “To the Trustees of Eaton’s Free School for 3 years rent of 10 acres 
 Land for the use of the Poor House.’’?? 
 
 The extracts from the records which have been given show that 
 the Eaton School was a parish-county institution similar to the one 
 founded by Syms. The county record in which the action of the 
 Trustees was entered gives no indication that the Elizabeth City 
 Parish minister and church wardens had a part in managing the school 
 but there is no doubt that they acted with the justices in accordance 
 with the terms of the will. In fact it seems that upon one occasion 
 at least the vestry exercised some control, for the record of 1720 
 indicates that they had orderd the renting of part of the school 
 land. It isclear that throughout its more than a century of existence 
 the Eaton School had an income from its original endowment sufficient 
 to provide a master. The exact amount received at any time is 
 nowhere stated, but the fact that a man who leased the farm in 1725 
 was required only to supply a master as payment and that the Syms 
 School trustees were able to get a master for thirty pounds a year 
 suggests that the income was approximately the same as in the case 
 of the Syms School. 
 
 Abingdon and Ware Parishes tn Gloucester County 
 
 The answer made by the minister of Abingdon Parish to the 
 ynquiry of the Bishop of London concerning schools in his parish in 
 1724 was as follows: 
 A free School endowed with 500 acres of good land, 3 slaves, cattle & household 
 goods. The Master is George Ransom a native of Virginia.*§ 
 
 *7Elizabeth City Parish vestry book, p. 139. 
 *8Perry, Historical Collections, I, p. 309. 
 
40 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 The school referred to was undoubtedly one provided for in the 
 will of Henry Peasley which was drawn up in 1675. The will is not 
 in existence but a summary of it appears in an Act of 1756 incorporat- 
 ing the trustees. The Act?’ stated that in 1675 Peasley devised, 
 
 a tract or parcel of land, containing six hundred acres, or thereabouts, lying in and 
 being in the Parish of Abingdon, . . . together with ten cows and one breeding 
 mare, for the maintenance of a free school forever, to be kept with a school- 
 master for the education of children of the Parishes of Abingdon and Ware, 
 forever. 
 
 The occasion for action by the Assembly in 1756 is shown in the 
 second and third paragraphs of the Act: 
 
 And whereas several slaves have been by different persons, since the above 
 devise, given for the same purposes, but, by reason of the inconvenient situation 
 of the said land, few children frequent the free school kept there, so that the 
 charitable intention of the said Henry Peasley, and the other donors, is of little 
 benefit to the said two parishes. 
 
 And whereas it is represented to this present General Assembly, by the 
 ministers, church wardens, and vestrymen of the said two parishes of Abingdon 
 and Ware, that if proper persons were impowered to lease out the said land and 
 slaves, the annual rents thereof would be sufficient to support and maintain a free 
 school in each of the said parishes for the education of the children residing 
 there. ... 
 
 The Act then goes on to provide for the incorporation of the 
 officers mentioned and to require them “‘to erect and found a free 
 school in some convenient part of each of the said parishes of Abing- 
 don and Ware.” The arrangement was clearly in harmony with 
 the intention of Peasley. 
 
 The above quotations show that up to 1756 the Peasley School 
 was in Abingdon Parish, and the presumption is that it belonged to 
 the two parishes mentioned in the Act and was controlled by their 
 officers. The date of the will suggests that the school was in opera- 
 tion some time before the end of the seventeenth century, but the 
 loss of the vestry records of the parishes concerned and the lack of 
 other data except those contained in the Act of 1756 and the minister’s 
 report make it impossible to determine much about it. The clause 
 “if proper persons were impowered to lease out the said land and 
 slaves,’”’ suggests that up to 1756 the trustees had acted on the assump- 
 tion that they did not have the power to lease the property and that 
 probably the master of the school had had its use as his compensation. 
 It is difficult to understand why the action taken in 1756 was not 
 taken long before that date, for no doubt the location of the Peasley 
 
 2*9Hening, VII, pp. 41-438. 
 
Endowed Parish Schools AI 
 
 School had been unfavorable from the first. Whether the two 
 parish schools were established in accordance with the direction of 
 the Assembly cannot be determined with certainty, but it is unlikely 
 that the officers of the two parishes would have requested power 
 to make the arrangement if they had not desired and intended to 
 use the permission given. It is reasonably certain that the school 
 was in continuous operation from the latter part of the seventeenth 
 century until 1756, and we may assume that after that year there 
 was a school supported mainly from the income of the Peasley bequest 
 in each of the parishes mentioned. Probably the old school in Abing- 
 don Parish was moved to a more satisfactory location than it had had 
 before 1756.°° 
 
 Accomac Parish 1n Accomac County 
 
 In 1724 it was reported from Accomac Parish that there was in 
 the parish, 
 
 a school endowed by one Mr. Sandford, late of London. John Moragh, an Irish 
 man, is at present Master of it.* 
 
 Sandford had formerly lived in Accomac, but his will was drawn 
 up in London and proved there in 1710.** The endowment was given 
 for the benefit, better learning, and education of poor children, whose parents 
 are esteemed unable to give them learning, living in the upper part of 
 Accomack county, in Virginia. 
 
 The property, the rents and profits of which went to the school, 
 consisted of three tracts of land containing 3420 acres. The manage- 
 ment of the school was placed in the hands of the county commis- 
 sioners living in Accomac Parish, the church wardens, and the ves- 
 try.*4 Probably the school was opened within a year or two after 
 1710 and continued in operation, although no facts concerning the 
 school itself except those given by the minister as stated above have 
 been found. 
 
 30No attempt has here been made to determine what was done with the Peasley 
 school or property after the colonial period, but it appears from a statement in 
 Colonial Churches of Virginia made by Rev. W. B. Lee, the rector of Abingdon 
 Parish in 1908, that ‘‘some years ago this bequest was changed by the Virginia 
 Legislature to benefit the poor of Gloucester county.’’ The rector also speaks of 
 a parishioner, Mr. Joe Deal, who ‘‘owned a part of the Free School Tract, and 
 lived and died in the original Peasley house, built about 1655” (Colonzal 
 Churches of Virginia, pp. 185, 187). 
 
 31Perry, Historical Collections, I, p. 302. 
 
 Virginia Magazine of History, XVIII, p. 180. 
 
 3%3Meade, Old Churches and Families of Virginia, I, p. 265. 
 
 “Joid., p. 265. 
 
42 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 Washington Parish 1n Westmoreland County 
 
 The minister of Washington Parish reported in 1724 as follows: 
 
 The gentleman who bequeathed my Glebe to the parish left the whole tract 
 (containing 440 acres), to be disposed of by the Vestry for the better maintenance 
 of a minister and schoolmaster, the Vestry made no division of the land, but gave 
 it to me as a glebe, with this proviso, that I provide a sufficient person to instruct 
 the youth in reading, writing and arithmetic under my inspection, which con- 
 dition I have complied with.* 
 
 The minister’s report does not indicate who made the gift to the 
 parish, but Tyler states that the donor was William Horton,** who, 
 as shown in the county records, made a bequest to Washington 
 Parish in a will drawn up in 1700. Very probably the school was 
 started shortly after the donor’s death, but the statement by the 
 minister, Lawrence DeButts, that ‘‘the Vestry made no division of 
 the land, but gave it to me as a glebe” suggests that he may have 
 been the first minister in the parish who had had the use of the land 
 and that the school was not opened until after his incumbency began. 
 DeButts left England some time after July, 1721.7 The vestry 
 record of Washington Parish is not in existence and no facts concern- 
 ing the Horton School except those given above appear. We may 
 assume, however, that the school was kept in operation after 1721 
 at least, even though it probably was necessary to allow the master 
 to take in pay pupils. The conduct of the school by the parish 
 minister would have met the requirements of the will, and it may be 
 that this was the arrangement sometimes made. 
 
 St. Stephen’s Parish in Northumberland County 
 
 It seems probable that in addition to the five parish free schools 
 established before 1724 there was one other school in operation for 
 .a time at least which was not in charge of parish officials. While 
 the school did not belong to the parish in which it was located we 
 may consider it here because it apparently completes the list of 
 endowed schools in operation before 1724, and because the will which 
 provided for it supplies information which aids in determining facts 
 in regard to the character of the other schools which have been men- 
 tioned. The office of minister in St. Stephen’s Parish** was vacant in 
 1724, so that no report was made for it then, but the county records 
 
 Perry, Hutstortcal Collections, I, p. 292. 
 
 6 Wiliam and Mary College Quarterly, VI, p. 82. 
 
 37Fothergill, A List of Emigrant Ministers to America, p. 24. 
 
 38There was also a St. Stephen’s Parish in King and Queen County. 
 
Endowed Parish Schools 43 
 
 show that in 1702 John Farnefold, the minister of the parish, who 
 died in that year, left a part of his property for the establishment 
 and maintenance of a school for poor children belonging to the parish. 
 The section of the will which indicates his intention is as follows: 
 
 I give 100 acres where I now live for the maintenance of a free school to be 
 called Winchester schoole for fower or five poore children belonging to ye parish 
 and to be taught gratis & to have their dyett lodging & washing & when they can 
 read the Bible & write a legible hand to dismiss them & take in more, such as my 
 exors., shall think fitt, and for the benefitt of the said school I give five cows anda 
 Bull, six ewes, and a ram, a carthorse & cart and two breeding sowes, & that my 
 two mulatto girles Frances and Lucy Murrey have a yeare’s schooling & be free 
 when they arrive at the age of 22 years to whom I give a sow shote to each, & 
 for further encouragement of a schoolmaster, I give dyett, lodging & washing and 
 500 pds of tobacco & a horse, Bridle & Saddle to ride on during his stay, the place 
 where the school house is to be erected my will is to have it neare my dwelling 
 house, some part of which may serve for a school house till another more con- 
 veniently be built. Item what schoole books I have in my study I leave for ye 
 benefit of ye schoole. Then my wil] is that some of my estate be sold for the 
 maintenance of the said schoole except what my exors., shall think fitt to select 
 necessary for use as bedding, potts, & pewter. . . .If the school fail for want of 
 maintenance which I hope it will not give that hundred acres &all the rest of my 
 land to Farnefold Nutt.*9 
 
 It was clearly Farnefold’s purpose to establish a boarding school, 
 but it does not seem that he made sufficient provision for the opera- 
 tion of such an establishment for any length of time. The only 
 evidence with regard to the school outside of the will is in a land patent 
 to Farnefold Nutt which records that “John Farnefold, clerk, by his 
 last will gave one hundred acres of land for ye use of a Free €chool.*° 
 The school was probably in operation for some years, but the small 
 size of the foundation gift and the lack of reference to it in documents 
 of a later period may mean that it was discontinued ‘‘for want of 
 maintenance’”’ which Farnefold had foreseen as a possibility. The 
 alternative gift of the property to Nutt in case of its failure suggests 
 that his interest may have interfered with the continued operation 
 of the school. 3 
 
 There was one other bequest made before 1724 with the intent 
 of founding a free parish school, but the evidence indicates that the 
 purpose of the donor was not carried out. In 1685 William Gordon 
 left one hundred acres of land to Christ Church Parish in Middlesex 
 ~ 89 William and Mary College Quarierly, XVII, pp. 245-46. Farnefold seems to 
 have named his school after Winchester Grammar School, which suggests that at 
 one time he may have been a student there. He was a member of the first board 
 
 of trustees of William and Mary College. 
 49Virginia Magazine of History, IV, p. 31. 
 
44 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 County to establish a free school.*4 The vestry record of the parish, 
 which begins with the year 1670, contains no reference to the gift 
 before 1727, in which year it was ordered by the vestry, 
 
 That the church wardens procure copies of the will of Mr. William Gordon 
 relating to Land given to this parish for a free school.” 
 
 There is no further record in the vestry book relating to the 
 Gordon bequest until 1748, at which time the parish began to receive 
 annually 500 pounds of tobacco which was “‘employed towards the 
 schooling of poor children.’’42 The income from the land was clearly 
 insufficient to establish and maintain a free school, but the fact that 
 the vestrymen did not take action regarding the grant until 1727 
 suggests that they lacked interest in the education of the poor.” 
 
 Besides the gifts to parishes made before 1724 for the foundation 
 of free schools there was one bequest made for the purpose of aiding 
 in the support of a parish school. In 1668 Henry King, a resident of 
 Upper Parish, Nansemond County, bequeathed one hundred acres 
 of land to the parish ‘‘towards the maintenance of a free school.’’® 
 The existing vestry book of Upper Parish covers only the period after 
 1744, but in this period there is no reference to the King bequest. 
 The minister of the parish in 1724 reported that there was then “‘no 
 public school’ in it*® and no evidence has been found to show that 
 
 “William and Mary College, Quarterly, VI, p. 82. 
 
 “MS. vestry record for October 10, 1727. 
 
 4%7Tbid., record for years 1748 to 1767. 
 
 “Bruce (Institutional History of Virginia, I, 358) says with reference to the 
 Gordon bequest, 
 
 “William Gordon, of Middlesex, presented one hundred acres of valuable land 
 as an endowment for a free school; and with the proceeds obtained from the sale 
 of crops of this plantation, a schoolhouse was soon erected, and a regular teacher 
 employed, who, for some years, gave instruction, without expense, to the children 
 in attendance.”’ 
 
 The reference given as source for the statement quoted is an article by Tyler, 
 William and Mary College Quarterly, VI, 82. The statement in the Quarterly 
 is as follows: 
 
 In Middlesex, in 1685, William Gordon gave one hundred acres of land for a 
 free school, on which land a schoolhouse was built; and school was conducted for 
 some years. In 1700 the court of Middlesex reported that the said school land 
 “‘now lyeth idle.”’ 
 
 Tyler does not indicate the source of his information, but presumably the 
 year of the bequest is given in the court record of wills. The data taken from 
 the vestry record and given above make it seem improbable that the school was 
 actually established. 
 
 *The part of the will relating to the gift is as follows: 
 
 I give one hundred Acres of land lieing & beinge Adjacent to Mr. England and 
 being exchanged for land of myne now in the possession of Mr. England to this 
 parrish where I now live towards the maintenance of a free school. (Will printed 
 in William and Mary College Quarterly, V, p. 112). 
 
 6Perry, Historical Documents, I, p. 296. 
 
Endowed Parish Schools 45 
 
 there was one later. Probably the lack of a school to which the 
 income from the King land could be given and the relative smallness 
 of the gift explain the inaction of the vestrymen who were the officers 
 responsible for the administration of the property. In 1754 the 
 parish built a workhouse in which a number of children were cared 
 for and taught, and it may be that the income from the King gift 
 was placed in the parish funds without record and used for the support 
 of this undertaking. 
 
 The data which have been presented above show that there were 
 in Virginia in1724 five endowed parish schools and that these probably 
 constituted all but one of the endowed free schools in the colony at 
 the time. The chief sources yielding information concerning the 
 schools before 1724 are first the county, parish and colonial records, 
 and second, the reports of the ministers in the colony to the Bishop 
 of London. It is a significant fact that the number of endowed 
 schools reported by the ministers corresponds closely with the number 
 shown by other sources to have been in existence. If it had been 
 found that there were several endowed schools which were not re- 
 ported in 1724, either within the limits of the parishes reported upon 
 or outside of them, it might be assumed that further investigation 
 would reveal the existence of others. As has been stated, the county 
 records have not been studied systematically enough to make it cer- 
 tain that all school facts they contain have been gleaned, but the cor- 
 respondence between the survey report of 1724 and what the study 
 of the county records already made has revealed makes it seem likely 
 that the examination of them by various students has been fairly 
 exhaustive. This applies to the period after 1724 as well as that 
 before, and if this view is correct it justifies the drawing of conclusions 
 regarding schools in the later period on the basis of what has already 
 been found in the county records and published and what is revealed 
 by the other available sources. 
 
