Our Vermont historian, Zadock THOMPSON, opens his chapter on "Education and Literature in Vermont," as follows:

      There can be little doubt of the correctness of Mr. Thompson's views of the character of the first settlers of Vermont and that "they early directed their attention to the establishment of schools"; that is shown by the records of almost every town in the State.

      The first settlers of Vermont were not born in Vermont. They came here in the main from the older settled colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut, a few coming from Rhode Island and New Hampshire. They brought with them what education they had received and the characters they had formed in those colonies from which they had emigrated. And it is evident that those early settlers, after they came to Vermont, clearly perceived "the numerous advantages which education confers"; they must have acquired that capacity before they came here. It seems, then, to the writer, that for the better understanding of our educational history we should first go back to our settlement and briefly review the influences which had been at work in moulding the characters of our first settlers. We boast of our Puritan origin, and we may. Freedom had its birth long before the declaration of independence. It was weak at first; it grew slowly but surely until it culminated in the American Revolution and the establishment of a free government. What were the agencies which effected this growth? History leaves us in no doubt on that subject.

      New England was settled by the Puritans. First came those who fled from Nottinghamshire to Holland in 1609 to escape persecution. From Holland they landed at Plymouth in 1620 and founded the Plymouth colony. Between 1630 and 1650 large numbers of Puritans left England for America and founded the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. The latter did not flee from persecution, as, at the time they left, Puritanism in England had increased in power and could not be assailed with impunity. The Puritans were, in fact, the best class of men England could turn out at the time to found new communities. They were free thinkers, independent in thought and action. They were subjects of the crown of Great Britain, but formed governments for themselves in Massachusetts and Connecticut as purely democratic as the government of the United States is or ever was. They were behind this age in civilization, yet they were thoroughly democratic in their local government. Their laws were crude in style and form and they were intolerant to those who differed from them in religious faith and doctrine, yet with an unflinching adherence to duty, as they understood it, and their firm reliance upon the church and the school-house, they made their way on in the progress of civilization, and succeeded in opening the way for the best government the sun ever shone upon.

      As this chapter is to be devoted to educational history, we may briefly consider that which pertains to New England before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. As one writer well says: "Scarcely had the Pilgrims landed when they put their heads together in order to devise means for the moral and mental culture of their children." The colony, or the colonies, and the school started together. The first educational ordinance in Massachusetts was in 1642. This provided that the selectmen of every town should see to it that children and apprentices are not wronged in matters of education; it also provided for a fine of twenty shillings upon the offenders against the law. Various enactments were made in subsequent years by the General Court of the several colonies, with the view evidently of adequately supporting a generous system of education. They established free schools -- schools that were open to all children of school age, and, more than that, they provided by law the all of school age should attend -- compulsory, if need be. The next year after the New Haven colony was founded a school was established and in running order in that colony. I may be here permitted to take an extract from the Plymouth colony laws passed by the General Court of the colony in 1670:

      These laws were drafted in "ye ancient style," but they unmistakably indicate the Puritan idea of education at the time, and it may also be remarked that the history of the Puritans in New England shows that their laws were not a dead letter. They were thoroughly in earnest in their laws, in all the ways of life.

      Thus began the settlement of New England and thus it progressed under that high ideal of life which brought to its aid religion and education. The free school -- the school open to all, had been without precedent; it was first adopted by the Puritans. It is not to be claimed here that the early colonial schools of New England had the perfection which a more advanced and enlightened age has shown; but they were schools as good as could be gotten up at that age with the means they had, and were as faithfully and persistently maintained as any schools ever were. History gives no practical example that shows in a stronger light the value of general education. If we search the old colonial records we shall find much that is arbitrary, much that is superstitious, much that is intolerant in religion; but we shall not fail to find that the Puritans put themselves on grounds from which they could advance and that they did advance. The germ was transplanted from Europe to our shores, and here it grew, and was pruned from time to time, as it grew, of its inconsistencies with enlightened freedom, its superstition and its intolerance. And here is an opportunity for the philosophical student of history to study the laws of growth which apply as well to nations, states, communities and societies, as to a tree or plant. The germ, so to speak, must be nourished by the material which the revealed and natural laws of God require to insure its growth, and the important factors in the nourishment by the Puritans were the church and the school-house.

