Soon the private academies became so numerous that the opportunity for higher education reached to every part of the State. These schools did a grand work. For three-quarters of a century they opened up opportunities for the ambitious boys and girls whose parents were able to pay for their tuition.
Then, a new idea appeared in educational matters—the idea that the child of the poor man has as much right to the opportunity for education as the child of the rich, and that it is the duty of the State to provide this opportunity for rich and poor alike. So the period of the free schools followed that of the private academies.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
The first settlements in what is now Orange County were made not far from the same time in both the eastern and western extremities. The county then included what is now Rockland County, and was bounded on the north by the line separating the counties of Orange and Ulster. This line ran from the mouth of Murderer's Creek (now Moodna) "westward into the woods as far as the Delaware River." These settlements were made previous to 1700, but the time is not absolutely certain with respect to either of them.
In the western part of the county, in what is now the town of Deerpark, the first settlers were Dutch and Huguenot families, who came from Kingston and New Paltz. In the eastern part the settlers came up the Hudson River and consisted almost entirely of English speaking people from New York and the Long Island towns. In fact, so close was the association with New York, that for some years the New York reports included Orange and our county had no independent county government.
In 1693, according to the report of Governor Fletcher, made by Matthew Clarkson, secretary of the province, there were in "Orange County not above twenty families, for the present under the care of New York."
In 1698 there were reported to Governor Bellomont about thirty families and 140 children in Orange.
These children were scattered over a wide district, in pioneer homes, where luxuries were unknown and where even the necessaries of life were difficult of attainment. There were no schools for their instruction at this time, nor for a number of years afterward, but it is evident that many of them at least did secure the elements of an education, either from their parents or from some other source, for we find them later, in the Dutch and Huguenot settlements at any rate, as the men of affairs, prominent in the church and in the community, able to read and write and to transact business in a business-like manner.
By 1723 a second generation had grown up and new settlers had come into the county. In that year 543 children are reported. By this time the pioneers had overcome the greater difficulties of the early settlement. Their farms yielded abundant supplies and there was opportunity to make provision for the instruction of their children. That this opportunity was made use of and that some provision was made, in most parts of the settlements, for the instruction of the boys and girls, there is little reason to doubt.
The young people of this generation learned "to read and write and cast accounts," at any rate. There were few, if any, schoolhouses, and tradition has it that the teachers, like the tailors and the shoemakers, went about from house to house, giving instruction in the three R's.