 The parish schools founded before 1724 were the Syms, Eaton, 
 Peasley, Sandford, and Horton schools. It was the custom for the 
 founders of the free schools to place their management in the hands 
 of parish or parish and county officials, making them in a sense 
 public schools. The Syms School and the Eaton School were both 
 in Elizabeth City Parish, so that only four of the twenty-nine 
 parishes reported upon by the ministers in 1724 had endowed schools. 
 In view of the fact that among the twenty-nine older and more 
 
46 Parish Education tn Colontal Virginia 
 
 thickly populated parishes only four had such institutions, it is not 
 strange that in the twenty-six not reported upon the record of only 
 one has been found. 
 
 ENDOWED PARISH SCHOOLS ESTABLISHED AFTER 1724 
 
 In the period after 1724 there were four endowed parish schools~ 
 added to those in existence before that year. One of these was the 
 second Peasley School to which reference has been made. 
 
 Bruton Parish in James County 
 
 In 1742 Mrs. Mary Whaley left to the care of the minister and 
 church wardens of Bruton Parish, as representatives of the parish, 
 a charity school known as Mattey’s School, which she had established 
 some years previously in memory of her son Matthew. The fol- 
 lowing extract from her will shows the nature of the gift and the 
 character of the school: 
 
 I give devise and bequeath to the minister and churchwardens for the time 
 being of the said parish of Bruton in the county of York in the said Colony of 
 Virginia and their successors a certain piece of land in the said parish of Bruton 
 containing by estimation ten acres little more or less together with Mattey’s 
 schoolhouse and a Dwelling house lately erected and built thereon for the use-of a 
 schoolmaster (to teach the neediest children of the Same parish who shall be 
 offered in the art of reading writing and arithmetic). .... 
 
 I give to Mattey’s School aforesaid the sum of Fifty pounds sterling to be 
 paid to the said minister and churchwardens for the time being and their successors 
 at the rate of ten pounds a year for the use of the same school.*” 
 
 The money grant to the school was not made available during the 
 colonial period,** but the trustees apparently had no difficulty in getting 
 a master to teach a number of poor children in return for the use of 
 the property and the right which was probably given him of taking 
 in pay pupils. In 1750 the trustees stated that the “school and the 
 Teaching therein hath continued’ without interruption after the 
 death of Mrs. Whaley in 1742.4 In 1766 they placed the following 
 advertisement in the Willzamsburg Gazette: 
 
 Mattey Free School, Williamsburg, Sep. 4, 1766. 
 The trustees for Mrs. Whaley’s charity to Mattey’s School (the minister and 
 churchwardens of Bruton Parish) give this notice, that in the forenoone of Monday 
 they will meet in the church of Williamsburg to choose a Master for that school. 
 
 47William and Mary College Quarterly, IV, pp. 10, 13. The Whaley will as 
 well as other source material bearing on the history of the Mattey School has 
 been published by Lyon G. Tyler in the Quarterly. 
 
 487bid., VI, p. 79. 
 
 49Tbid., IV, p. 7. 
 
Endowed Parish Schools 47 
 
 They hope to have it in their power to make such proposals as shall encourage a 
 diligent and useful person to accept of the office.*? 
 
 In 1768 the Gazette announced that Mr. William Rose had 
 succeeded the late Mr. Jacob Bruce as master.®! While the Mattey 
 School did not have as great an endowment as some of the other 
 parish schools, its location in Williamsburg favored it, and it probably 
 was in successful operation from 1742 until the end of the colonial 
 period, at any rate.” 
 
 Suffolk Parish in Nansemond County 
 
 Some time before 1731 John Yeates of Suffolk Parish in Nanse- 
 mond County established two schools for the education of the chil- 
 dren in the neighborhoodin which he lived. Inhis will, drawn up in 
 1731, he provided by endowment for the support of the schools and 
 arranged that the members of the parish vestry resident in the part of 
 the parish near his home should manage them.®? Nothing concerning the 
 conduct of the schools after 1731 has been found, but the income from 
 the bequest was apparently sufficient to carry out Yeates’ intentions, 
 for in 1804 after the property had been converted it consisted in 
 nineteen slaves who were hired out for forty-eight pounds annually. 
 
 5°William and Mary College Quarterly, iV, p. 10. 
 
 ‘i7bid., X XVII, p. 209. 
 
 52The vestry book of Bruton Parish is lost or destroyed, and the extracts from 
 it which were published in 1855 in The Church Review and Ecclesiastical Record 
 contain no reference to the Mattey School. 
 
 8Veates’ will is given in the Virginia School Report for 1885, Third Part, pp. 
 230-31. The sections relating to the schools are as follows: 
 
 “T give and bequeath all my land or lands in Virginia, and all the rents and 
 profits of the same to the following use and uses: The rents thereof, now by lease or 
 otherwise, may be converted hereafter to the use of a free-school or schools, in the 
 lower part of Nansemond, formerly so called, being the parish I have so long lived 
 in, among such friendly neighbors; and that there may be two school-houses 
 continued in the same places already fixed, which I have built, so that one school- 
 house will be very convenient for the children of the one side of Bennett’s Creek, 
 and the other on the other side thereof, which will complete that part of the parish, 
 as formerly I have done; and by that means, with God’s blessing, the most or all 
 of the children in those parts will be educated from the Glebe down to the extent 
 of that part of the parish lying on the south side of Nansemond river, which for- 
 merly was called the Lower Parish of Nansemond.”’ 
 
 “‘What books I haveor shall give for the use of the school or schools, may lie in 
 the desk in the schoolhouse, under lock and key, in each schoolhouse as I have 
 provided, that when children have read those books they may be there ready for 
 other children also.” 
 
 The will then provides for a gift of 10£, ‘‘to buy books for the poorer sort of 
 inhabitants in the parish, as the Whole Duty of Man; also for procuring Testa- 
 ments, Psalters, Primers, for my several schools.”’ 
 
 The provision regarding the management of the property is as follows: 
 
 “Tt is my will and desire that those gentlemen vestrymen living this side of 
 Nansemond river may have the management of the disposal of the rent yearly.”’ 
 
 4Ibid., p. 230. 
 
48 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 Besides the Yeates schools and the Mattey School there were a 
 number of endowed schools founded in the latter part of the colonial 
 period, but none of them seems to have been given to a parish or 
 placed in charge of parish officials.°> There were, however, several 
 gifts of property to parishes for the purpose of providing free educa- 
 tion for poor children in private schools or of assisting in such pro- 
 vision. The largest grant for the support of education of the poor 
 of which record has been found is that of Humphrey Hill of the Parish 
 of St. Stephen’s in King and Queen County. In 1775 Hill gave 500 
 pounds to the minister, wardens, and vestrymen of the parish, 
 
 to be by them put out at interest on land security, and the interest becoming 
 due or arising thereon to be annually paid to such schoolmasters as shall teach one 
 or more children whose parents are unable to pay for the instruction of such 
 child or children themselves.** 
 
 NUMBER, MANAGEMENT, AND CHARACTER OF PARISH SCHOOLS, 1634-1775 
 
 The data which have been presented show that there were in 
 colonial Virginia nine endowed parish schools six of which were 
 entirely in the control of parish officials, the others being in charge 
 of boards of trustees made up of both parish and county officers. 
 Since only seven of the ninety parishes existing at the end of the colonial 
 period had endowed schools, it is clear that we should look upon them 
 as being exceptional rather than common arrangements for educating 
 parish children. The work of parish endowed schools was to an 
 extent supplemented by several free schools for poor children which 
 were not in control of public officials but these were fewer in number 
 and of less consequence than the others. The distinction between 
 the parish endowed schools and the similar institutions not under 
 parish control is of course of little significance except for the fact 
 that we are here concerned with public activity with the idea of 
 
 55Tn 1760, or thereabouts, William Hunter editor of the Williambsurg Gazette, be- 
 queathed property for the support of a negro schoolin Williamsburg. Fora time 
 this school admitted white children as well as negroes. This fact is brought out in 
 a letter of Rev. C. Nicholas to Rev. John Waring, who was an official of the S. P. 
 G. in London. Nicholas states that, 
 
 “Soon after Mr. Hunter’s Death I had the number of children increased to 30 
 & obliged the mistress that there might be no partiality shewn to white scholars, 
 of which she then had about a dozen, to discharge them all & this at the Risque of 
 the Displeasure of their Parents, with whom she was in high Repute for her 
 ‘Care & Method of Teaching” (S. P. G. Minute Book C, p. 69). es 
 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Stith in 1774 left a bequest of 120 pounds to endow scholar- 
 ships for six poor children in a school in Smithfield in Isle of Wight County which 
 she had established in 1753 (William and Mary College Quarterly, V, 118). 
 
 6 William and Mary College Quarterly, XVII, p. 247. 
 
Endowed Parish Schools 49 
 
 determining its extent and character and of finding the elementsin 
 it which might serve as a basis for later public education.” 
 
 It seems clear that the endowed parish schools.as a whole were 
 not considered very seriously or managed very carefully by those 
 to whose care they were entrusted. The Eaton School was probably 
 the most important of the free schools, but as has been shown above, 
 its trustees for a long period neglected properly to make use of and 
 guard its property or supervise the conduct of the school. The evi- 
 dence indicates that the same is true of the Syms and Peasley 
 schools. In the case of the other schools there is no basis for a judg- 
 ment with regard to their management. The attitude of those in 
 control of the schools may have been partially a reflection of the 
 difficult conditions under which the institutions operated, making 
 full success inherently impossible. No doubt the wide distribution 
 of the population interfered with attendance, and probably the poor 
 did not show much of a desire to make use of their educational 
 opportunities. The large size of the parishes made it impossible for 
 a school to serve more than a small district in its immediate neighbor- 
 hood so that it could not be looked upon as a community enterprise 
 of concern to the parish as a whole. But if the controlling class to 
 which the parish school trustees belonged had had a keen interest 
 in the education of the poor or had appreciated fully their responsi- 
 bility, they would have exercised a closer supervision of their trust 
 and would have shown their concern in a variety of ways which would 
 have been evidenced in the records. At no time did the parish or 
 colonial authorities attempt to supplement the income of the schools 
 so that their work might be improved or extended. From the stand- 
 point of later development of public activity in education the evidence 
 of a desire on the part of the trustees to make the most of the free 
 schools would have been more significant than the particular degree 
 of success attained in their operation. 
 
 With the possible exception of the Eaton School the endowed 
 parish schools in colonial Virginia were of the elementary vernacular 
 type rather than Latin schools or institutions combining instruction 
 in English and Latin. That is, they were essentially like the endowed 
 non-classical schools of England to which reference has been made, 
 
 57Cubberley (Public Education in the Untted States, p. 22) states that in colonial 
 Virginia there were ‘‘church charity schools for some of the children of the poorer 
 members.’’ The parish free endowed schools were the nearest approach to in- 
 
 stitutions of the type mentioned by him, for in no case did the Established Church 
 in Virginia provide a school. 
 
50 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 That this was the fact is shown directly in the cases of the Horton, 
 Farnefold, Mattey, and Yeates schools. The only evidence suggest- 
 ing that Latin was taught in any of the schools is in the use of the 
 term ‘‘free school” in application to them and in the requirement of 
 the master of the Eaton School in 1697 that he should instruct in 
 “sramer learninge.”’ 
 
 The application of the term “free school’ to the endowed estab- 
 lishments of the type considered is sometimes taken to mean that 
 they gave Latin instruction,°® and there is a slight basis in colonial 
 usage for this interpretation.*® A Virginia statute of 1656 provided 
 for the apprenticing of orphan boys where the estates ‘“‘will not reach 
 to a free education,’’®® thereby implying that there was a distinction 
 between the English instruction which a master was required by law 
 to give his apprentice and a “‘free education’ suitable for boys in 
 families of property. In England this education consisted mainly in 
 Latin instruction and it was commonly given in Latin grammar 
 schools to which the term ‘‘free school’’ was often applied. In 
 1660-61 the General Assembly provided for the purchase of land for 
 a “‘colledge and freeschoole,’’® although the project was not then car- 
 ried out. In 1690 Governor Nicholson proposed the revival of the 
 “design of a free school and colledge.”” The interest of those who were 
 back of the plan was evidently not in establishing a school where 
 education free from cost could be given; it was rather in providing an 
 
 58In referring to the free schools in Virginia in the seventeenth century, Bruce 
 (Institutional History of Virginia, I, p. 350) speaks of their models as being the 
 endowed grammar schools of England and says, ‘‘There was not a single shire in 
 England lacking one of these fine grammar schools.’’ While it is likely that if 
 conditions in Virginia had been more favorable free grammar schools would have 
 been established there, it is clear that the models for the schools actually es- 
 tablished were the non-classical schools of England rather than the Latin schools. 
 
 59In reference to the use of ‘“‘free school” in connection with English grammar 
 schoolsin the 16thand 17th centuries, Leach (English Schools at the Reformation, p. 
 110) says, ‘‘What was the meaning of Free School, or Free Grammar School at this 
 time? Dr. Johnson defined it to mean, and that is the obvious meaning of it, a 
 school that is free,—where no payment is made for tuition fees.’’ Jackson 
 (School Support in Colonial Massachusetts, p. 86) says with respect to the meaning 
 of the term ‘‘free school’’ as used in Massachusetts, ‘‘On the basis of the 
 records themselves we may assert that the primary meaning of the term ‘free 
 school’ as used in Massachusetts meant freedom from charges for being taught.’’ 
 However, this statement is not opposed to the view that the term was occasionally 
 used to indicate a Latin school. In 1753 there were in Boston two free writing 
 schools and one free Latin school. In the town records for that year a com- 
 mittee reported that they had ‘‘also obtained Copys of the Grant, Survey, and 
 Return of one Thousand Acres of Land for the Free School of Boston.’’ (Boston 
 Town Records, 1729-1742, p. 110). Thisisin evident reference to the Latin school. 
 
 60Hening, Statutes, I, p. 416. 
 
 S\Hening, II, 25. A similar use of the term occurs in a Maryland law of 1663 
 (Clews, p. 408). 
 
Endowed Parish Schools 51 
 
 opportunity for students to prepare themselves to meet the college 
 entrance requirements. 
 
 If there were many other illustrations in Virginia colonial records of 
 the use of “‘free’’ with an implication like that indicated above, there 
 might be a presumption in the case of any free school that it gave 
 instruction in Latin unless there is positive evidence to the contrary. 
 In fact the instances mentioned are the only ones found in the course 
 of the present study.” The typical use of “‘free school’’ as meaning 
 a school free from tuition for those for whom it was founded is shown 
 in Farnefold’s will given above. Property was given to found, 
 
 a free school . . . for fower or five poore children. . . to be taught gratis... & 
 when they can read the Bible & write a legible hand to dismiss them. 
 
 The only parishes reported in 1724 as having within their limits a 
 Latin school were Bruton and Elizabeth City. The Bruton Parish 
 school was the ‘““Grammar School’’ connected with the College, while 
 the school in Elizabeth City Parish was a “‘private school.’”’ The em- 
 phasis which the minister of Elizabeth City Parish put upon the 
 fact that Latin and Greek, in addition to reading, writing, and cipher- 
 ing, were taught in the private school without mentioning them as 
 subjects taught in the Syms School or the Eaton School tends to 
 show that neither of the endowed schools at the time regularly gave 
 Latin instruction. None of the general treatises on conditions and 
 customs in Virginia mentions Latin asa subject taught in any of the 
 free schools. In Hugh Jones’ Present State of Virginia, published in 
 1724, there is a proposed plan of education for the colony. Jones 
 speaks of the existence of reading and writing schools in the parishes, 
 and then says, 
 
 Let such lads as have been taught to read and write in those schools, be 
 admitted into the Grammar School at the College.® 
 
 ®It may have been that Governor Berkeley in his well-known statement con- 
 cerning education in Virginia in 1671 used ‘‘free schools”’ in its exceptional mean- 
 ing. He said, ‘‘But I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I 
 hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience 
 and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them’’ (Hening, 
 II, 37). If we should understand that Berkeley was referring to Latin schools, 
 which is quite possible, his statement should be accepted as evidence that Latin 
 was not taught in the Eaton or Syms free schools which were then in operation. 
 This interpretation makes it unnecessary to conclude that his statement was 
 false. There is a suggestion that this interpretation may be correct in the fact 
 that in the apprentice law of 1656 and the enactment of 1660-61 providing land 
 “for a colledge and freeschoole,’’ which were passed in his administration, ‘‘free”’ 
 is used to indicate Latin school instruction—as has been shown above. 
 