      Perhaps the space given to history outside of Vermont and before the State was settled, as introductory, may be regarded as useless; but the writer does not so consider it. If the reader adopts the reasonings and conclusions of the writer, we shall now understand why the first settlers of Vermont early directed their attention to education; we shall understand what made success possible in the Revolutionary struggle. The writer is old enough to bring evidence to bear upon this point. I was personally acquainted with quite a large number of the soldiers of the Revolution, residents in the main of Rutland county.. They were men, not machines, as were the common soldiers of the British army. I knew them as prominent and useful members of society; members of churches, deacons, civil magistrates and otherwise occupying places of trust and responsibility. They were not in general as highly educated as the average citizen of today, yet the proportion who were obliged to make their cross, when they drew their pensions was probably not larger than that of the soldiers of the war of 1861.
 
 

      The first constitution of Vermont, established by convention July 2, and December 24, 1777, contained this section: 

      The first general law of Vermont, says Thompson, on the subject of primary schools was passed by the Legislature on the 22d day of October, 1782. This law provided for the division of towns into school districts, for the appointment of trustees in each town, for the general Superintendence of schools and for the election of a prudential committee by the inhabitants of each district, to which committee power was given to raise one-half of the money necessary for the building and repairing the school-house arid supporting a school, by a tax assessed on the grand list, and the other half either on the list, or on the parents of the scholars, as should be ordered by a vote of the district.

      This was the law under which the school system of Vermont started. That there were some schools in the State prior to the passage of this law seems probable. Mr. HOLLISTER, the Pawlet historian, says: "Next to providing themselves with shelter and the most common necessaries of life, our fathers, true to the institutions under which they had been reared, directed their attention to education. Schools were established as soon as a sufficient number of scholars could be gathered in any locality." This is true of all the towns in the county of Rutland, indeed of the State. The first school-houses, as well as the first dwellings, were of logs; so important to our first settlers was the education of their children that they made almost anything answer for a school-room. The historical student cannot fail to see the force of those words of Mr. HOLLISTER: "Our fathers, true to the institutions under which they had been reared" (in Massachusetts and Connecticut), directed their attention to education.

      The act of October 22, 1782, also provided that the judges of the County Courts be authorized to appoint trustees of a county school (grammar school), in each of their respective counties, and with the assistance of justices of the peace to levy a tax for the purpose of building a county school-house in each county. This part of the act was never fully carried into effect. The first county or grammar schools in Rutland were established, but no tax was ever raised as provided. Some of them were aided by "grammar school land" granted by the Legislature; though as early as 1786 a movement was made in Rutland county which resulted in the establishment of the Rutland County Grammar School at Castleton. This movement was mainly on the part of the people of Castleton, and through their efforts a grammar school was opened in that town in the year 1781. It was opened in "a gambrill-roof school-house" which had been recently erected, and was continued in the same until the building was consumed by fire in the year 1800. The Legislature passed an act October 29, 1805, entitled "An Act Confirming the Grammar School in the County of Rutland," and the Rev. Elihu SMITH, the Hon. James WITHERELL, and Messrs. Chauncey LANGDON, A. W. HYDE, Theophilus FLAGG, Samuel SHAW, James GILMORE, Amos THOMPSON, John MASON, Enos MERRILL and Isaac CLARK were constituted a board of trustees with the usual powers. Section F of this act reads as follows: "And it is hereby further enacted that the house in Castleton in said county, lately erected on the spot where stood the schoolhouse for said county, which was lately consumed by fire, be and is hereby established as a county grammar school-house for said county, so long as the inhabitants of said Castleton shall keep the same or any other house in the same place in good repair for the purpose aforesaid to the exceptance of the County Court of said county.”

