Education in the Nineteenth Century

The nineteenth-century story is dominated by Henry Barnard, Secretary to the Commissioners of the Common Schools, a board created by legislation he had fathered while a member of the General Assembly. Barnard's "First Annual Report of the Secretary," published in the First Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners in 1839, is "must" reading for an understanding of the sorry state of public education in Connecticut at that time. It is a detailed and fascinating description of school buildings, textbooks, teaching methods, and teachers' ages, sex, tenure, training, and the like. Barnard was an outspoken Whig, and his office was abolished in 1842, when the Democrats came to power in Connecticut. His official reports resumed after 1849, when he was again appointed to lead the public school system, including the normal school at New Britain, the first in the state. Barnard is thoroughly covered in the "Biographies" section of this bibliography, but not listed there is his essay "Schools and Education," in James H. Trumbull's Memorial History of Hartford County (Boston, 1888), vol. II. This consists of Barnard’s reminiscences, with those of other people and a long account of schools in the period 1817 through the 1820s, based on interviews with men a generation older than Barnard. Barnard's essay takes up thirty-three pages. There is a dissertation by Hendrick D. Gideonese on Barnard’s efforts, "Common School Reform: Connecticut, 1834-1854," Harvard, 1963.

Daniel Gilman's "New Phases of the School Question in Connecticut," The New Englander 26(0ctober, 1867) is an unusual and interesting piece that might be missed by investigators. It is a critique of Connecticut schools, a description of them as they were in 1867. Appearing under the guise of a review of three works on education, it is worth looking at because it gets at much of the political background of the controversy over educational policy at the time. Another work focusing largely on the nineteenth century is a dissertation written at the University of Connecticut in 1978 by Peter John Harder, "An Analysis of the Evolution of Public Responsibility for Secondary Education in the Town of Madison, Connecticut, 1821-1922." Harder has reported some of his findings in two articles in the CHS Bulletin. "Politics, Efficiency and Rural Schools, 1866-1919, 44(April, 1979)2:52-60, deals with the laggard consolidation movement that left most rural students in pretty awful one-room schoolhouses. "Turn of the Century School Reform, The 'Eye of the State' on Madison, Connecticut," 43(July, 1978)3:81-90, discusses the relationship between the state commissioner of education and the superintendent in Madison.

The public high-school movement in Connecticut was largely a nineteenth-century phenomenon. A number of the works mentioned above, such as those by James and Harder, include relevant information. There are two published works devoted to the subject. Orwin D. Griffin’s The Evolution of the Connecticut School System with Special Reference to the Emergence of the High School (New York: Teachers College, 1928) is a competent study with special emphasis on the Hartford Classical and English High School, founded in 1847, which Griffin calls the first complete high school in Connecticut. There is one chapter on the period 1865-1928, so that the book focuses primarily on the early high-school movement. In 1926 there were only forty-nine four-year high schools in Connecticut, but in his last chapter, Griffin confidently predicts the rise of the public junior college.

Silas Hertzler’s The Rise of the Public High School in Connecticut (Baltimore: Warwick and York, 1930) is based on Hertzler’s Yale dissertation (1927). It includes many charts and graphs, with data on number of students, salaries and sex of teachers, and so. Hertzler’s sources are mainly local histories and publications and papers of local school boards--in other words, his work is firmly grounded in primary materials. Hertzler gives the nod to Middletown for the first high school, established in 1840. There are other places which could make the claim, too--it depends on what you call a high school.

See also Robert Frederick Kelly, "Influences Related to the Continuation of the Norwich Free Academy as the Agency for High School Education in Norwich, Connecticut, 1932-1965." Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1974. A similar work, dealing with New London’s three private academies that served as public high schools, is Philip Pumerantz’s "A Study of Persistence and Change in Secondary Education in New London, Connecticut from 1873 to 1951." Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1967.

There are a number of sketches of classroom life in the nineteenth century that will be of great interest to students in today's schools.

The Diaries of Julia Cowles. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951. This has become a standard source. Cowles was in school at the same time as Goodrich, 1797-1803 (below).

Gay, Julius. Social Life in Farmington Early in the Century. Hartford: n. pub., 1899.

Goodrich, Samuel G. Recollections of a Lifetime. New York: Miller, Orton and Mulligan, 1856. The early sections include a marvelous chapter on the Ridgefield district school which Goodrich attended in the 1790s and early nineteenth century, with a description of exactly how the three R's were taught--from the perspective of a five-year-old beginner.

Higgins, John E. "A Connecticut Schoolboy in the 1850s." CHS Bulletin 45(April, 1963)2.  John Fiske at the Chase Preparatory School in Middletown.

Smith, Mortimore. One Hundred Years of Schools in Newtown. Newtown, Conn.: the Newtown Bee, 1945. This is a talk given to the Newtown P.T.A. It deals with teachers’ salaries and other matters in the town’s twenty-one districts of 1800. Much interesting anecdotal material.

Nineteenth- and very early twentieth-century school life is charmingly depicted in the pages of The Lure of the Litchfield Hills. The editors apparently were fascinated by one-room school houses: issue after issue includes articles on "The Old Schools," with scores of photographs and reminiscences.