 Present State of Virginia, p. 84. 
 
52 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 If the several free schools of the time were giving Latin instruction, 
 he probably would have recognized the fact in his scheme. 
 
 The requirement that the master of the Eaton School in 1697 
 should instruct in “‘gramer learninge’”’ as well as in English must be 
 taken to mean that at the time Latin grammar was taught in the 
 school. It seems likely that for a time following and preceding 1697 
 the subject was taught, for the conditions under which the school ' 
 operated did not change. That Latin was not taught regularly in 
 the school or that it was a minor interest is shown by what has been 
 brought out above. Eaton did not say in his will what subjects 
 were to be taught, but that his use of ‘‘free school’”’ was the customary 
 one is indicated by his statement that in it ‘‘no free education”’ should 
 be given except to those for whom it was founded. 
 
 Except in the case of the Eaton School, wherever there is any di- 
 rect evidence regarding subjects taught in the free parish schools 
 it shows that they were the branches commonly taught in the vernac- 
 ular schools of the time—reading and writing, or reading, writing, and 
 arithmetic—and we may assume that these subjects were taught in 
 all of them. The requirement that the master of the Eaton School 
 should instruct ‘‘all such children in English” as came to him merely 
 meant that he should give instruction in the subjects commonly 
 taught in the vernacular. Although religion was not definitely 
 prescribed as a subject of instruction as were reading, writing, and 
 arithmetic, it is probable that the teachers followed the universal 
 custom of the time, catechizing children and using religious material 
 in reading. Farnefold provided in his will that the children who 
 should be in attendance at his school at any time were to be replaced 
 by others as soon as they could “read the Bible and write a legible 
 hand.’ In the will of John Yeates to which reference has been made 
 there is provision for a gift for procuring ‘‘Testaments, Psalters, 
 Primers, for my several schools.’”’ The minister reporting for Hen- 
 rico Parish in 1724 said that children in private schools were cate- 
 chized by their teachers,® and if this was the case in the private 
 schools it was no doubt the practice in the free schools. Some of 
 the apprenticeship laws required masters to instruct in the Christian 
 
 Graves, in his History of Education in Modern Times, p. 85, states that the 
 free schools increased in number in the 18th century ‘‘and their courses were 
 muchimproved.” There is no evidence in the case of any of the schools showing a 
 change or improvement in the course of study. 
 
 Perry, Historical Documents, I, p. 305. 
 
Endowed Parish Schools 53 
 
 religion the children bound to them,® and in accordance with this 
 provision the indentures often stipulated that apprentices should be 
 taught so far as to be able to read the Bible. 
 
 It was evidently the primary purpose of the founders of the 
 endowed schools in Virginia to provide education for the poor. In 
 the cases of the Farnefold, Sandford, and Mattey schools this is 
 specifically stated as the intention. Eaton spoke in his will of the 
 education of ‘‘children,”’ but that this was understood to mean poor 
 children is indicated in the Act of 1759 incorporating the trustees 
 of the Eaton School where they are referred to as “‘the proper objects 
 of the pious founder’s charity.”’ Yeates seems to have been the only 
 founder who had in mind provision for all the children of a district. 
 In providing educational facilities for the poor the men who endowed 
 the schools seem to have been moved less by religious interest than 
 were those who established the English schools for the poor or the 
 public schools in New England.” ‘They did not indicate in their 
 wills that they had pious intentions nor do they mention religious 
 upbringing or instruction. While they no doubt assumed that the 
 schools they founded would teach religion, according to the custom 
 of the time, their concern apparently was primarily in giving the poor 
 an opportunity to better themselves. Probably the lack of religious 
 motives back of the settlement of Virginia and the general conformity 
 among the people to the beliefs of the Established Church made 
 religious instruction in schools seem less important than in most of 
 the other colonies. The point of significance here is that the lack of 
 
 sHening, I, 260-61. 
 
 The following are typical statements showing the emphasis on religion in 
 English charity education in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 
 Basingstoke in 1618 James Deane left 13£tobe devotedto the payment of a 
 petty schoolmaster, ‘‘who shall teach little children to write and read but es- 
 pecially to read and to learn the catechism in the principles of religion’’ (quoted 
 by Watson, English Grammar Schools, p. 153). In An Account of Charity Schools 
 Lately Erected, published in 1709, it is stated that the chief design of the schools 
 ‘is for the Education of Poor Children in the Rules and Principles of the Christian 
 Religion as professed and taught in the Church of England... .’’ The im- 
 portance attached to religious education in the Puritan colonies is suggested by 
 the following extract from the Connecticut code of 1656: Parents and masters 
 must educate the children in their charge so that they ‘“‘may, through God’s 
 blessing, attain at least somuchasto be able duly to read the Scriptures and 
 other good and profitable printed books in the English tongue, being 
 their native language, and in some competent measure to understand the main 
 grounds and principles of Christian religion necessary to salvation, and to give a 
 due answer to such plain and ordinary questions as. . . may be propounded 
 concerning the same’”’ (Clews, Colonial Educational Legislation, p. 79). No such 
 statements as the above are found in the sources dealing with education in colonial 
 Virginia. 
 
54 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 a strong religious purpose kept down the number of endowed institu- 
 tions and lessened in a measure the interest of those in whose charge 
 the schools were left. 
 
 Although it was the object of the founders of the parish free schoois 
 to provide education for the poor, it is evident that children in better 
 class families as well as those whose parents could not afford to pay for 
 their tuition commonly received instruction in them. Probably it 
 was ordinarily expected that parents who were able to pay tuition 
 should do so, for in most cases the income from the foundation grant 
 was small. Beverley, writing in 1705, spoke of the ‘‘allowance’”’ 
 paid the masters of the endowed schools by ‘‘gentlemen’’ whose sons 
 attended them.®* The perquisites referred to in the advertisement 
 appearing in the Williamsburg Gazette in 1753, which the master of 
 the Syms School received in addition to the income from the school 
 farm, very probably were in the form of fees paid by some of the 
 pupils. The income from the Mattey School was clearly insufficient 
 to support a master. We have seen that for some time previous to 
 1759 children of parents ‘‘well able to pay for their education”’ had 
 attended the Eaton School without charge, but that the abuse was 
 then corrected.®® 
 
 In specifying who should be instructed in the endowed parish 
 schools the founders speak of ‘‘children” without indicating whether 
 they intended that girls should attend. While it is likely that girls 
 in colonial Virginia received schooling less commonly than boys, in 
 accordance with the general custom of the time, there is sufficient 
 evidence to show that many in both the upper and lower classes were 
 given an education. The common provision in indentures binding 
 girls to apprenticeship, that they should be taught to read, shows an 
 attitude favorable to their education. These facts taken in connec- 
 tion with the lack of any suggestion of discrimination against them 
 makes it seem probable that they attended the public parish schools.”° 
 
 88Reverley, History of Virginia, p. 40. 
 
 68°Cubberley (Public Education in the United States, p. 21) speaks of Virginia as 
 illustrating the ‘‘non-state interference, pauper-school attitude,’ apparently 
 meaning that the endowed free schools were pauper schools. The attendance of 
 children from the better class shows that the schools were not looked down upon. 
 The situation of the children who were admitted without charge was not unlike 
 that of foundationers in the endowed English grammar schools. 
 
 The only suggestion that girls may not have attended the endowed schools 
 which ‘has been found in the course of the present study is in a statement in 
 Beverley’s History having to do with the situation in 1705. In reference to 
 support of the schools Beverley said that besides incomes from foundation grants 
 the masters received ‘‘an additional allowance which gentlemen give with their 
 
Endowed Parish Schools 55 
 
 There is no statement in the sources showing exactly how many 
 pupils there were at any time in any of the endowed parish schools. 
 It is probable that the children of appropriate age who lived sufficient- 
 ly near a school attended it, but their number must have been relative- 
 ly small. According to the ministers who reported in 1724 there 
 was on the average one family per square mile in the parishes having 
 endowed schools,” and Elizabeth City, relatively the most thickly 
 populated parish, had only slightly more than this. All of the parish 
 institutions which have been mentioned were located on the plan- 
 tations which the founders gave for their support except the Mattey 
 School and possibly the Yeates schools. None of the founders, with 
 the above exceptions, seems to have questioned the suitability of his 
 farm from the standpoint of nearness to the homes of children whose 
 parents might wish them to attend, but this is presumably a re- 
 flection of the fact that there was little concentration of population 
 to be taken into account. If the situation had been otherwise each 
 donor probably would have provided for the sale or lease of his 
 property and the establishment of a school in a section where homes 
 were relatively close together. 
 
 In the case of the Peasley School we have direct evidence show- 
 ing that the distance from homes interfered with attendance. ‘The 
 school was established in the seventeenth century, but until 1756, 
 when the trustees were incorporated, there were so “few children’ 
 frequenting it because of its “inconvenient situation’”’ that it had been 
 of little benefit. Farnefold made detailed provision in his will for a 
 free school in which ‘“‘fower or five poore children’’ were to be edu- 
 cated and maintained. It seems likely that his reason for not 
 suggesting that day pupils living near his plantation might attend 
 and thus provide sufficient work for the master and enlarge the 
 service of the school was that he thought the school would not be 
 near enough to the homes of the children to allow them to attend. 
 An indication of the influence of the plantation system in inter- 
 fering with efforts to instruct children in groups is given in the 
 statement of the minister in South Farnham Parish in 1724 with 
 reference to his practice in catechizing on Sunday.” He stated that 
 
 sons’ implying that the daughters in the upper class families at least did not 
 attend. The only direct reference in the wills of founders of endowed schools to 
 the instruction of girls is in Farnefold’s will, quoted above, where provision is 
 made for a year’s schooling of two mulatto girls. This suggests that white girls 
 were not discriminated against. 
 
 Perry, Historical Documents, I, pp. 262-318. 
 
 “Iind., I, p. 286. 
 
56 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 “the remoteness of the parishioners from church prevents their 
 sending their children to be catechized.’”’ South Farnham at the 
 time was one of the relatively more densely populated parishes.” 
 The Eaton School apparently had a larger number of pupils than 
 any other similar institution. Reference has been made to the asser- 
 tion in the Act of 1759 incorporating its trustees that, 
 the said foundation hath been abused by admitting a great number of children 
 into the said school, whose parents are well able to pay for their education. 
 The statement does not mean that at any one time there had 
 been a great number of children of the well-to-do in the school; it 
 means, rather, that the total number of better class children who had 
 attended over a period of years was large, and that their free edu- 
 cation constituted an abuse. However, it is probable that nothing 
 would have been done to limit or prohibit their attendance if a 
 fairly large number had not sought instruction in it. The relatively 
 good attendance in the Eaton School may be accounted for partially 
 by the fact that Elizabeth City Parish in which it was situated had a 
 
 ®The following extract from The Present State of Virginia, written in 1697 
 by Hartwell, Chilton, and Blair, is an aid in visualizing the condition of affairs 
 at the middle of the colonial period. The system of industry which brought 
 about the condition described continued throughout the colonial period. 
 
 ‘As to the outward Appearance, it looks all like a wild Desert; the Highlands 
 overgrown with Trees, and the Lowlands sunk with Water, Marsh, and Swamp: 
 The few Plantations and clear’d Grounds bearing no proportion to the rough and 
 uncultivated . . . perhaps not the hundredth Part of the Country is yet clear’d 
 from the Woods, and not one Foot of the Marsh and Swamp drained, as fast as the 
 Ground is worn out with Tobacco and Corn, it runs up again in underwoods, and 
 in many Places of the Country, that which has been cleared is thicker in Woods 
 than it was before the clearing. It is but in few Places that the Plough is made 
 use of, for in their first clearing they never grub up the Stumps, but cut the Trees 
 down about two or three Foot from the Ground; so that all the Roots and Stumps 
 being left, that Ground must be tended with Hoes, and by that time the Stumps 
 are rotten the Ground is worn out; and having fresh Land enough, of which they 
 must clear some for Firewood, they take but little care to recruit the old Fields’’.. . 
 (pp. 6 and 7). 
 
 The relation between education and the conditions suggested above is pointed 
 out by various contemporary writers. The following is from a statement made in 
 1705. 
 
 “Cohabitation would highly advance Learning and school education: for this 
 flourishes only in such places, for the smallest and meanest of Schools cannot be 
 maintained without a competent number of Scholars, which has been our great 
 discouragement in Virginia and Maryland where the number to be entertained 
 together are too few to maintain any master or mistress, who are necessitated to 
 shift from place to place, until they cannot live at all by that Calling: so that 
 in many remote corners many families never had opportunities of schools, and 
 therefore remain without all knowledge of Letters, which we have no hopes of 
 regulating or preventing without Towns and Cohabitation’”’ (Francis Makemie, 
 ‘A Plain and Friendly Perswasive to the Inhabitants of Virginia and Maryland, 
 1705’, Va. Mag. of Hist. and Biog., IV, p. 255). 
 
Endowed Parish Schools 57 
 
 population less widely distributed than any other which had an 
 endowed school excepting Bruton Parish. The school also seems to 
 have been the best of the endowed institutions, as is suggested by the 
 fact that Latin was taught in it at least for a time. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 4 EDUCATION IN THE PARISH WORKHOUSE 
 
 ENGLISH WORKHOUSE EDUCATION 
 
 The English workhouses of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
 turies, with which the Virginia colonists were familiar, were often 
 educational institutions as well as establishments for the care and 
 employment of the poor. The common idea among the many 
 variations in these houses of industry was that the inmates, whether 
 children or adults, should aid in their support as far as possible by 
 engaging in various occupations, usually in converting textiles, and in 
 order to make the plan of production effective it was often necessary 
 to give a small amount of trade instruction.1 In the seventeenth 
 century, particularly before the Civil War, when the workhouses were 
 at their best as industrial establishments,” intensive trade education 
 was also given to youths of apprentice age in some of the institutions 
 then in operation, with the purpose of developing skilled workers 
 who could later maintain themselves and contribute to the industrial 
 good of the country.’ 
 
 One of the best industrial schools within a workhouse was that of 
 the London Bridewell as conducted in the first half of the seventeenth 
 century, in which training in numerous occupations was given to the 
 youths confined there at the hands of arts masters to whom they were 
 apprenticed. ‘‘Christ’s Hospital at Ipswich, the Hospital at Reading, 
 
 1Leonard, English Poor Relief, pp. 225-27; Dunlop, English Apprenticeship , 
 p. 248; Gray, A History of English Philanthropy, p. 114. 
 
 2Gray, pp. 216, 220; Leonard, p. 238. 
 
 ®Leonard, pi 217, 
 
 4In a report of the London Bridewell made in 1630-31, quoted by Leonard, 
 p. 354, there is the following statement concerning the number of apprentices and 
 their trades: 
 
 “Four Silkeweavers who doe keepe poore children taken vp in the streets or 
 otherwise distressed as their apprentices to the number of fortye & sixe. 
 
 Two Pinmakers who doe likewise keepe as apprentices twenty and three. 
 
 One Ribbon weaver who keepeth v apprentices. 
 . Two Hempdressers who keepe Tenn apprentices. 
 
 Five Glovers who keepe Sixteene apprentices. 
 
 One Linnen Weav (er) who keepeth iii jr apprentices. 
 
 58 
 
Education in the Parish Workhouse 59 
 
 and the Nottingham House of Correction had all training depart- 
 ments of this kind in which many of the poor children of these towns 
 were taught trades.’ 
 