      I have been unable to learn that any tax was ever laid on the county of Rutland for the purpose of erecting buildings for a county school-house. A corporation was created by the Legislature under the name of the Rutland County Grammar School, and was twice afterward affirmed; once by the act last named in 1805, and subsequently in 1830. The school has been essentially an academy from the first and received its support, as other academies have to this day, in the tuition fees of those who attended. It is the oldest academy in Rutland county and one of the oldest in the State. A portion of the time since its establishment it has had a large patronage, and was regarded as one of the most flourishing institutions of its kind in New England.
 
 

      Other academies have arisen in Rutland county. The Troy Conference Academy was incorporated in 1834, and soon after commenced as a school. A fine academy building in Poultney was completed in 1837, and the school commenced its work in that building in the fall of that year. For twenty years after the establishment of this school its patronage was large. In 1863 it was changed to a school for females under the name of Ripley Female College, and in 1873 was restored to the Troy Conference and has since been used as a Conference school with a fair patronage, and is now quite prosperous under the direction of Rev. C. H. DUNTON as principal.

      The "Brandon Academy” was incorpated by the Legislature in 1806. It existed as a school for several years, but never drew much patronage outside of the town. The Vermont Scientific and Literary Institution was organized about 1825; I find no record of its incorporation. A fine building was erected and the school started off under the auspices of the Baptist denomination, and for many years was quite flourishing. Like many other academies in the State, its patronage gradually diminished until it ceased to exist, and the "Old Seminary Building" became the property of the graded school established in Brandon in 1865, and was repaired and remodeled for that purpose.

      Several other academies have been incorporated from time to time in Rutland county, but the three at Castleton, Poultney and Brandon have been the most prominent. The Vermont Academy was incorporated and located at Rutland in 1805, but I find no account of its ever existing as a school. The West Rutland Academy was incorporated in 1810 This existed and was quite a flourishing school for over twenty years. Poultney Female Academy was incorpated in 1819, but lived only two or three years. Mr. HOLLISTER in his history of Pawlet, says: "Measures were taken about the beginning of the present century for the establishment of an academy, or grammar school, as such institutions were then generally called. A commodious brick edifice was erected near the village, in which the higher branches were taught, usually two terms in the year, fall and winter, until its destruction by fire in 1845. When the Methodist church on the hill was vacated in 1845 by the society, it was fitted up for an academy under the auspices of Jason F. WALKER, its first principal. This school took the name of Mettowel Academy, but I am not aware that this or any other academy in Pawlet was ever incorporated. The Mettowel was sustained as an academic institution some ten years, when it ceased to exist.

      The people of Vermont seemed to have been opposed to adding academies by raising a tax on the grand list, yet those institutions have been numerous in the State, and in great part well sustained until the introduction of graded schools, of which I shall have something to say in this chapter. The academies in Rutland county have done good work in the cause of education, and two of them, those at Castleton and Poultney, are now doing good work; one of the State Normal Schools is connected with the academy at Castleton. The historians of the several towns where the academies are and have been located will go more into detail in giving the history of those institutions in Rutland county.

      We will now return to the primary schools. The Legislature from time to time made amendments to the school laws passed in 1782, yet no radical changes were made until 1844. The laws of 1782 were so changed quite early in our history that a State school tax was provided of three cents on the dollar; the money raised by this tax and the income of the school lands went into the town treasury and was called "the public school money," and divided among the several districts in each town by the selectmen of the several towns, and the balance necessary to support the school was raised on the polls of the scholars attending the schools. By an act passed by the Legislature in 1825, a very considerable fund was added to the "public money." By this act all the avails of the "old Vermont State Bank," with six per cent of the net profits on the existing banks, and all sums arising from peddlers' licenses went into this fund. It amounted in 1841 to $164,292.28. But this sum soon departed by means of legislative enactments and otherwise, which our space will not permit us to trace out in detail.

