The report of the monthly meeting in 1792 indicates that that meeting’s concern for the education of the poor was comparable to others mentioned; they state that all of the children “partake of learning freely” and their and other Friends’ children “are placed among Friends” as apprentices.
Warrington
Youths’ meetings
The earliest Quaker settlements in Warrington were in 1735,[504] and their first meetings for worship were held with the Friends at Newberry. Warrington Preparative Meeting was organized in 1745;[505] while the monthly meeting records date to 1747.[506] For nearly thirty years there is no notice in the records concerned with education, saving those which refer to the settling of youths’ meetings. Those were very frequent.[507] The report on the youths’ meetings in 1779 was as follows:
Some of the Friends appointed to attend the Youths’ Meeting report that four of them attended it and gave it as their sense that it was a good meeting, and that if it should be as well attended in the future, it might be of use.[508]
Committees of men and women named on schools
Three years later, 1782, it was considered necessary to leave off holding the youths’ meetings, for what reasons it is not known, but on a protest from some members it was concluded that it might be continued for at least another meeting.[509] In 1778 the yearly meeting extract was received, in which the establishment of schools was recommended; committees of both men and women were at once named for the service and desired to report.[510] In the year following, the report was made on the part of Warrington Preparative Meeting:
Warrington Meeting informs us that they have made choice of William Underwood, Peter Cleaver, Benjamin Walker, and Joseph Elgar for trustees and overseers of a school, with which this meeting concurs.[511]
The trustees thus appointed, it seems, were not so successful as might have been desired, if we may judge by their report made in 1780.
No progress reported 1780