 The inmates of the English workhouses of the eighteenth century 
 were chiefly decrepit old people and children too young to be ap- 
 prenticed.® In order that the children might take part in the simple 
 industrial activities carried on, and thus contribute to their support 
 and ‘“‘be inured betimes to labor,”’ they were given a small amount of 
 training in such occupations as carding, spinning, knitting, and 
 stocking making. At various ages from eight to twelve they were 
 commonly bound out as apprentices so that the public might be 
 relieved entirely from the costs of their maintenance. Instruction 
 other than that of a manual type was seldom given in the seventeenth 
 century workhouses, but in the eighteenth century the children were 
 usually taught to read and say the catechism, and less often, to 
 write and ‘“‘cast accompts.”’ This instruction was given in some of 
 the institutions when the children were very young before they were 
 set to work, in others at the age when they were working. The school 
 within the workhouse was in some cases supported out of the rates, 
 in others by charitable gifts.’ 
 
 One Carpenter who keepeth Two apprentices. 
 
 The whole number of apprentices are cvi.”’ 
 
 Manchester in 1615 made an arrangement with John Kirby whereby he agreed 
 to ‘‘diligently teach, instructe and bringe upp all such youthes, children and 
 other persons as shall be sent or committed into the said Howse of Correcon in 
 some honest and true labour soe longe as they shall remayne there vnder his 
 chardge’’ (Quoted by Leonard, p. 228). 
 
 5Leonard, English Poor Relief, p. 218. 
 
 6Gray, History of English Philanthropy, p. 115. 
 
 7An Account of Several Workhouses (London, 1732). This gives a detailed 
 account of the operation of more than one hundred parish workhouses. Follow- 
 ing is the regulation regarding the education of the children in the workhouse of 
 St. Giles Parish: 
 
 ‘‘That there be a school in the House, where all children above three Years of 
 Age, shall be kept till they be five years old, and then set to spinning, knitting, 
 or to such other work as shall be thought proper for the Benefit of the Parish, and 
 that the Master or Mistress who shall teach them to Work, or some other proper 
 Person, shall likewise instruct each of them in Reading twice a Day, half an Hour 
 each time, till they are nine years of Age; and then that the said Master or Mis- 
 tress, or other proper Person, do teach them to write and cast Accompts two hours 
 every Day, the better to qualify them for Apprenticeship or Services’’(p. 31). 
 
 In the Parish of Stepney, 
 
 ‘The Children in this House areall young and helpless, and therefore aresent to 
 a School in the neighborhood, at the publick charge, till they are 8 years of Age; 
 and then they are bound out apprentices till the Age of 24” (p. 68). 
 
 In a parish workhouse in Northamptonshire the working school was so success- 
 fully conducted by a man and his wife that there were forty children besides 
 sixty parish children in it (p. 151). 
 
60 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 The system of workhouses established by parishes in England had 
 its beginning in local acts,’ but in 1722 Parliament passed a general 
 law giving to all parishes, singly or in union, permission to establish 
 them.® As a result a large number of institutions were organized, 
 as many as one hundred parishes being reported in 1725 as having 
 taken advantage of it in the three years succeeding its passage.}° 
 
 PARISH WORKHOUSE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 
 
 The problem of caring for the poor in Virginia was relatively 
 simple, and it was not until the latter part of the colonial period, when 
 there was an increase in the number of the poor, that there was any 
 attempt to provide workhouses as a means of lowering public charges 
 and reducing the number of vagabonds. The indigent were well 
 taken care of in the homes of the inhabitants or aided in their own 
 homes, and dependent children were bound out at an early age as 
 servants or apprentices, thus relieving the parish from costs for their 
 maintenance. The possibility of using workhouses as a means of 
 trade education, however, was recognized by the authorities, and in 
 the seventeenth century two attempts were made by the General 
 Assembly to establish them with this object in view. The intention 
 seems to have been to set up institutions something like the training 
 department of the Christ’s Hospitals in England. 
 
 The first workhouse law, passed in 1646, provided in some detail 
 for the establishment of a ‘‘flax house’? at Jamestown to which 
 children were to be sent from the different counties, there to be in- 
 structed and employed ‘“‘in carding, knitting, and spinning, etc.. . 
 under such master or mistresse as shall there be appointed.’”! Only 
 
 8Webb, English Local Government, p. 1380. 
 
 ‘George I, cap. 7. “IV... and for the greater eace of parishes in the relief 
 of the poor, be it further enacted by the authority of the aforesaid, That it shall 
 and may be lawful for the churchwardens and overseers of the poor inany parish, 
 town, township or place, in vestry or other parish or publick meeting for that 
 purpose assembled . . . to purchase or hire any house or houses in the same 
 parish, township, or place, and to contract with any person or persons for the 
 lodging, keeping, maintaining and imploying any or all such poor in their re- 
 spective parishes, townships, or places.’ 
 
 Nicholls, History of the English Poor Law, Il, pp. 16-17. 
 
 1Hening, I, p. 336. The law provided, 
 
 “That the commissioners of the several counties respectively do, at their dis- 
 cretion, make choice of two children in each county of the age of eight or seven 
 years at the least, either male or female, which are to be sent up to James City 
 
 between this and June next. . .And that the said children be furnished from the 
 said county with six barrels of corne, two coverlets, or one rugg and one 
 blanket: One bed, one wooden bowl or tray, two pewter spoons, a sow shote of 
 six months old, two leying hens, with convenient apparel both linen and woolen.” 
 The law then goes on to indicate the dimensions of the houses to be built. 
 
Education in the Parish Workhouse 61 
 
 children of “‘such parents who by reason of their poverty are disabled 
 to maintaine and educate them”’ were to be taken, but this provision 
 was made probably because the authorities would not have been 
 justified in forcibly taking others. There was no occasion at the 
 time for establishing the institution as a means of caring for de- 
 pendent children, since the system of apprenticeship readily effecte d 
 this end. The purpose was educational and industrial, and the law 
 was merely one of a series enacted from 1633 to 1696 in a rather 
 unsuccessful endeavor to further the cultivation of flax and the 
 manufacture of linen.” As one evidence of the lack of success. 
 attending the efforts made, there is the statement of Governor 
 Berkeley made in 1666 to the effect that he had incurred an expense 
 of one thousand pounds in flax culture but had accomplished nothing 
 Syit 
 
 The statute of 1646 was repealed in 1661-62 without having been 
 put into effect,'* its failure being evidenced by the lack of success in 
 raising flax up to the time of its repeal, the lack of further legislative 
 regulations dealing with its execution, the provision of a new plan in 
 1668, and by the fact that no trace of it has been found in the records. 
 We are not directly concerned with its operation, however, because 
 it did not provide for any activity on the part of the parishes. 
 
 In 1668 a statute was enacted with the same general intent as 
 that in the earlier law, but in this provision was made for the es- 
 tablishment of a number of county-parish institutions, wool and 
 hemp in addition to flax are mentioned as commodities with which 
 children were to work, and there was no requirement that action 
 should be taken, the law merely giving permission. 
 
 The detailed provision for the food and clothing of the children may be taken as 
 evidence of the extreme care with which the project was planned, but it would 
 have been more to the point to have effectively provided for the manufacture or 
 importation of spinning wheels and the production of flax. 
 
 2Hening, I, p. 218; II, 26, 121, 306; III, p. 81. 
 
 Bruce, Economic History of Virginia, I, p. 398. 
 
 14Hening, II p. 43. 
 
 15‘*A n act impowering countie courts to build worke houses assisted by the vestrie 
 
 WHEREAS the prudence of all states ought as much as in them lyes to en- 
 deavor the propagation and encrease of all manufactures conducing to the neces- 
 sityes of their subsistence, and God having blessed this country with a soyle 
 capable of producing most things necessary for the use of men, if industriously 
 improved, Ji is enacted by the grand assembly and the authority thereof, that for the 
 better converting wool, flax, hempe, and other commodities into manufactures, 
 and for the increase ofartificersin the country, that the commissioners of each 
 county court, with the assistance of the respective vestries of the parishes in their 
 counties, shall be and hereby are empowered to build houses for the educating 
 and instructing poore children in the knowledge of spinning, weaving, and other 
 
62 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 Whether or not any meaning should be attached to the fact that 
 wool is mentioned first in the list of commodities to be converted, it is 
 certain that at the time of the passage of the law there was a special 
 interest in the development of the woolen industry. In 1659 the 
 exportation of wool was prohibited,! and in 1666 a law was passed 
 requiring that ‘‘the commissioners of each county court shall provide 
 and sett up a loom and weaver in each of the respective counties of 
 this country, and at the charge of the covnty.’’!” The interference 
 of the Dutch with the trade connections with England in 1667 
 brought home to the Virginians the desirability of doing more than 
 had been done in developing home manufacture of necessities such as 
 woolen cloth.!8 The effort here was no more successful than in the 
 case of linen. Beverley, writing in 1705, said, ‘‘Their sheep yield 
 good Increase, and bear good Fleeces, but they shear them only to 
 cool them.’’!9 
 
 The Act of 1668 does not indicate what was to be the nature of the 
 assistance to be given the courts by the vestries, but no doubt it was 
 intended that they should have a part in the organization and con- 
 duct of the institutions as well as in their support. In case a work 
 school was established in any community the vestry records should 
 show something of the action taken by the vestry. The evidence of 
 the joint meetings of the court and vestry might appear only in the 
 court record, but the vestry book should indicate something of what 
 was done by the parish officials in determining the policy to be 
 pursued in co-operation with the court, and in particular it should 
 show the action taken by the vestrymen or wardens in making choice 
 of poor children to be cared for and educated in the institutions. 
 Votes showing the levy of parish taxes for the support of the work- 
 house also should appear. Only four of the vestry books extant 
 begin as early as 1668, but neither in these or in those covering the 
 later period is there any suggestion that the county-parish work- 
 schools were actually founded, and the probability is that the per- 
 mission given the courts and vestries was not taken advantage of. 
 The fact that those who have examined the county records have 
 
 useful occupations and trades, and power granted to take poore children from 
 indigent parents to place them to worke in those houses’? (Hening, II, 266). 
 ‘Henning, II, 488. 
 
 WI bid., ‘p. 238. 
 
 18Osgood, American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, III, p. 256; Bruce, 
 Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, I, p. 385. 
 
 19Beverley, History of Virginia, p. 255. 
 
Education in the Parish Workhouse 63 
 
 reported nothing showing their organization further substantiates 
 this conclusion.”° 
 
 There was no further legislative attempt made in Virginia to set 
 up workhouses for the purpose of trade education, but in 1755 an 
 Actin general like the English law of 1722 was passed providing. for 
 them as a part of the scheme of poor relief. At the middle of the 
 eighteenth century there was an increase in the number of poor 
 people, particularly of the vagabond class, and it was with the 
 purpose of furnishing a test of destitution and willingness to work, 
 as well as of reducing the costs of poor support that the law was 
 enacted. Following are the first two paragraphs of the law of 1755: 
 
 I. WHEREAS the number of poor people hath of late years much increased 
 throughout this colony, and it will be the most proper method for their main- 
 tenance, and for the prevention of great mischiefs arising from such numbers of 
 unemployed poor, to provide houses for their reception and employment, 
 
 II. BE it enacted ... that it shall and may be lawful for the vestry of 
 every parish in this colony to order and cause to be erected, purchased, or hired, 
 one or more house or houses within their parish for the lodging, maintaininge, 
 and employing of all such poor people as shall be upon the parish, or who shall 
 desire relief from the vestry or church wardens; ... and to levy a reasonable 
 allowance in their parish levies, for the education of such poor children as shall 
 be placed in the said house, or houses, until they shall be bound out according to 
 law.”! 
 
 Other paragraphs of the law provided that the poor should not 
 move from one parish to another to gain a settlement, that beggars 
 should be sent to the workhouse, and that a person who asked alms 
 should go to the workhouse if required.” 
 
 20Bruce, in his Economic History of Virginia, I, p. 256, says in reference to the 
 law of 1668, ‘‘This act must have been enforced, for in 1678 the justices of the 
 peace of Lower Norfolk County were indicted by the Grand Jury for neglecting 
 to observe it.’’ (Records of Lower Norfolk County, original volume, 1675-1686, p. 
 40). Herefers to the fact that Lord Culpeper as Governor received instructions 
 in 1679 to further the erection of workhouses, and suggests that those established 
 in response to the law of 1668 may have fallen into disuse. There must have 
 been some exceptional circumstance obligating the county court of Lower Nor- 
 folk County, for the law, as shown in quotation above, was merely permissive, 
 and the directions to Lord Culpeper may be properly considered as further evi- 
 dence that nothing was done in effecting the intent of the law. 
 
 *"1Hening, VI, p. 475. 
 
 2The law of 1755 had its origin in a petition of the minister, wardens, and 
 vestry of the Parish of Bruton in which there is reference to the increase in the 
 number of vagabonds in the parish. The introductory paragraph of the law, 
 given above, makes it appear that the conditions in Bruton Parish were general in 
 the Colony. The prayer to the General Assembly set forth, ‘‘That the charge of 
 providing for the Poor of the said Parish, hath always been burthensome to the 
 Inhabitants thereof, and of late Years hath much increased, which they conceive 
 is owing to the great number of idle Persons that resort to the City of Williams- 
 burg (situate in the said Parish) in publick times, who lurk about the Town, and 
 
64 Parish Education in Colontal Virginia 
 
 The statute went beyond the English law of 1722 in definitely 
 allowing parish levies for education, but,as has been shown, in practice 
 the English parishes often provided out of the rates for the instruction 
 of the poor children in their workhouses. The educational pro- 
 vision is of interest apart from its actual results for the reason that it 
 represents the first legislative action taken by the colony allowing 
 public taxation for education, and thus it may be considered the 
 first step toward public activity in this field taken in Virginia. 
 
 Judging from the existing vestry books, the first action in re- 
 sponse to the law of 1755 was taken by Bristol Parish in Prince 
 George County. In the record for the November meeting of that 
 year appears the order, 
 
 That the church wardens apply to the Vestrys of Martins Brandon and Bath 
 parish to know if they will join with this parish towards building a workhouse, to 
 keep the poor of the three parishes in, pursuant to an Act of the General Assembly.? 
 
 No report from the wardens appears in the record, but in the 
 meeting of November, 1756, it was ordered, ~ 
 
 That Theodorick Bland apply to the Vestry of Brandon Parish to join this 
 parish in building a workhouse for the poor of each parish.”4 
 
 In a December meeting of the same year it was, 
 
 Ordered that Stephen Dewey, Alexander Bolling, Theodorick Bland, William 
 Eaton do meet the persons appointed by the vestries of Brandon and Bath 
 Parishes to agree in settling the terms of the poore house.” 
 
 The joint committee met, and in the vestry meeting of February 
 23, 1757, the Bristol Parish members reported its conclusions. The 
 report is of special interest, apart from the project it proposes, be- 
 cause it presents the only description of the educational condition of 
 poor children in Virginia in the eighteenth century which has been 
 found. The report is as follows. 
 
 It is the opinion of this Committee that a Convenient House ought to be 
 Rented for Entertaining the poor of the said Parishes, if to be had, but if not, 
 that then Land ought to be bought & Convenient Houses to be built for the joint 
 
 use of the said Parishes in proportion to the Number of Tithables in each of the 
 said Parishes. This Committee having taken under their most serious Con- 
 
 Parts adjacent, till they gain a Settlement, and then become a charge to the 
 Parish.” The parish officers then go on to ask permission to establish a work- 
 house in the parish. Inresponsea bill was brought out which gave permission to 
 all parishes as in the law finally enacted (Journals of the House of Burgesses, 
 volume for 1752-1755, May 16, 1755, p. 260). 
 
 *3Bristol Parish vestry book, p. 160. 
 
 4Tbid., p. 164. 
 
 *5Ibid., p. 164. 
 