      In 1837 Congress made provision for the deposit of the surplus revenue, which had accumulated from the sales of public land, with the several States of the Union. The share which fell to Vermont was $669,086,74. This sum was distributed among the several towns in the State in proportion to their population, and the towns were directed to loan the money on sufficient security, and apply the annual interest to the support of schools. The several towns became responsible to the State for the money and for its use; also for its return, and any portion of it, if called for under subsequent apportionments that might be made. This has and now seems to be a permanent fund, subject, however, to new apportionments that are liable to lessen the amount or proportion in some or all of the States.
 
 

      A great deal of criticism and wit has been expended over our "old time schools." We hear from the critics and wits of the old school-house: "It was such a building," they say, "as the farmer of today would not house his cattle in."  "The teacher was not qualified for his work; he was paid seven or eight dollars a month in winter, and from fifty cents to a dollar a week in summer and boarded around."  "The rod or the ferrule was his scepter, with this he governed his school."  " The government was arbitrary, the method of instruction was coarse, rude and dictatorial; it was not such as to awaken the minds and hearts of pupils."

      The quotations in the preceding paragraph are taken from the writings of those who have assumed to instruct us in matters of education during this generation. While it is true that our school system has undergone a great change in the last forty years, and that the present system is far in advance of that under which the schools were conducted in this State for the first half century of its existence, every intelligent Vermonter will concede. Yet the tone of those criticisms of the old time school in Vermont are too often, as the writer believes, a slander upon the good people of Vermont who settled our State, founded our institutions, and led us on for fifty years with as true a patriotic purpose as ever existed in the hearts of men, and as intelligently as the light of their time would permit. Civilization has advanced, and schools, as a result, have advanced. Because our fathers did not establish the graded school and the long list of improvements found in our modern system, it furnishes no better reason for ridicule than the fact that the Vermont farmers used the clumsy wooden plow for the first half century after the settlement of the State. The farmers then used the best implements they had, and the best that the age could furnish. It was not their fault that the plow with the iron mould-board had not then come within their reach, or that the mowing-machine, which would cut as much grass in a given time as six men would with their scythes, had not been invented.

      Education, when treated historically, is a matter of growth, and rude as the earliest schools of Vermont were, I should bestow the larger meed of praise upon the founders of our institutions, and those who nourished and cared for them in the early part of our history. The truth stands out prominently in our early history that the people regarded the school as indispensable. For a school-house, if they could do no better, they built one of logs, hired a back room in some dwelling-house, or put up the best frame building they could -- a school they would have. Aside from the support of Christianity, if there is anything in our history more important than any other, or more productive of good results, it is the faithfulness and persistency of our fathers in projecting and sustaining the schools.

      One bright morning in May, 1820, I was ushered into a school-room in school district No. 2 in Middletown, the district in which my father then resided. The school-house was a small building, in size twenty by sixteen feet on the ground. It had its entrance on the north end which opened into a little room or passage-way five feet square, and this opened into a school-room of some fifteen feet square. The north end of the house, five feet in width contained the above entry room, the chimney and the girls' closet. I well remember the appearance of this school-room as I entered it for the first time. It retained substantially the same appearance as long as I went to school there, which was until 1827, when my father was set to school district No. 1, the village district. Writing benches, as they were then called, ran around on three sides of the room, fastened to the walls, and in front of them mere rough benches of hard wood slabs, with legs as rough as the slabs. On these were seated the larger pupils, all old enough to write, and in the center of the room were lower seats conveniently arranged for the smaller scholars.

      In the front or north end of this room was a large fire-place, constructed of the best stone that could be obtained in the vicinity, not hewn or polished, but put in as they came from the field. From this fire-place the room was warmed in the winter. Wood was then plenty, and householder or party who sent to school furnished his portion, a quarter or half a cord to the scholar, as the vote of the district in school-meeting might be. The fire was first made by putting in a "back log," then a "forestick" on a pair of andirons and the space between filled up with small wood and kindlings. Such also was the way dwellings were heated at that time. I have in this description included all the furniture and all the fixtures of the school-house where I learned the A B C, and shall assume that this school-house was an average of the school-houses in Rutland county at the time I attended school there. I completed my common school education in the village school-house, which was no better than the other; it was larger, as the village school had about eighty scholars in the winter term, and some less in the summer; there were about forty in winter and about twenty-five in summer in attendance at my first school while I attended there. No paint was ever put on either of those houses, inside or out, and both were alike "open to the wind and the weather;" and from what I knew of other school-houses in the town, and from what I afterwards learned of the school-houses outside, those two houses fairly represented the average school-house of Rutland county and of the State.

