Studies pursued in Flower’s school
In Benezet’s
Walby’s
Seaton’s
Girls’ School
Godfrey’s
The curriculum of the first school (Enoch Flower’s) consisted of reading, writing, and casting accounts,[877] and it seems entirely probable that these were the chief constituents, along with moral instruction, for many years, in all save the Latin School. At any rate there occur no disproving factors in that early period. In 1742, when Anthony Benezet came from the Germantown school to Philadelphia, he was employed to teach arithmetic, writing, accounts, and French.[878] John Walby, employed about ten years before him (Benezet) was to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic.[879] Alexander Seaton was employed in 1751 to teach a school “in the upper part of the City,” the subjects being writing, arithmetic, and parts of the mathematics.[880] In 1754, when Benezet first began in the Girls’ School (mornings), he was required to instruct in reading, writing, arithmetic, and English grammar.[881] Then, besides what we may term the English School, in which Seaton and Benezet taught for some time, there were others which we might term “petty schools,” for example, one kept by Debby Godfrey,[882] who taught some poor children to learn to sew and read, and another, taught by Ann Redman (1761), previously occupied by Rebeckah Burchall, where were taught reading, writing, and plain sewing.[883]
Letter writing
Since writing letters was an art much used and cultivated in the Colonial Period, and writing was greatly emphasized in the schools, it may be of interest to insert a letter written by a school boy in 1735. The letter is written in a fairly regular boyish hand, and is probably the production of a youngster about 12 years of age.
Nov. 21, 1735.