Education in the Parish Workhouse 65 
 
 sideration the unhappy and indeed miserable Circumstances of the many poor 
 Orphans and other poor Children, Inhabitants of the said Parishes whose parents 
 are utterly unable to give them any Education and being desirous to render the 
 said House as Beneficial as possible & that such poor Children should be brought 
 up in a Religious, Virtuous & Industrious Course of Life so as to become usefull 
 members of the Community, Have Resolved earnestly to recommend it to their 
 Respective Vestries that they should join in a Petition to the General Assembly 
 to procure an Act to enable the said Parishes to erect a FREE ScHooL for 
 educating the poor Children of the said Parishes in Reading, Writing and Arith- 
 metic at the joint Expence of the said Parishes, and Uniting the same to the 
 said Poorhouse Under such Rules, Orders and Directions as shall be most just 
 and proper for perfecting so usefull and Charitable a Work, And in Order to 
 facilitate the obtaining such Act to propose that the said Vestries should unite in 
 opening Subscriptions that the Rich and Opulent & all other well disposed people 
 may have an opportunity of Contributing towards so pious a design out of that 
 SToRE which the FATHER of Bounties hath bestowed on them.?6 
 
 In accordance with the proposal of the committee the four 
 members from Bristol Parish were directed by the vestry, 
 to Petition the General Assembly in conjunction with the Vestrys of Martins 
 Brandon and Bath Parishes to obtain such Act as aforesaid. 
 
 Neither the Journals of the House of Burgesses nor the Minutes of 
 the Council record the reception of the proposed petition, and very 
 possibly it was not presented for the reason that the other parish 
 vestries did not favor the plan. The next reference to the project 
 in the Bristol vestry minutes is in the record for 1774: 
 
 Ordered that the Revd Mr. Harrison the C. Wardens Rob’t Bolling Docr 
 Theok Bland, or any three of them, be appointed For the Parish of Bristol, to 
 agree with the Vestry of Brandon Parish, in Order to Purchase a Place to Errect a 
 Poor House for the use of Bristol and Brandon Parish’s.** 
 
 This order taken in connection with the fact that there is no 
 other reference to the workhouse shows that the plan was not carried 
 out. 
 
 While the law of 1755 contemplated merely the education of the 
 few little children who might be cared for in each of the workhouses 
 before the time of their apprenticeship, probably at the age of six or 
 seven, the intention in the joint committee’s report apparently was to 
 establish a kind of boarding school for improperly cared for children 
 whether or not they were actually dependent. If the school was to 
 serve the three parishes, the distribution of the population meant 
 that the children would have to live in the institution, and this 
 together with the provision for instruction in ‘“‘Reading, Writing, 
 
 Bristol Parish vestry book, pp. 165-66. 
 271Ibid., p. 244. 
 
66 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 and Arithmetic’’ without a reference to apprenticeship implied that 
 the children to be taught might be from six to ten years of age or 
 possibly older. There may have been an intention to make the 
 institution a kind of working school like that established in Talbot 
 County, Maryland, a few years previously, and largely with money 
 raised in Virginia.22 There is no indication of it in the report, how- 
 ever. It is clear that the idea was to go beyond what was allowed 
 by the provisions of the law of 1755 for otherwise no special Act of the 
 Assembly would have been required. Consideration of the state- 
 ment in the report regarding the lack of educational provisions for 
 the poor will be taken up later.?® 
 
 The references in the vestry books to the establishment or opera- 
 tion of workhouses in response to the law of 1755 are very few and 
 brief, and they give no suggestion of educational activity except in 
 the one case cited. In fact the institutions established seem to 
 have been poorhouses without provision for employment such as in- 
 tended by the law. The vestry records show that the following six 
 parishes had workhouses or poorhouses at the dates indicated: 
 Frederick Parish in Louisa County (1756), Petsworth Parish in 
 Gloucester County (1760), Christ Church Parish in Lancaster 
 County (1767), Augusta Parish in Augusta County (1767), Elizabeth 
 City Parish in Elizabeth City County (1771), and Stratton Major 
 Parish in King and Queen County (1772). 
 
 28Steiner, History of Education in Maryland, p.34; William and Mary College 
 Quarterly, XII, p. 162. 
 
 29The exceptional character of the proposition stated in the report of the 
 joint committee raises the question as to whether it was an expression of a grow- 
 ing community interest in the education of the poor. A possible explanation is 
 found by relating what is recorded in the Bristol Parish vestry minutes to some 
 of the circumstances connected with the passage of the law of 1755. The extracts 
 from the vestry record which have been given suggest that Theodorick Bland, 
 perhaps the leading man in the community at the time, may have been the 
 person most interested in the establishment of the parish school and most re- 
 sponsible for the action taken. The Journal of the House of Burgesses records 
 that after the receipt of the petition from Bruton Parish, above referred to as 
 being the occasion for the passage of the law of 1755, ‘‘a Bill for employing and 
 better maintaining the Poor. . . .was read the first Time, and ordered read the 
 second Time.’’ Four days later the bill was read the second time and given toa 
 committee of which Mr. Bland, from Prince George County, was a member. 
 This committee brought in an amendment which was accepted, although what the 
 amendment was is not indicated. The fact that the main difference between the 
 English statute of 1722 and the Virginia law of 1755 was in the educational pro- 
 vision suggests that the amendment may have been the insertion of the educational 
 clause. Mr. Bland’s membership on the committee of the Assembly and on the 
 committee of the vestries which brought forward the educational project, to- 
 gether with the fact that Bristol Parish was the first one to respond to the Act of 
 1755, suggests that he may have been responsible for the proposal as it appears in 
 the Bristol vestry minutes. 
 
Education in the Parish Workhouse 67 
 
 While none of the parishes took advantage of the educational pro- 
 visions of the law of 1755, there was one which established a poor- 
 house upon the basis of a grant of property left by will after obtaining 
 a special Act of the Assembly, and upon its own initiative provided 
 for the teaching of poor children within it. In a will made 
 in 1675 a certain William Cadowgan left to Upper Parish in Nanse- 
 mond County land and stock the income from which was ‘“‘to be 
 disposed of, by the churchwardens and vestry of the said parish, 
 towards the maintenance of the poor, and other charitable uses.” 
 In 1752 the Assembly allowed the vestry to sell the property as it 
 then existed, and provided ‘“‘that the money arising by the sale of the 
 said lands, and the said stock, shall be by them applied, for and 
 towards erecting a house for the reception of the poor of the said 
 parish.’’° In the vestry record for the meeting held November 4, 
 1754, appears the following entry concerning the parish workhouse 
 which was constructed: 
 
 The house Built for the reception of the Poor of the Parrish Being now finished 
 According to Agreement is Received by the Vestry And Persuant to the Act of 
 the Assembly for that Purpose Made and provided . .. it is ordered that the 
 Church wardens of this Parrish at Christmas next or some Convenient time soon 
 after Convei into the Said house all the Poor persons that now is or hereafter 
 shall be Maintained at the Parrish Expense there to be supported. . . .And it is 
 firther ordered that Samuel Wallis then Be Admitted into the Said House as 
 Overseer and Master and that he take Care of the Furniture and Provisions 
 Which shall be provided for the said poor. And furthermore that he Teach 
 eight poor Children which are to be sent into the Said House by the Church- 
 wardens to Read Rite etc. For all which service The Said Samuel Wallis to 
 have and Receive from this Parrish Annually the Sum of Twenty Pounds Current 
 Money, His own Children Accommodated and Liberty To take in and School ten 
 children besides the Poor Accordin as he Can Agree with there Parents, etc. 
 During the time he shall be continued ... 
 
 The record of the Upper Parish vestry meetings for the period 
 following 1755 show that the poorhouse school was in operation until 
 1759, when it was discontinued. In 1755 Wallis received his twenty 
 pounds, but his salary for 1756 was reduced to ten pounds, as shown 
 in the following order: 
 
 That Samuel Wallis be Continued in the poorhouse the ensueing year at Ten 
 pounds Current Money and that there is a woman as an assistant Imploy’d 
 when occasion Require by the Church Wardens and that he have Liberty to take 
 in and School Fifteen Children besides our Poor them not Exceeding Eight. 
 
 The master was to be allowed to increase the number of pay 
 
 0Hening, VI, 266, 518. 
 
68 Parish Education tn Colonial Virginia 
 
 pupils as an inducement for him to continue to teach the parish 
 children at the reduced salary. In the minutes for the meeting in 
 June, 1756, appears the only record of a dependent child being 
 placed in the poorhouse for schooling: “That the Daughter Margaret 
 hall be put in the almshouse There to be School’d.”” In 1756 Wallis 
 received his ten pounds ‘‘for keeping School, etc.,’’ and in 1757 and 
 1758 he was paid as ‘“‘Teacher at ye poor house.’ In the record of 
 January 1, 1759 the following entry appears: 
 
 Whereas Mr. Samuel Wallice hath been Imployd some time past by the 
 Vestry of this parish to take care of the poor house and to educate the poor 
 children of the parish and it appearing that a sufficient Number of children can- 
 not be got to be educated In the said house and that Continueing the said Mr. 
 Wallice will be Running the Parish to expense without having the Desired Good 
 efect it is therefore ordered that the Church wardens of this parrish Do account 
 with and Discharge the said Mr. Wallice on the Seventeenth day of this Instant 
 being the end of the year of his said service and that they employ some sober 
 careful person to Look after the said House.*! 
 
 In 1763 the parish was debtor ‘‘To Samuel Wallis for John Orans 
 Schooling and Wood 2-8-2’’; in 1769 he was paid for “‘schooling some 
 poor children” six pounds; and in 1770 “for schooling several poor 
 children’’ he was paid 4£, 17s., 6p. 
 
 The above extracts from the vestry records make it appear that 
 there was not a sufficient number of dependent children in the parish 
 to make it worth while to maintain the school in the workhouse. 
 Poor parents probably preferred to keep their children at home 
 rather than have them placed in the institution. It would seem as 
 though poor children residing near the workhouse might have 
 attended the school at the same time living in their homes. ‘There 
 is, however, no suggestion of a desire on the part of the parents for 
 such an arrangement or of a recognition on the part of the vestry 
 that this plan might be followed. The fact that the master was 
 allowed to teach private pay pupils in the school as partial com- 
 pensation for his work indicates that the vestry did not think that 
 association with the poorhouse would be looked upon by people in 
 the community as objectionable, and the fact that the master was 
 allowed to increase the number of pay pupils from ten to fifteen 
 shows that he must have had a number of them in his school. In 
 spite of the fact that the cost of educating parish children was pro- 
 vided for entirely or in large part by a gift to the parish the plan did 
 not succeed. As suggested, the reason seems to have been in the 
 
 31Upper Parish, Nansemond County, MS. Vestry Minutes. 
 
Education in the Parish Workhouse 69 
 
 lack of a keen interest on the part of the vestrymen, who could have 
 made some adaptations, and in a lack of a strong desire on the part of 
 the poorer people to have their children educated. In any case, the 
 Upper Parish workhouse school, which was the only institution of the 
 kind established in Virginia in the colonial period, failed under circum- 
 stances which apparently were relatively favorable. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 PARISH APPRENTICESHIP 
 
 ENGLISH PRECEDENTS IN PARISH APPRENTICESHIP 
 
 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries poor law 
 apprenticeship was used in England as the chief means of caring for 
 dependent children and relieving the public from charges for their 
 support.1 The indenture under which the children were bound was 
 essentially the same as for industrial apprenticeship,? but the in- 
 tention back of the law governing the practice was to provide main- 
 tenance and oversight rather than education. 
 ye meaning of ye statute was not for the education of boys in arts but for charity 
 to keep ym and relieve ym from turning to roguery and idleness, so a man’s 
 house was, as it were, a Hospital in yt case, rather than a shop of trade.’ 
 
 Even though it had been intended to make regular trade edu- 
 cation a part of the plan, the early age at which the children were 
 apprenticed and the oversupply of labor would have interfered 
 effectively with an attempt to require it of the masters. That 
 the overseers of the poor were concerned primarily with relieving the 
 parish from responsibility of support rather than with the provision 
 of training or proper bringing up is shown by Dunlop‘ and by Burn 
 in his History of the Poor Laws, written in 1764. Burn said that 
 the overseers understood their duty to be, 
 
 To maintain their poor as cheap as possibly they can at all events; .. .to 
 bind out poor children apprentice no matter to whom or to what trade, but to 
 take special care that the master live in another parish.§ 
 
 The attitude of the poor law officials is shown by the fact that the 
 larger share of the children were bound to husbandry and house- 
 
 1Dunlop, English Apprenticeship and Child Labor, p. 248. 
 
 2Poor Laws, or the Laws and Statutes relating to the Setiling, Maintenance, and 
 Employment of the Poor (1727), p. 10. 
 
 3Dunlop, p. 252. A court decision in the case of the gentry of Sheffield and 
 its environs who tried to establish immunity from taking poor apprentices. 
 
 4Dunlop, p. 256. 
 
 5Burn, History of the Poor Laws, p. 211. 
 
 70 
 
Parish Apprenticeship 71 
 
 wifery with the understanding that they should serve as general 
 help in return for their livelihood.® 
 
 All persons were required to take poor apprentices ‘‘who by their 
 profession or manner of living, have occasion to use servants.’ 
 People of the better class in character and occupation objected to 
 taking them, and they usually accepted them only because of the 
 fine attached to refusal, even though a premium was paid and boys 
 were bound until twenty-four. It was early decided that the justices 
 had power to coerce those who refused: 
 and if any such Master shall refuse to take such Apprentice (according to their 
 Discretion) [that is the overseers’] so to him appointed, the said Justices may 
 bind such Master over to the next General Gaol-delivery, there to answer his 
 Default. And this was the Direction of Sir Henry Mountagne Knight, Chief 
 Justice of the King’s Bench at Cambridge Assises, Anno Dom. 1618.8 
 
 An act of Parliament passed in 1696 set at ten pounds the fine 
 for refusal to take an apprentice.? Persons who were willing to 
 accept parish children usually were not of a type to make satisfactory 
 masters, and the system was characterized by much abuse of the 
 children.!° William Bailey, writing in 1758, said, 
 
 The present Method of putting out poor children apprentices, is very well 
 known to be attended with great Inconveniences, as it lays an Incumbrance on 
 Estates, and Families. Few of those poor children now serve out their Time, 
 and many of them are driven, by Neglect or Cruelty, into such Immoralities as to 
 frequently render them the objects of publick Justice. Many of those who take 
 Parish apprentices are so inhuman, as to regard only the pecuniary Consideration, 
 and having once received that, they, by ill Usage and Severity often drive the 
 poor Creatures from them." 
 
 some of the children no doubt were placed with masters who gave 
 attention to their trade training,” but as a whole, English poor law 
 apprenticeship should not be looked upon as having been an effective 
 educational device and should hardly be considered to have been 
 apprenticeship in the proper meaning of the word." Partly in 
 recognition of the unfortunate conditions under which poor apprentices 
 served and the careless manner of their bringing up, there was made 
 in the eighteenth century workhouses and charity schools a more or 
 
 6Dalton, Country Justice, p. 85. 
 
 7Burn, Richard, The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer (1772), I, p. 68. 
 
 8Dalton, Country Justice, p. 166. 
 
 8 and 9 Wm. III, cap. 30. 
 
 lPunlop, English Apprenticeship, pp. 256-59. 
 
 UBailey, Wm., A Treatise on the Better Employment and More Comfortable 
 Support of the Poor in Workhouses (1758), p. 5. 
 
 Leonard, English Poor Relief, p. 226. 
 
 %Dunlop, p. 249. 
 
72 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 less successful attempt to instruct parish children in reading, writing, 
 and the catechism before they reached the age to be bound out. 
 