      But it should not be forgotten here that many of the best scholars and ablest men Vermont ever produced received their primary education in such buildings as I have described. I can count a score of men and more at the district schools with me who in after life distinguished themselves in the professions. The academy and the college were then more relied on for a "finish."

      Improvement in our common school system in this State was not so rapid until after 1840. Thomas H. PALMER, a former resident of Pittsford in this county, was the prime mover in bringing about a revision of the school laws of the State, and opening the way for the efficient system under which the public schools of the State are now conducted. Mr. PALMER was a native of Scotland, emigrated to Philadelphia when a mere boy, where he acquired a competence in book publishing, and retired from that business in 1826, and removed to Pittsford. There he provided himself with a beautiful house, and gave himself to the literary pursuits and the cause of education. He took a deep interest at once in the schools of Pittsford, visited them often, offered suggestions to teachers and pupils, and often gave public lectures on this interest which lay near his heart. As early as 1850 he invited the teachers in the county, or those intending to teach, to meet him at Pittsford for what we may call a teachers' institute (what he called it I am not aware). They were usually held about two weeks. The exercises consisted of a review of the branches then taught in the common schools, with lectures an the various topics connected with the teacher's management of the school by Mr. Palmer. These institutes were held by Mr. PALMER once a year, usually in the fall, and proved of much utility. Mr. PALMER's efforts in the cause of education attracted attention in other parts of the State, and in the summer of 1874 he was invited to Middlebury by Governor SLADE, and there had an interview with the governor and president and professors of Middlebury College. In this consultation it was determined that an effort should be made to remodel the school laws of the State, and to that end a committee of Middlebury gentlemen was appointed to correspond with the influential friends of education about the State, and Mr. Palmer took upon himself to canvass the State personally, which he did, lecturing in a number of towns. On the meeting of the Legislature of that year in October, petitions came from all parts of the State asking for more efficient school laws. Those petitions were favorably received by the Legislature, and a law was passed which provided for an examination of teachers, and the supervision of schools. This was one step, but an important one, toward our present system. The Legislature of 1845 took another step in the same direction. It provided for a State superintendent of schools, and one or more superintendents in each town of the State. The State superintendent to be elected by the joint Assembly, and the town superintendents by the freemen of the several towns at their annual meetings in March. It provided for the examination of teachers, and made null and void all contracts for teaching between teachers and prudential committees of districts, unless the applicants had first procured certificates of qualification.

      In 1840 the Legislature, by an act of that year, provided that all the moneys raised by school districts for the payment of teachers' wages, be raised upon the grand list; and moneys by a tax upon the scholars who attend school shall be appropriated only to defray the expenses of fuel and teachers' board. In this connection we may as well state that in 1864 the Legislature provided that "all expenses incurred by a school district in supporting schools in excess of public moneys received by the district shall be defrayed by a tax upon the grand list of the district." Such is the law in force now and will doubtless remain the law of Vermont. This makes a free school in the full sense of the term. A parent under this law has no more, no less, to Pay whether he sends his children to school or allows them to run in the streets.

      A board of education was provided for in the State in 1856. That board was empowered to appoint a secretary and it had the general oversight of the schools until 1874, when the board was vacated by statute and a superintendent of education took its place. Since that time the State superintendent of schools and the town superintendents have had the supervision of the schools of the State. The State superintendent is required to hold teachers' institutes in each county, to give public lectures and, as far as practicable, to visit schools in company with the town superintendents.
 
