In one of these old-field schools kept by Hobby—sexton, pedagogue, and "the most conceited man in three parishes"—George Washington obtained most of his education. A daily ride on horseback for a year to a similar school ten miles away, and for another year a row morning and night even in roughest weather across the river to a Fredericksburg teacher, ended his school career when he was thirteen; but he had then made a big pile of neatly written manuscript school books, which may now be seen in the Library at Washington; and he had acquired a passionate longing to be educated, which accompanied him through life.
An "advisive narrative" sent from America to the Bishop of London, toward the end of the seventeenth century, says:—
"This lack of schools in Virginia is a consequence of their scattered planting. It renders a very numerous generation of Christian's Children born in Virginia, who naturally are of beautiful and comely Persons, and generally of more ingenious Spirits than those in England, unserviceable for any great Employment in Church or State."
Mary Lord, 1710 circa
This statement was not wholly correct; for though Virginians were not usually fitted to be parsons, they certainly proved suited to state and government. When the war of the Revolution broke out, the noblest number of great statesmen, orators, and generals, who certainly were men of genius if not of conventional school education, came from the southern provinces. These brilliant Virginians were strong evidence and proof of what the great orator, Patrick Henry, called, in his singular pronunciation, "naiteral pairts"; which he declared was of more account than "all the book-lairnin' on the airth." Different climates and surroundings soon bring out different traits in the same race of people. The warm climate and fruitful soil in the southern colonies developed from English stock an easy-living race who needed the great stimulus and noble excitement of the Revolution to exhibit the highest qualities of brain. The Puritan minister, Cotton Mather, said in 1685, in a sermon before the Governor and Council in Massachusetts, "The Youth in this Country are verie Sharp and early Ripe in their Capacities." Thus speedily had keen New England air and hard New England life developed these characteristic New England traits.
New England at that time was controlled, both in public and private life, by the Puritan ministers, who felt, as one of them said, that "unless school and college flourish, church and state cannot live." The ministers were accredited guardians of the schools; and when Boston chose five school inspectors to visit the Latin School with the ministers, many of the latter were highly incensed, and Increase Mather refused to go with these lay visitors.
By a law of Massachusetts, passed in 1647, it was ordered that every town of fifty families should provide a school where children could be taught to read and write; while every town of one hundred householders was required to have a grammar school. In the Connecticut Code of Laws of 1650 were the same orders. These schools were public, but were not free; they were supported at the expense of the parents.
In 1644 the town of Salem ordered "that a note be published the next lecture day, that such as have children to be kept at school, would bring in their names, and what they will give for a whole year; and also that if any poor body hath children or a child to be put to school, and not able to pay for their schooling, that the town will pay it by a rate." Lists of children were made out in towns, and if the parents were well-to-do, they had to pay whether their children attended school or not.