There are persons still living who have heard the story told by those who were there, on that day. Among others, Margaret Decker, daughter of Major Johannes Decker, horn in 1770, was there at school that day. She afterward married Benjamin Carpenter and left many descendants. She told the story many times to children and grandchildren, substantially as it has been told by the people of the valley since 1779. Several of these grandchildren are still living and agree in all the main points of the story as she told it to them. This is only one of many cases where the story is a family tradition.
Peter E. Gumaer was a lad nine years old, at the time this occurred. He was a neighbor and playfellow of those children in the other district who were in school that day. He grew up with them and knew them intimately all their lives, for he outlived them all, dying beyond the middle of his ninety-ninth year. In his account of Brant's raid, given with slight alterations in Eager's History of Orange County, he tells the story substantially as it is told by the descendants of these children. The addition of a brush and the color of the paint are touches not found in the original story.
This sketch of the schools in colonial times is fragmentary and unsatisfactory, but, there is so little that has been preserved concerning them, that no account can be other than fragmentary.
THE PERIOD OF THE PRIVATE ACADEMIES.
The movement for the establishment of schools of higher grade began with the people themselves. They knew what they wanted and proceeded to obtain it in the most direct way. The method was much the same all over the State. The farmers and other well-to-do people of a considerable section subscribed the money necessary to put up a building and to provide the furniture and equipment needed. Then, when the building was ready for occupancy, it was leased to some teacher, whose compensation was the fees for tuition, paid by the students who attended. More than 300 of these institutions were established in the State.
In this movement for improved schools, the county of Orange was one of the first in the State to act. There were two other schools of this type which were incorporated before The Farmers' Hall Academy in Goshen, but the incorporation was not until several years after these schools had been in operation. The Clinton Academy at Easthampton and the Erasmus Hall Academy in Brooklyn, were both chartered by the Board of Regents in 1787, while the Goshen school was not chartered until April first, 1790.
The building for the Farmers' Hall was erected in 1773 and the school was maintained as a school for instruction in academic subjects during the Revolution, with some interruptions.
To this school, in 1781, there came a man who was to do more for the cause of education in this county than any who had preceded him. Noah Webster had graduated from Yale in 1778 and had begun the study of law at Hartford. The invasion of New York from the north, by Burgoyne, called for the services of every able bodied man, and young Webster marched to the valley of the Mohawk, as a private in his father's company of Connecticut militia. After the campaign was over, he returned to the study of law and was admitted to the bar in Hartford in 1781. Instead of waiting at Hartford for a practice, he decided to enter the profession of teaching and probably came to Goshen in the fall of the same year.
The following letter of introduction, written by Henry Wisner, Esq., a magistrate of Goshen, would seem to indicate that Mr. Webster was not a new comer in Goshen at that time and he had probably completed his first year in the school when it was written:
Goshen, N. Y., August 26th, 1782.