 The general statute under which pauper children were bound out in 
 England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the Eliza- 
 bethan poor law of 1601,'4 the apprenticeship provisions of which were 
 not repealed until 1814. This made the parish churchwardens and 
 the overseers of the poor the poor law officials, and gave to them the 
 duty of apprenticing the children whose parents they might think not 
 “fit or able to keep or maintain them.’ The law stipulated that they 
 might raise ‘“competent sums of money”’ by parish levy for premiums 
 to be paid the masters taking the children, and it required that in 
 apprenticing a child they should secure the assent of two justices of 
 the peace.& Thecustom seems to have been for the justices toregister 
 their assent by use of the following form filled in and copied at the 
 bottom of the indenture, although sometimes the statement of con- 
 currence was incorporated in the indenture: 
 
 We T. L. and M. T., two of his majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the County 
 Aforesaid, do hereby declare our Consent to the putting forth of the abovesaid 
 L. M. Apprentice to the said J. K. according to the intent and meaning of the 
 Indenture above written.! 
 
 Probably in the ordinary course of events the action of the 
 justices was purely formal, but in the many cases where legal questions 
 arose in the administration of the law the justices took the respon- 
 sibility. 
 
 In summary, the English scheme of pauper apprenticeship with 
 which the American colonists were familiar was not primarily an 
 educational arrangement, but rather a system of compulsory support 
 and guardianship of children administered under the supervision of 
 the county justices by the parish poor law officers who had the 
 right to use parish funds to partially compensate the masters. 
 
 PARISH APPRENTICESHIP IN VIRGINIA 
 The English system of compulsory apprenticeship was continued 
 
 1443 Elizabeth, cap. 2. 
 
 The granting of the power to levy taxes to provide for apprenticeship pre- 
 miums which was first given in the law of 1601 may be considered to be the first 
 step taken in England toward public support of education, but the general lack 
 of an educational element in the scheme and the dominance of the poor support 
 motive raise a question as to whether the taxation provided for should be con- 
 sidered to have been educational taxation. Whether in fact it was the first step 
 toward public support can best be determined by a study of the sequence of events 
 in the later development. 
 
 14% Poor Laws or The Laws & Statuies relating to the Settling, Maintenance & 
 Embloyment of the Poor (1727), p. 11; Dalton, Country Justice, *p. 447. 
 
Parish Apprenticeship 73 
 
 in Virginia but it was used in the colony as a means of education as 
 wellasofsupport. The statutes distinguished three classes of children 
 who were subject to forced apprenticeship: poor orphans,! children 
 who were not being brought up properly because of the poverty,}® 
 disordered lives, or carelessness of their parents,!® and illegitimate 
 children.?° Before 1769 the law required that bastard children should 
 be bound out as servants,”! but in that year they were put upon the 
 same basis as other poor children and apprenticed under the same 
 indenture.” It was assumed or directly stated in all of the apprentice- 
 ship laws that training in a trade should be given, but the first 
 prescription of instruction in reading and writing for children of any 
 of the classes mentioned above was made in an enactment of 1705 
 which dealt with the apprenticing of poor orphans.¥% Schooling 
 was not required of masters of children apprenticed because of the 
 poverty or neglect of their parents until 1727. 
 
 In the various statutes dealing with forced apprenticeship there 
 are four objects indicated: the improvement of industry by the 
 training of skilled workers,** the reduction of the amount of poverty 
 and vagabondage,” the better bringing up of otherwise uncared for 
 children,”° and relief from public responsibility for support.?? Con- 
 
 7Hening, I, 416 (1656). The laws referred to here were not the only ones 
 making the distinctions between the classes of children. The statute of 1656 
 provided that orphans were to be bound to a manual trade “‘if the estate will not 
 reach to a free education.”’ 
 
 18Hening, I, 336 (1646); II, 298 (1672). 
 
 Hening, IV, 212 (1727); VI, 32 (1748). It was not until the passage of the 
 law of 1748 that proper bringing up specifically included due care of the education 
 of children. The law of 1727 was as follows: ‘‘That if it should happen, that the 
 parent or parents of any child or children, upon due proof before the court of the 
 county wherein such parent or parents inhabit, shall be adjudged incapable of 
 supporting and bringing up such child or children, by reason of his, her, or their 
 idle, dissolute, and disorderly course of life, or that they neglect to take due care of 
 the education and instruction of such child or children, in christian principles, that 
 then it shall and may be lawful upon certificate from the said court, to and for the 
 churchwardens of the said parish, where such child or children shall inhabit to 
 bind out, or put to service or apprentice, such child or children, for such time or 
 term, and under such covenants, as hath been usual and customary, or the law 
 directs in the case of orphan children.’’ 
 
 20Hening, I, 4388 (1662); III, 87 (1691). Mulattoes were also distinguished, 
 but they may be considered as illegitimates. 
 
 41Hening, III, 87. 
 
 2Hening, VIII, 374-77 (1769). 
 
 *%Hening, III, 375 (1705): ‘‘And the master of every such orphan shall be 
 obliged to teach him to read and write.” 
 
 *4Hening, I, 336 (1646); IV, 482 (1736). 
 
 *Hening, II, 298 (1672), An ‘‘Act for Suppressing vagabonds and disposeing of 
 poore children to trades.’’ 
 
 *Hening, IV, 212 (1727). 
 
 7Hening, III, 375 (1705): ‘‘And if the estate of any orphan be of so small a 
 
74 Parish Education 1n Colonial Virginia 
 
 sidering the laws as a whole it cannot be said that any one of the 
 objects sought was dominant in the minds of the legislators. It 
 seems, however, that as time went on there was an increasing interest 
 in the welfare of the children concerned. This is suggested by the 
 addition of educational requirements and the placing of illegitimates 
 on the same basis as other children. 
 
 The duty of apprenticing poor orphans was in law in the hands of 
 the county justices,?* while the binding out of bastards as servants or 
 apprentices was given to the parish wardens.?* The apprenticing of 
 children of poor or careless parents was assigned to the justices until 
 a law of 1727 delegated the work to the wardens acting “upon certifi- 
 cate’ from the county court.8° Eefore 1727, however, the wardens 
 participated in the work of apprenticing children of parents not able 
 to bring them up by submitting to the courts the names of children 
 subject to the law.*! \ Since we are primarily concerned with parish 
 activity in education we should note that after 1727 the wardens had 
 the larger share of the responsibility for carrying out the laws of com- 
 pulsory apprenticeship, although the binding ‘out of orphans and the 
 general supervision of the system was left to the county courts.” 
 The certification provided for in the law of 1727 corresponded to the 
 “assent”’ prescribed in the English law of 1601, although it was not 
 the custom as in England to register the consent in the indenture. 
 Probably it was the practice when the court was a party to the pro- 
 cedure for the wardens to take the names of children and proposed 
 masters to the justices, who then approved the proposed disposition 
 of the children by an order. In view of this a record showing children 
 bound out by the wardens “‘upon order of the court’’ does not mean 
 that the justices initiated the proceeding or had more than a formal 
 part in binding out the children. 
 
 The scheme of forced apprenticeship which is outlined in the 
 statutes of colonial Virginia is in brief as follows. In general all 
 children whose education was not properly provided for by parents 
 
 value, that no person will maintain him for the profits thereof. LekCoal a 
 statute of 1769 which was concerned with the apprenticing of emit children, 
 there is complaint that the laws were insufficient for indemnifying parishes 
 “from the great charges Set oF arising from children begotten out of lawful 
 matrimony’’ (Hening, VII, 
 
 aetiening 1, i298: 
 
 *9Hening, III, 87 (1691); VIII, 374. 
  *°Hening, IV, 12. 
 
 31Hening, II, 298 (1672). 
 Baa eLening AV, 452 (1748). There were earlier laws which had the same general 
 import. 
 
Parish Apprenticeship | 78 
 
 or guardians were to be apprenticed. At first only trade training was 
 required of masters but in the first part of the eighteenth century 
 instruction in reading and writing also came to be required, except for 
 girls. In the seventeenth century the execution of the laws was in 
 the hands of the county court, and the court continued to have 
 responsibility for apprenticing orphans. Early in the eighteenth 
 century the parish wardens were given the duty of binding out all 
 except poor orphans, although according to law the court shared in 
 the work by giving an order or certificate to the wardens in the case 
 of each child apprenticed. If the law had been strictly followed the 
 study of parish activity in apprenticeship would be limited to an 
 examination of the work of the wardens acting in conjunction with 
 the court in binding out children other than orphans in the period 
 after 1727, in which year the duty of apprenticing children was first 
 given them. It will be shown, however, that the law was not closely 
 followed. 
 
 The vestries never had a duty with regard to apprenticeship as- 
 signed to them by statute, and yet the vestry books show that in the 
 period which they cover it was a common practice for them to bind 
 out poor children of the three types distinguished in law, including, 
 occasionally, orphans with property. The assumption by the 
 vestries of the charge of binding out dependent children naturally 
 proceeded from their having general charge of the care of the poor, 
 and from the fact that the wardens were appointed by them from 
 among their own number and were responsible to them. In the 
 vestry meetings the cases of persons partially or entirely dependent 
 upon the parish for support, or likely to become so, were brought up 
 for action, and in the cases of poor children, whether orphans or not, 
 there were the alternatives of providing support or binding them out. 
 There are many illustrations in the vestry books showing how in the 
 natural course of events the apprenticing of poor children fell into 
 the vestry’s hands. Following are typical cases: 
 
 Ordered that the Child Widow Bass now hath nursing for ye parish be bound 
 out by indenture to ye aforesaid widdow Bass by the Churchwardens (Bristol 
 Parish, 1720). 
 
 Whereas George Peirson ye son of George Peirson decd has bin from time past 
 a burden to ye parish Henry Bray prefering to ease ye parish and the said child 
 off (from being any charge for the future) Order is by this present vestry that the 
 Church wardens bind him out to Henry Bray with pd come to the age of one and 
 twenty years (Petsworth Parish, 1692). 
 
 Upon the petition of Eliz. Glidewell that she is a poor widow and not able to 
 
76 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 take care of her children desires that her son Robt. Glidewell be bound to Tho 
 Clemmon as the law directs Tis granted (Bristol Parish, 1729). 
 
 Ordered that Francis, Agnes, Thomas, and Averillah, children of Mary 
 Gerrard, Widdow, be bound out by the church wardens (St. Paul’s Parish, 1736). 
 
 To Mrs. Abagail Richardson, for Mary and susanna Jeffs, children of Sarah 
 Jeffs, in full for the Time she hath kept them, and to indemnify the Parish from all 
 charges for keeping and bringing them up the said children for the time to come, 
 they being now bound apprentices to her (Henrico, 1771). 
 
 That the vestry commonly assumed responsibility for the binding 
 out of poor children is indicated in Hugh Jones’ Present State of 
 Virginia, written in 1722: 
 
 For where there is a numerous Family of Poor Children the Vestry takes care 
 to bind them out Apprentices, till they are able to maintain themselves by their 
 own labor.* 
 
 Whenever the wardens bound out a child upon vestry order, the 
 indenture was probably given to the vestry clerk for preservation along 
 with other official papers. If the clerk was especially careful, or if 
 the vestry required it of him, he copied the indenture into the perma- 
 nent record, but the indenture was a relatively lengthy, formal 
 paper, and as long as the original was kept there was no real necessity 
 of copying it. After the expiration of the term of service to which 
 the child was bound there was no good reason for keeping the original, 
 and so we have the contracts kept only in those cases where a copy 
 was made. In the Petsworth Parish vestry book there are evidences 
 showing that the vestry was unusually conscientious in its work, 
 and here we find that the indenture was ordinarily recorded in the 
 body of the vestry record following the order for apprenticing a 
 child. In Fredericksville Parish in Louisa County the vestry re- 
 quired the clerk to record the indentures of children they ordered to 
 be apprenticed in a special book devoted to the purpose, but they 
 paid him for his work, as for instance in 1770: ‘“‘Dr. to ditto [the 
 clerk] for recording four indentures—120 [pounds of tobacco].”’ 
 It is only in the case of Fredericksville Parish that we have an ap- 
 parently complete record for a considerable period of years of in- 
 dentures binding out children whose apprenticeship was ordered by 
 the vestry, but for the reasons which have been indicated little 
 significance should be attached to the lack of similar records in other 
 parishes. 
 
 Where it was customary after 1727 for the wardens to apprentice 
 children “‘upon certificate’ from the county court instead of upon 
 
 3Jones Hugh, Present State of Virginia, p. 54. 
 
Parish Apprenticeship fis 
 
 order of the vestry, the probability is that they gave the indenture to 
 the vestry clerk just as they did where the work was done under 
 direction from the vestry. In this case, however, after the disposal 
 of the original indenture at the end of the period of service no evi- 
 dence would remain except where it was the practice to make a copy 
 for preservation. And since the binding out was not ordered by the 
 vestry, the clerk would seldom record it as a part of the official vestry 
 business. It is possible that in such case it was the more or less 
 common practice for the clerk to record the indenture in a special 
 book, although none has been found. In one parish, however, it 
 was the consistent policy for the clerk to copy in the back of the 
 vestry book the indentures of children apprenticed upon order of the 
 court. This was in Dettingen Parish in Prince William County. 
 
 The chief problem in the study of compulsory apprenticeship is 
 the determination of the number of children who were provided for in 
 the system. It will make the solution of this problem simpler if at 
 first attention be confined to the period after 1727 in which, for the 
 reasons above indicated, we may assume that the actual indenturing 
 of poor children was done by the wardens either upon vestry or court 
 order. For this period there is an adequate number of vestry books 
 upon which to base conclusions, whereas there is not for the earlier 
 time. If a correct judgment as to numbers is made for the last 
 fifty years of the colonial period, we may make a sufficiently trust- 
 worthy inference for the time preceding. 
 
 Following is a list of the parishes whose vestry books have been 
 examined, with the number of cases of apprenticeship recorded in 
 each case in the period from 1726 to 1776 or for a period within these 
 limits for which we have what is apparently a complete record. 
 
 Parish Period Cases Average Yearly 
 Number 
 Albemarle, Sussex 1741-1776 0 — 
 Antrim, Halifax 1752-1770 0 —_ 
 Blissland, New Kent 1726-1776 
 Bristol, Prince George 1726-1749 32 1.45 
 Christ Church, Lancaster 1739-1776 0 — 
 Christ Church, Middlesex 1726-1776 0 — 
 Cumberland, Lunenburg 1747-1776 0 — 
 Dettingen, Pr. William 1751-1776 67 2.6 
 Elizabeth City, Elizabeth City 1751-1776 2 08 
 Frederick, Frederick 1764-1776 0 — 
 Fredericksville, Louisa 1742-1776 61 1.8 
 Henrico, Henrico 1730-1773 3 .05 
 
78 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 King William, Henrico 1727-1750 0 — 
 Kingston, Mathews 1727-1776 1 —_ 
 Linhaven, Lower Norfolk 1727-1776 0 — 
 Petsworth, Gloucester 1727-1776 24 48 
 St. George, Spotsylvania 1727-1776 0 — 
 St. James, Goochland 1744-1776 1 — 
 St, Mark’s, Culpeper 1730-1776 2 — 
 St. Patrick’s, Prince Edward 1755-1774 0 — 
 St. Paul’s, Hanover 1727-1738 16 1.3 
 St. Peter’s, New Kent 1727-1759 3 — 
 Shelbourne, Loudon 1771-1776 0 — 
 Stratton Major, King and Queen 1729-1776 16 4 
 Truro, Fairfax 1737-1740 11 Bie 
 Upper Parish, Nansemond 1744-1776 0 — 
 Wicomico, Westmoreland 1727-1776 0 _— 
 
 If it should be assumed that for the parishes and the periods 
 indicated we have a complete record of all the children apprenticed 
 by the wardens either upon court or vestry order, the conclusion 
 would be that an altogether inconsiderable number of poor children 
 were apprenticed. But the wide differences between the parishes, 
 in some cases between those in adjoining counties, make it certain 
 that the record for some is incomplete. In some cases where there is 
 no evidence of apprenticeship it is likely that the wardens apprenticed 
 children without vestry intervention, and that the indentures were 
 not preserved or recorded. In view of these considerations, attention 
 may be limited to several of the parishes in which the largest number 
 of children were bound out and for which the record for a considerable 
 period seems complete. Even in these cases conclusions can be 
 only approximately correct. 
 