 

      Mr. PALMER was a very enthusiastic advocate of normal schools, but he did not live to see them established; he died in 1861. The Legislature passed an act, which was approved November 17, 1866, which established a State Normal School. This act was amended in 1870, which appropriated $1,000 to each of the Normal Schools of the State, then established at Johnson, Randolph and Castleton, and extended the schools to 180; this appropriation was afterward cut down to $500. The act was subsequently amended, which extended the same to 1890. It will be understood that these schools are for the education of teachers. The State superintendent of education nominates and approves a principal teacher and first assistant for each Normal School and shall withdraw such approval when the interests of the school demand, and the principal provides for the discipline of the school. There are two courses of study in the Normal School, and are such as the trustees and the superintendent of education agree upon. The Normal Schools of the State, thus far, have been very well sustained and in effect have raised the standard of qualifications of teachers; and especially has this been apparent to the friends of education in Rutland county, from the good work of the Castleton Normal School, of which A. E. LEAVENWORTH is now and has been for several years the principal.
 
 

      The establishment of graded schools in the larger towns has, perhaps, more than anything else indicated improvement in our schools and school system of the State. The law now in force provides for "graded schools," "district high schools," and "union schools." A graded school is defined as "a school maintained by the town, or school for not less than thirty weeks in each year, and consisting of four or more departments taught by four or more teachers, having an established course of study, and having all of the departments under the control of one principal teacher, shall be a graded school and be entitled to the privileges granted by law to graded schools." If the children of a school district are so numerous as to require more than one teacher, the district may, at a district meeting, vote to erect as many school-houses and to provide as many teachers as are necessary, and may direct the sciences or higher branches taught in one of those schools. This is the "district high school."

   "Contiguous school districts may form a union district for the benefit of the older children of such districts by a two-thirds vote of each of the districts thus united."  The older children who possess the qualifications prescribed by the prudential committee shall be permitted to enter the union school, or "union high school," as it is sometimes called; and this is the union school.
 
 

      There has been a good deal of legislation in Vermont in the last forty years with a view to the improvement of schools. For this purpose the friends of education in the State have been very active in that time in procuring suitable legislation to raise the schools on a higher plane. Instruction is now much more thorough and effective in the common branches, and in many of the schools in Rutland county the higher branches are now taught successfully, and at the graded schools in Rutland and Brandon young men are fitted for college, and all the higher schools are supported entire by tax on the grand list, as all public schools in the State are and have been since the act of 1864.

      A remarkable change has occurred in forty years in the character of our school buildings; school-houses have been erected in Rutland county at a cost among the thousands. As I write now I can look out on a school-house in Poultney erected and furnished at a cost of over $12,000, and it would not be a wild estimate to say that the cost of this one house was more than all the school-houses in Rutland county were worth in I820. The graded school buildings in Rutland and Brandon each must have considerably exceeded that sum in cost. In the towns of Castleton, Fairhaven, Pawlet, Wallingford and Pittsford we find excellent school-houses in the central districts and great improvement throughout the county in school-house architecture, with few exceptions. A great improvement also will be found in the style and furnishings of the school-rooms. No school-room is now expected to be without a blackboard, and most of them have outline maps and some globes and other apparatus, for illustration and instruction. Suitable desks are also in general provided.

      Our school system seems now as perfect as it can be made; yet it must be conceded that some of our schools in the "back districts" are still "behind the times"; but this is not the fault of the existing system; if there is a fault anywhere it lies with the people of those districts. What more can the State of Vermont do for schools than it is now doing? It has provided a way to pay the entire expenses; it educates competent teachers, but it cannot prevent by law the depopulation of the rural districts; but it has provided for the union of contiguous districts and, last of all, it has provided for the "town system," seemingly for the purpose of bringing within the reach of every child of every class an opportunity for acquiring a good common school education.
 
 

"History of Rutland County Vermont with Illustrations & 
Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men & Pioneers"
Edited by H. Y. Smith & W. S. Rann, Syracuse, N. Y.
D. Mason & Co., Publishers, 1886
History of Rutland County
Chapter XIV.
(pages 201-213)

Transcribed by Karima, 2002