 The Bristol Parish vestry book covers the period from 1720 to 
 1789. In 1720 the vestry ordered the apprenticing of two orphans 
 and the binding out to service of one illegitimate child. In most of 
 the years following down to 1748 similar action was taken. In 1748 
 two bastard children were bound to apprenticeship ‘“‘by an order of 
 the court of Prince George County,’ and in 1749 it was ordered 
 “That the church wardens petition the court to bind out Ann the 
 daughter of Robert Hudson.’ In these two years no other cases are 
 recorded, and in the years following there is no further reference to 
 apprenticeship. Why the court should have desired to take over the 
 work of ordering the apprenticing of poor children after it had been 
 for several decades in the hands of the vestry is difficult to see, but 
 it is apparently because the court took the duty that there is no 
 
Parish Apprenticeship 79 
 
 further reference to apprenticeship in the parish records. The 
 Prince George County order books for the period are destroyed so that 
 it is impossible to determine any of the facts in the matter by means 
 of them. Whatever may have been the cause of the change of policy, 
 the important question from the standpoint of an attempt to de- 
 termine the number of children apprenticed in the parish is as to 
 whether the vestry in the period from 1727 to 1749 took practically 
 the sole responsibility in ordering the binding out of poor motherless 
 or fatherless children, the children of poor or negligent parents, and 
 illegitimates, or whether there was a division of the work with the 
 court ordering the binding out of children of the same types. 
 
 The Bristol vestry record suggests that from 1720 to 1748 the 
 vestry was the recognized authority in the parish for the indenturing 
 of poor children of all classes, and that practically all who were pro- 
 vided for by this means were bound out by the vestry. The following 
 typical cases from the vestry book serve as evidence. 
 
 Mr. Theo. Bott haveing an orphant boy bound to him by his mother desires 
 the same may be confirmed by this vestry (1720). 
 
 Upon the petition of Eliz. Lett It is ordered that James Lett her son now 
 being at Tho. Gregories be by the Church wardens bound unto Daniell nance and 
 his wife untill the said James come to lawful age (1722). 
 
 Upon the motion of Daniel Jackson That John Pucket is run away and left 
 one of his children by name Eliz. pucket prayes that ye said child be bound to 
 him and his heirs as the law directs. Tis granted (1728). 
 
 Upon the petition of Eliz. Glidewell that she is a poor widow and not able to 
 take care of her children desires that her son Robt. Glidewell be bound to Tho. 
 Clemon as the law directs Tis granted (1729). 
 
 Ordered that Willm Bleik (alias Pride) be bound to Willm Pride supposed to 
 be his father (1731). 
 
 Ordered that the children of William Stow dec’d be bound out by the vestry 
 as the law directs (17381). 
 
 Ordered that Mary Blys Child be bound to Peter Gill born the 17th Feb. 
 1729 Named Joshua Irby (1731). 
 
 Ordered that Henry Voden assigne Eliz. Brown an orphan girl over to Wm. 
 Pirkason (17385). 
 
 William Eppes and Theodorick Bland Churchwardens of the parish put In- 
 stance Hall (son of John Hall deceased) an apprentice to Wm. Sturdivant as the 
 law directs to learn the trade of shoemaking (1747-8). 
 
 The variety of cases, the apprenticing of orphans, the continuous 
 record, the petitions to the vestry, and the lack of reference to the 
 justices as officials binding out children point to the conclusion that 
 in the period from 1720 to 1748 the vestry was the body which took the 
 
80 Parish Education in Colontal Virginia 
 
 responsibility for ordering the apprenticing of poor children in the 
 parish. 
 
 Limiting attention to the period from 1727 to 1748, we find that 
 thirty-two children, or an average of about 1.5 each year, were ap- 
 prenticed in Bristol Parish.4 The significance of this number, how- 
 ever, can only be seen by comparing it with the total number of 
 white children in the parish who were of proper age to be apprenticed, 
 and this number cannot be determined accurately. The facts as 
 they existed in 1740 may be approximated and taken as typical for 
 the period. The white children born in Bristol Parish in 1740, 
 1741, and 1742 numbered 51, 81, and 76 respectively. If sixty 
 births each year be taken as normal for some years preceding 1740, 
 and if it be assumed that ten per cent of all children born in the parish 
 died, there were in 1740 somewhat over five hundred white children 
 in the parish who were more than three years old and less than 
 fourteen.*® At the same time there were, on the basis 1.5 as the 
 average number apprenticed each year, perhaps fifteen children, or 
 three per cent of all, who had been apprenticed under the poor law. 
 In view of the fact that there were relatively many poor people in the 
 colony at the time,*” we should be justified in concluding that among 
 
 34In this period there were also twenty illegitimate children, mainly mulattoes, 
 ‘“‘bound to serve as the law directs.’’ At this time the law directed that bastards 
 should be bound to service. 
 
 %5Bristol Parish Register. Bristol Parish is taken for detailed study because the 
 vestry book and register have been published, allowing more careful examination 
 than can readily be made in the case of other parishes. The number of births was 
 somewhat greater than that indicated above for the register of names beginning 
 with D, E, and F is missing for the years preceding 1745, and probably some births 
 in lower class families were not registered. Of 100 illegitimate children which 
 are shown by the register, the record of fines, or the record of apprenticeship to 
 have been born in Bristol Parish between 1719 and 1770 only 51 have their births 
 recorded in the register. 
 
 36[n industrial apprenticeship the age for binding out children was thirteen or 
 fourteen, but in the system of poor law apprenticeship in Virginia children were 
 usually bound out at an earlier age, often as infants. 
 
 37No adequate study of the number of poor people in colonial Virginia has been 
 made, but it is clear that there were many of them. Theratio between the number 
 of dependent poor receiving public aid and the number of tithables was, ac- 
 cording to a rough estimate based on the vestry records, 20 to 1200. This takes 
 no account of the vagabond class or of the poor who got along without parish aid. 
 While the statutes of the colony are not by themselves a safe basis for judgments 
 as to actual facts of any sort, the following extracts from the laws are a kind of 
 proof that there were many poor. 
 
 _ A law of 1672 (Hening, II, 298) stated that the neglect of certain English 
 statutes “hath encouraged and much encreased the number of vagabonds idle 
 and dissolute persons.’’ In an act of 1727 (Hening, IV, 208) there is complaint 
 that idle and disorderly persons able to work ‘“‘strole from one county to an- 
 other, neglecting to labor,” and that vagabonds “‘run from their habitations and 
 
Parish Apprenticeship 81 
 
 the ninety-seven per cent not apprenticed there were a great many 
 poor children who were not receiving an education either of a trade 
 or school type. That this conclusion is correct is shown in a de- 
 scription of conditions as they existed in the parish a few years later. 
 
 In 1755 a committee composed of members of the vestries of the 
 neighboring parishes of Bristol, Martins Brandon, and Bath made a 
 report to their respective vestries concerning a proposal to establish 
 a school in connection with a workhouse.** The plan was proposed 
 by the Bristol Parish representatives, of whom Theodorick Bland, 
 the leading man in the community, was one. The part of the report 
 which is descriptive of conditions is as follows: 
 
 This committee having taken under their most consideration the unhappy 
 and indeed miserable circumstances of the many poor orphans and other poor 
 children, inhabitants of the said parishes, whose parents are utterly unable to 
 give them any education and being desirous. . .that such poor children should be 
 brought up in a religious, virtuous and industrious course of life, have resolved 
 earnestly to recommend it to their respective vestries that they should join in a 
 petition to the general Assembly. . .(Bristol Parish vestry book, pp. 165-66) 
 
 The above description of the situation is very significant not only 
 as an indication of the bad condition educationally of the large 
 number of children not apprenticed, but also as in effect a recognition 
 of the inefficacy of poor apprenticeship as an educational means.%® 
 The law definitely provided that ‘‘the many poor orphans and other 
 poor children’? mentioned should be apprenticed, properly brought 
 up by masters, and given instruction in a trade and in reading and 
 writing.*° If it had been the consistent policy for the masters of 
 
 leave either wives or children without suitable means of support.’’ The following 
 is an introductory paragraph in an enactmnet of 1755 (Hening VI, 475). 
 
 “WHEREAS the number of poor people hath of late years much increased 
 throughout this colony . .. andit willbethemost proper method for their main- 
 tenance, and for the prevention of great mischiefs arising from such numbers of 
 unemployed poor. to provide houses for their reception and employment, . . .”’ 
 
 88See above, p. 
 
 s9While no other contemporary description of the condition of poor children 
 in Virginia has been found, there is a similar statement with reference to Mary- 
 land where there were corresponding poor apprenticeship Jaws and somewhat the 
 same social conditions. There is a certain amount of confirmation of the con- 
 clusions reached with respect to Virginia in this statement. Rev. Thomas 
 Bacon, who at the middle of the 18th century undertook the establishment of a 
 charity work school in Talbot County, Maryland, preached a sermon in London 
 in the endeavor to get contributions to help in carrying out the project. He 
 said in the sermon, 
 
 “God only knows, the great necessity of such a work in this province, where 
 education is hardly to be attained at any rate by the children of the poor, much 
 greater than can be apprehended from the general complaint, or even discovered 
 by the particular inquiry of such as are put upon it by the duties of their station.’ 
 (Steiner, History of Education in Maryland, p. 34 
 
 40Hening, IV, 208; V, 451. 
 
82 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 children apprenticed to follow the law either voluntarily or because of 
 the oversight of the court which the law provided for, there would 
 have been no reason for the complaint in the report or for an attempt 
 to put a new plan into operation. If the disobedience had been 
 merely a temporary lapse and if the system of apprenticeship had 
 not been under the conditions inherently unsatisfactory as an edu- 
 cational means, the members of the vestry, who were the most in- 
 fluential men in the community, could readily have brought about a 
 reform. Mr. Bland, for instance, was a member of the vestry, clerk 
 of the county court, and a member of the House of Burgesses. 
 
 It may be stated here that while it would be possible to give too 
 great significance to the statement in the Bristol Parish vestry book 
 as an indication of the educational conditions with respect to the 
 poor in Virginia in the eighteenth century, it is certainly the best 
 evidence bearing on the subject. It shows the working of the scheme 
 of apprenticeship rather than the theory as expressed in the law or as 
 it may be inferred from the study of individual cases of children 
 bound out. It also shows the futility of an ‘attempt to attach im- 
 portance to the detailed provisions and minor amendments of the 
 law. 
 
 How is the state of affairs described by the committee on the 
 workhouse school to be related to the fact that it was the consistent 
 policy of the Bristol Parish vestry over a long period to apprentice 
 one or two children each year? The probability is that the authorities 
 confined their attention to the cases of children who were dependent 
 onthe public for support or were likely to become so, and that 
 ordinarily other children of the poor were not apprenticed. 
 
 In Dettingen Parish sixty-seven children, or an average of two or 
 three each year, were apprenticed between 1751 and 1776. The 
 record of apprenticeship in this parish is in the form of indentures made 
 by the wardens ‘“‘upon order of the county court’’ and copied in the 
 back of the vestry book. The activity of the vestry was confined to 
 ordering the binding to service of nine illegitimate children in the 
 period from 1745 to 1753. After 1753 the court seems to have taken 
 entire charge of the binding out of children both to service and to 
 apprenticeship. The indentures made out before 1765 were not 
 recorded in the year in which they were drawn up, but were copied 
 mixed in order of time—1764, 1751, 1760, 1752, etc. Apparently it 
 was the custom before 1763 for the clerk to keep the original in- 
 dentures along with other parish papers, but in that year the clerk 
 
 le 
 
Parish Apprenticeship 83 
 
 was required to copy them, and ordinarily thereafter the order of 
 time was followed. The fact that all the apprenticing was done 
 upon order of the court, that all classes of poor children were bound 
 out by the wardens upon court order, and that there are enough 
 cases over a long period to show a consistent policy makes it reason- 
 ably certain that we have in the record an account of all poor children 
 who were apprenticed under the poor law in the parish. 
 
 The total number of recorded cases of apprenticeship in Dettingen 
 Parish is larger than for any other parish, the average of 2.6 per year 
 is greater than for any other, except for Truro Parish for a short 
 time; and considering the number of tithables, of whom there were 
 1287 in 1760,*! the relative number of children apprenticed was more 
 than twice that in Bristol Parish. One explanation of this fact is 
 that there were relatively many poor people and young orphans in 
 the parish.*2 Another explanation is that Dumfries, which was in 
 Dettingen Parish, was during the latter part of the colonial period an 
 important center of trade so that the possibilities of apprenticeship 
 were more readily realized than in most of the other parishes. Bishop 
 Meade says that Dumfries was “‘once the mart of that part of Vir- 
 ginia, ... the abode of wealthy merchants from Scotland.’’® 
 However, the number of poor children apprenticed, considering the 
 number of poor people in the parish, is not much if any greater than 
 would be called for by the rule that dependents should be bound out. 
 
 In Fredericksville Parish sixty-one children were apprenticed in 
 the period from 1742 to 1776, an average of 1.8 per year. The case 
 of this parish is similar to that of Dettingen in that there was a 
 relatively large number of children bound out and that the record was 
 in the form of indentures, but the apprenticing here was done by the 
 wardens upon vestry order instead of upon court order. Children 
 other than those for whom we have record may have been ap- 
 prenticed by court order, but the evidence indicating that the work 
 was done by the vestry is of the same type as in Bristol Parish. 
 
 The Truro Parish vestry book has no record of apprenticeship 
 except for the years 1737 to 1740, and here it is in the form of in- 
 dentures copied in with the vestry minutes. No doubt parish 
 children were bound out before and after these dates and we may 
 assume that there was not much variation from 2.7 each year which 
 
 4M{S. Vestry Book, 1760. 
 “Ror instance, see page 77 in the parish vestry book. 
 Meade, Old Churches and Families of Virginia, II, 209. 
 
84 Parish Education tn Colonial Virginia 
 
 was the average number apprenticed in the period from 1737 to 
 to 1740. This leads to the same conclusion as that reached in the 
 consideration of the other parishes—that dependent children were 
 bound out. 
 
 In the case of Petsworth Parish the record shows that the vestry 
 apprenticed children of all types distinguished in law, and that they 
 exercised an unusual interest in the children, sometimes paying 
 premiums and as early as 1700 requiring of the master three years 
 schooling.“* It is impossible to determine whether the vestry 
 ordered the apprenticing of all poor children who were bound out in 
 the parish, but there are the following indications that they did. 
 The vestry regularly ordered the apprenticeship of poor orphans, 
 which in law was a duty of the court, and they occasionally bound out 
 orphans with property; they demanded three years of schooling 
 before the law required it; they sometimes paid premiums to masters 
 for taking children; and the record shows a continuous policy. The 
 premium in cases of children without property was paid by the parish 
 as the institution responsible for the care of the poor, and it is un- 
 likely that the court would order the apprenticing of children when 
 the payment of the premivm was customary—thus requiring the 
 vestry to make an outlay of parish money. In Petsworth Parish 
 the educational motive is more apparent than in any other parish, 
 but the relatively small number of cases, an average of .48 per year, 
 shows that this purpose was not strong enough to make the vestry 
 look upon apprenticeship as a means of giving education to any 
 large share of the poor children of the parish. The motive which 
 was probably the fundamental one in this parish as in the others is 
 suggested by a record made in 1721. The wardens were required to 
 bind out an illegitimate child ‘‘as soon as possible they can gitt any- 
 body to take it off them.’’” 
 
 Except in the cases of the parishes which have been considered 
 above, the extant records, in each case covering part or all of the 
 period from 1727 to 1776, show few or no cases of apprenticeship. 
 But it is reasonable to assume that because of the desire to relieve 
 the public from charges for support the policy of binding out the 
 dependent children was generally followed. The lack of records in 
 some parishes may mean that the wardens acted upon their own 
 
 4’4The court record of Gloucester County in which Petsworth Parish was lo- 
 cated has been destroyed. 
 45Petsworth Parish MS. Vestry Book, p. 109. 
 
Parish Apprenticeship 85 
 
 initiative, that is without vestry order, and that the indentures were 
 not kept after the expiration of the terms of service. In other parishes 
 the practice was probably like that in Dettingen where the court 
 took charge of certificating the binding out of dependent children. 
 It may be that here the original indentures were not preserved and 
 that if books for recording the contracts were used they were lost 
 after the end of the colonial period. We may be sure, however, that 
 the more seriously apprenticeship was considered in any parish and 
 the larger the number of cases the greater the probability that a 
 parish record of orders or indentures was kept and the greater the 
 likelihood that some evidence would be preserved to the present, 
 whether the wardens acted independently or upon vestry or court 
 order. If we were considering the period before 1727, in which year 
 the wardens were made by law the agents for apprenticing poor 
 children other than orphans, we might explain the lack of evidence of 
 poor apprenticeship in the parish records in some cases, and the small 
 number taking all into consideration, by assuming that the work was 
 done almost entirely by the county courts; but in view of the facts 
 which have been brought out this does not serve as an explanation 
 after 1727. It may be assumed that the county courts in the period 
 after 1727, as well as before, followed the law fairly closely and 
 apprenticed dependent orphans, although the assumption of some of 
 the work by the vestries and the statement in the Bristol Parish 
 vestry book to the effect that ‘“‘many poor orphans’’ were not bound 
 out make it seem doubtful. 
 
 Heretofore attention has been confined mainly to the period 
 after 1727. With regard to the earlier period, in which the courts 
 were legally responsible for apprenticing all classes of poor children 
 except illegitimates, it may be said that there is little reason for 
 thinking that a larger share of poor children were bound out than in 
 the later period, and the probability is that, considering the growth of 
 enlightenment and the improvement in the conditions of living, the 
 relative number apprenticed was greater in the latter part of the 
 colonial period than in the earlier. It may be, however, that the 
 inadequacy of the system became more apparent as time went on.“ 
 
 The conclusion that ordinarily only the children who were de- 
 pendents were bound out in compulsory apprenticeship means that 
 the laws providing for neglected children of poor parents were not 
 
 46For a discussion of apprenticeship in the seventeenth century see Bruce, 
 Institutional History of Virginia, I, 311-14. 
 
86 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 generally enforced. This calls for an explanation. In the first 
 place it should be understood that the laws of colonial Virginia are 
 not to be depended upon as indications of actual practices. Many 
 laws seem to have been enacted as an expression of desire on the part 
 of the legislators without proper consideration being given to custom 
 or to conditions under which they were to be carried out. There are 
 many illustrations of the futility of legislation. In Chapter IV it 
 has been shown that the laws dealing with workhouses and the im- 
 provement of the woolen industry were of little or no effect. As 
 another illustration we have the laws dealing with minor morals and 
 religious observances.” The fact that the laws which provided 
 most adequately for the education in apprenticeship of the children 
 of poor or neglectful parents, that is those of 1727 and 1748, merely 
 gave power to the wardens and courts without requiring them to act, 
 is a partial explanation of their lack of effect. 
 
 However serious were the intentions of the legislators, there were 
 several factors in the situation which effectively interfered with 
 the execution of the laws. As has been shown, a chief motive in 
 enacting the statutes of apprenticeship was the desire to add to the 
 number of skilled workers and thus in a measure raise industry from 
 its low state. But the elements in the situation making the condition 
 of manufactures unsatisfactory also interfered with the development 
 of apprenticeship, and no doubt made parents and the local authorities 
 look upon it with disfavor as a means of education. The following 
 description of industrial conditions and practices at the middle of 
 the colonial period shows how the development of an artisan class 
 was discouraged and indicates that those who were directly con- 
 cerned with apprenticeship could not have thought of it as offering 
 much advantage to those subject to the law. 
 
 For want of Towns, Markets, and Money, there is but little Encouragement 
 for Tradesmen and Artificers, and therefore little Choice of them, and their 
 Labour very dear in the country. Then a great deal of Tradesman’s Time being 
 necessarily spent in going and coming to and from his Work, in dispers’d County 
 Plantations, and his Pay being generally in straggling Parcels of Tobacco, the 
 Collection whereof costs about 10 per cent, and the best of this Pay coming but 
 once a Year, so that he cannot turn his Hand frequently with a small stock, as 
 Tradesmen do in England and elsewhere, all this occasions the Dearth of all 
 
 47Tt is possible to show in a number of ways the common non-observance of 
 some of the laws dealing with morals. For evidence in the laws themselves see 
 Hening, III,168; III, 205; IV, 244. 
 
Parish Apprenticeship 87 
 
 Tradesmen’s Labour, and likewise the Discouragement, Scarcity, and Insufficiency 
 of Tradesmen.*§ 
 
 There was complaint in an apprentice law of 1646 that poor 
 parents for the most part were “‘most averse and unwilling to part 
 with their children,’’ as apprenticeship required, because of their 
 “fond indulgence and perverse obstinacy.’4 This natural parental 
 feeling no doubt persisted, and probably parents who could get along 
 without having to ask for public aid in their support, even though 
 their manner of living was of low grade, objected to having their 
 children taken away from them, especially when the training in 
 apprenticeship was poor and the life of the tradesman unsatis- 
 factory. In consideration of these facts the officials probably general- 
 ly refrained from using force except in cases where the parents were 
 notorious for their evil living. 
 
 The interest in the welfare of neglected children which was ex- 
 pressed by the legislators certainly was not as strong as that in the 
 improvement of industry, and at a time when in England and in 
 Virginia the lazssez faire doctrine prevailed in matters of public par- 
 ticipation in education this interest could not have had much force 
 with the local authorities, particularly when the advantages gained 
 by apprenticeship were not obvious. We have an indication of the 
 lack of interest in the educational welfare of the poor in the lax 
 way in which the endowed schools were managed, and there is a 
 similar indication in the fact that an expenditure of public funds for 
 education in schools was practically never made. 
 
 Attention has been confined heretofore to a determination of the 
 relative number of children bound out in forced apprenticeship. 
 Consideration should also be given to various provisions in the in- 
 dentures and to the extent to which they were carried out, although 
 the fact that relatively few children were bound out lessens the im- 
 portance of the matter. As in England, the form of contract used 
 was like that in industrial apprenticeship, the master agreeing to 
 teach or cause the apprentice to be taught the “‘art, trade, or mystery” 
 he was following. During the eighteenth century it was customary, 
 even before the passage of laws requiring it, to stipulate in the 
 agreement that instruction in reading and writing or ‘‘schooling”’ 
 should also be given, although such provision was not made as often 
 in the cases of girls as of boys. How faithfully the masters carried 
 out their agreements cannot be determined at all exactly. The 
 
 4sHartwell, Chilton, and Blair, The Present State of Virginia (1697), p. 8. 
 49Hening, I, 336. 
 
88 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 supervision of the system of apprenticeship was in the hands of the 
 ‘county justices, and the court records show that they sometimes 
 admonished and punished masters for failure to treat their apprentices 
 as the indentures required.®® We may assume that the fear of the 
 court or interest in the welfare of their apprentices held a considerable 
 share of the masters to their contracts. It seems likely, however, 
 that if the provisions for schooling and trade education had been 
 customarily held to, a larger number of children would have been 
 bound out. 
 
 Several factors which in spite of the provisions in the indentures 
 probably tended to lower the quality and the amount of education 
 received by poor children in apprenticeship may be mentioned. In 
 England the custom was to disregard the educational features in the 
 indentures, and this practice must have had some effect in Virginia. 
 The fact that the provision of support was the primary motive in 
 binding out children suggests that if a master cared for the physical 
 needs of his apprentice and did not abuse him, little in the way of 
 education might be required of him. The clistom of binding out 
 children when they were very young, some years before their masters 
 could be expected to pay any attention to their instruction, no doubt 
 tended to obscure the educational object. The relatives or friends 
 of the children were not of the type to exercise much influence favor- 
 able to them, and the apprentices probably were not greatly in- 
 terested in the fulfillment of the educational part of the contracts. 
 While the number of schools in Virginia increased as time went on, 
 the distance of many of the homes from a school must have made it 
 difficult very often for the masters to provide instruction in reading 
 and writing. There was no flourishing system of industrial ap- 
 prenticeship to set standards of trade education, and there was a 
 tendency on the part of the masters to set their apprentices to raising 
 tobacco to the neglect of their trade instruction. 
 
 The trades to which poor boys were most commonly apprenticed, 
 as shown by orders and indentures, were those of carpenter, shoe- 
 maker, planter, and blacksmith; but other trades to which they were 
 occasionally bound were those of weaver, tailor, cooper, tanner, 
 bricklayer, joiner, and wheelwright. The indentures of girls common- 
 ly required that they should be taught spinning, sewing, and knitting, 
 or “household business.” 
 
 It does not seem to have been the practice for the master to pay 
 
 S°Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia, I, pp. 311-14. 
 
Parish Apprenticeship 89 
 
 freedom dues or to make gifts to the poor apprentice upon the com- 
 pletion of his term of service except in the way of an outfit of clothing 
 and a small amount of food which law and custom required even 
 though the indenture did not so stipulate. A law of 1705 required 
 that at the expiration of the poor orphan apprentice’s period of 
 servitude the master should ‘‘pay and allow him in like manner as is 
 appointed for servants by indenture or custom,’ and in 1727 this 
 provision was made applicable to other poor children. The servants 
 were commonly given a barrel of corn and an equipment of clothing. 
 Most of the indentures found in the parish records make no require- 
 ment of freedom dues, and where there was nothing concerning the 
 matter it may be assumed that only the customary food and clothing 
 were given. Occasionally, however, the master was required by the 
 indenture to give more. In 1707 in St. Paul’s Parish a master 
 agreed to pay a girl apprentice ‘Six Hunderd pounds of good sound 
 sweet Tobacco in Cash, when she shall become of age.” In 1733 
 another master agreed to give to two apprentices, a boy and a girl, 
 “unto each of them Five pounds current money and each of them one 
 cow and calf.’ 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 The primary purpose of poor law apprenticeship in colonial | 
 Virginia, as in England, was the relief of the public from the costs of | 
 maintaining dependent children. A secondary purpose was the up- | 
 bringing and education of those who were bound out, but in practice 
 the scheme was not looked upon as a device for educating the poor 
 generally and it did not reach any large share of the lower class of 
 people. For the limited number who were bound out under the law 
 it was, considering the conditions, a more or less effective means of 
 trade and literary education. 
 
 ‘iHening, III, 375. 
 
 2Hening, IV, 212. 
 3MS. Vestry Minutes, pp. 16, 58. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 The foregoing study of public education as conducted by the 
 parishes in colonial Virginia has brought out the fact that efforts 
 were confined to an’ attempt to provide for the instruction and 
 training of the poor. The chief element in the plan outlined in the 
 law was a system of compulsory apprenticeship giving trade training 
 and schooling to dependent children and to those whose parents were 
 negligent or unable because of poverty to give them an education. 
 In addition to apprenticeship as a means of trade education, pro- 
 vision was made for the establishment of county-parish work schools. 
 Custom gave the vestries the right to defray the costs of tuition of 
 poor children in private schools in individual 'cases where it seemed de- 
 sirable, and late in the colonial period the vestries were allowed by 
 statute to establish workhouses and to levy a tax for the support of 
 education in them. While endowed schools were not comprehended 
 in the scheme of parish education as outlined in the law, the men who 
 founded such institutions looked upon them as a part of the pro- 
 vision for the poor and commonly gave their administration partially 
 or wholly to parish officials. The work of administering the means 
 of educating the poor was divided throughout most of the colonial 
 period between the county and the parish, but as time went on the 
 parish came to have the larger share of the responsibility. 
 
 The scheme of education embracing the means of caring for the 
 education of the poor which have been mentioned was in theory 
 adequate to secure its object. In practice, however, apprenticeship 
 was the only device at all generally used, and most of the children 
 bound out in forced apprenticeship were dependents. The endowed 
 parish-county schools which were next in importance to apprentice- 
 ship were not numerous enough to reach any considerable share of 
 the poor children, and they were not managed in such a way as to 
 realize their full possibilities. The other means of parish education 
 provided for in law or recognized in custom were so rarely used as to 
 
 go 
 
Conclusion QI 
 
 be negligible. Since the results of our examination of the sources 
 bearing on parish education are so largely negative, it might be 
 thought that perhaps the county, which shared legal responsibility 
 with the parish, was the institution which in practice actually did 
 the work. This possibility has been taken into consideration, how- 
 ever, and it has been shown that it was only in apprenticeship that . 
 the county ever acted independently, and that whether the binding 
 out was done by the county or parish officials or by bothin co-operation 
 our conclusion that ordinarily only dependents were apprenticed 
 holds. Except for the occasional payment of apprenticeship pre- 
 miums there was practically no expenditure of public funds for edu- 
 cational purposes in colonial Virginia. 
 
 While attention may be called to certain facts to show why there 
 was only a small amount of public activity in education in colonial 
 Virginia there is not the call for an explanation that there would be 
 if the public had participated to a considerable extent. That is, 
 there was no factor in the situation which would lead to the pre- 
 sumption that more was done than a general conformity to English 
 precedents demanded, and that there were reasons for doing less 
 than was done in England can readily be seen. The chief interfering 
 factors were the wide distribution of the population and the frontier 
 conditions which made it difficult to carry out any sort of community 
 enterprise. There was not the strong religious demand for the 
 teaching of reading which was an essential factor in the development 
 of public schools in New England, and the uniformity of belief in the 
 principles of the Established Church meant that there was not the 
 same interest as there was in England in providing orthodox in- 
 struction so as to combat the influence of competing sects. The 
 economic interest which was expressed in the legislation dealing with 
 workhouses and apprenticeship was not strong enough to overcome 
 the difficulties inherent in the industrial system. Philanthropic 
 concern in the educational welfare of the poor expressed itself in the 
 form of gifts for the establishment of a number of free schools and 
 endowments for the payment of tuition for instruction in private 
 schools rather than in an effort to secure general public provision for 
 them. Whether the undemocratic character of local government 
 was a factor interfering with the development of education for the 
 poor may be doubted, for there is no evidence of a demand coming 
 from the people who would have been benefitted by it. 
 
 When in 1779 Thomas Jefferson undertook his project of es- 
 
92 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
 
 tablishing a scheme of public education in Virginia there was no 
 precedent upon which he could depend except the custom of parish 
 and county participation in the administration of poor law apprentice- 
 ship and endowed schools for the poor. Back of the practice there 
 was an idea that the public should be concerned with the education 
 of the poor, but there was no general feeling of real public responsi- 
 bility and no sense of an obligation to do anything which might 
 involve the levying of taxes. While what was done in colonial 
 Virginia in the way of public interference in the education of the 
 poor may be viewed as a step toward the later development of 
 common schools, it probably was an obstacle rather than a help. 
 The association of the idea of public education with that of pro- 
 vision for the poor alone made it seem natural in the early part of the 
 federal period to confine the efforts made to an improvement of 
 arrangements for the poor. Such an attempt could not have the 
 enthusiastic backing of any class. 
 
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94 Parish Education tn Colontal Virginia 
 
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 Wise, J. C. Harly History of the Eastern Shore. Richmond, 1911. 
 
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 Beveridge, A. J. The Life of John Marshall. Vol. I. New York, 1916. 
 
 Brown, Alexander. The Cabells and Their Kin. Boston, 1895. 
 
 Pryor, Mrs. Roger A. The Mother of Washington and Her Times. New York, 
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 Rives, W. C. Life and Times of James Madison. Boston, 1859. 
 
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