which to pay for it. During the Swedish and Dutch periods education was in the hands of the church. Religion and education had not been clearly differentiated. The minister or his assistant served also as the teacher. Under favorable conditions the children were gathered for instruction, but where conditions were unfavorable the teacher visited the homes of the children. As the Dutch language in Delaware made small progress against the Swedish, so the Swedish soon began to lose ground against the more progressive and aggressive English. The government of Penn even started out with the promise of government-supported schools but later failed to make good its promise, and during the eighteenth century the educational institution on which the people found it necessary to place their main reliance was the private school, generally under church direction or with denominational support. These grew up from time to time in the leading towns of the province and served the purpose of giving some of the people the elements of an education which was of the prevailing classical and cultural type, but in which the government as such had no part. The educational opportunity of the State did not come till after the dawn of independence.

Chapter II.

THE FIRST ATTEMPTS AT STATE EDUCATION.

I. THE STATE SCHOOL FUND PERIOD, 1796-1829.

There is nothing on the subject of education in the Delaware State constitution of 1776.

A second State constitution was framed by a convention which met in New Castle in June, 1792. It was put into operation without being submitted to the people. This constitution has one reference to education:

The legislature shall, as soon as conveniently may be, provide by law for establishing schools, and promoting arts and sciences.1

It does not appear that there was any immediate action in recognition of this mandate of the organic law. No law was immediately passed, nor does it appear that the governors of the State in their messages to the general assembly made any reference in those years to the subject of education.

In 1796 the State took its first step toward meeting the instructions of the constitution of 1792.

On February 9, 1796, there was passed an act for the creation of a school fund which became the basis of the public school system of Delaware and which has been of preeminent importance in shaping the policy and giving tone to the administration of schools.

The act of 1796 provided that all the money accruing from marriage and tavern licenses, from 1796 to January 1, 1806, should be appropriated and known as "The fund for establishing schools in the State of Delaware." The State treasurer for the time being was constituted its guardian, under the name and style of "The trustee of the fund for establishing schools in the State of Delaware." He was authorized to receive gifts, donations, and bequests from individuals to whom the faith of the State was pledged. When the money in hand was sufficient, the trustee was to invest it in shares of stock of the Bank of Delaware, the Bank of the United States, the Bank of Pennsylvania, or the Bank of North America, and with the dividends arising therefrom to purchase other shares. He was to make an annual settlement with the general assembly and once a

Art. VIII, sec. 12, constitution of 1792. See Thorpe's charters and constitutions, vol. 1, p. 580. The section was carried over, without change, into the constitution of 1831, where it becomes Art. VII, sec. 11. See Thorpe, 1, p. 596.

year publish a list of the gifts received, with the names of the donors. The fund itself, at some time in the future, date not specified, was to be applied to the establishment of schools in the hundreds of the counties "for the purpose of instructing the children of the inhabitants thereof in the English language, arithmetic, and such other branches of knowledge as are most useful and necessary in completing a good English education," but it was further provided that the fund should not be applied "to the erecting or supporting any academy, college, or university in this State." 1

On January 24, 1797, an act supplementary to the school fund act of February 9, 1796, was passed. This act ordered the school trustee (the State treasurer) to sell the three shares of stock of the Bank of Delaware already acquired and apply the receipts, together with any other moneys he might then have in hand or receive, to the purchase of the shares of the stock of that bank reserved for the State by the act of incorporation. It was also enacted that the money arising from marriage and tavern licenses should be first applied to the payment of the chancellor and judges, and then the remainder was to be appropriated for the establishment of schools. The money thus appropriated to the payment of the chancellor and judges was evidently intended as a temporary loan to tide over any distress in the State treasury, for the sum thus used was to be replaced by money accruing to the State from arrearage taxes.3

Between 1797 and 1806 there seems to have been no further legislation on the subject of the school fund. In 1806 the act of 1796 and the supplementary act of 1797 were extended for seven years from January 1, 1806; on January 27, 1813, they were again extended to January 1, 1820;5 on February 8, 1822, they were revived and continued in force "until repealed by law," and it was further ordered that the moneys which would have belonged to the school fund had the act been in force in 1820, 1821, and 1822 were to be reckoned up and invested in bank stock for the benefit of the school fund."

Such is a summary of all the legislation in Delaware bearing on the school fund during this period. It is now proper to turn to an examination of the efforts to make it of service. The first proposed use of the accumulating school fund was in 1803, when the inhabitants of Glasgow presented a petition for authority to establish a school and for help from the fund. The legislative committee to whom the

1 Powell's History of Education in Delaware, 139. The act itself is ch. 105c, Laws of Delaware, II, pp. 1296-1298.

2 This had been the law from 1793 to 1796. See laws of 1793, ch. 28c, secs. 4 and 5. Laws of Delaware, II, p. 1127. It would appear then that the law of 1797 was merely a return to the earlier form of procedure. 3 Powell, p. 139, quoting Laws of Delaware, II, p. 1352 et seq., and VI, p. 327. See also ch. 133, Laws of Delaware, 1797, pp. 47-50. The moneys received from the trustees of the Loan Office and from the sale of vacant lands were to be invested in bank stock also, but "such shares, so subscribed, shall not be deemed or taken as any part of the fund for establishing schools in this State."-Sec. 5, ch. 133.

4 See ch. 24, Laws of Delaware, 1806, IV, p. 52.

Ibid, 1813, IV, 596.

• Laws of 1822, ch. 144, p. 241.

appeal was referred recommended that they have leave to bring in the desired bill, but thought the fund was then "too inconsiderable for a general application" and that a grant from the fund would therefore "neither meet the wishes of the public, nor be consistent with the establishment" of the fund. The bill was apparently not

brought in; at any rate no such bill became a law.

In a letter to Henry Barnard in 1865 Judge Willard Hall gives an insight into the condition of education in the State at the time these earliest efforts toward a State system were being made:

In 1803, April, I came to Delaware and settled at Dover. There was then no provision by law in the State for schools. Neighbors or small circles united and hired a teacher for their children. There were in some rare places schoolhouses. There was no schoolhouse in Dover. The teacher there in 1803 was a foreigner who hired a room and admitted scholars at prices. The teachers frequently were intemperate, whose qualification seemed to be inability to earn anything in any other way. A clergyman who had some pretensions as a scholar, but had been silenced as a preacher for incorrigible drunkenness, stood very prominent as a teacher. In the best towns it depended upon accident what kind of a school they had. In Wilmington at one time they had a very good teacher; he made teaching respectable, and interested parents in the instruction of their children. In Dover we sent to Harvard College in 1813 and procured a teacher who was with us several years. Afterwards we were left to chance, but fortunately generally had a good school. But even in the best neighborhoods, teachers of the young frequently were immoral and incapable; and in the country generally there was either a school of the worst character or no school at all.2

The first official recognition of the cause of public education by the governor of the State seems to have been that contained in the message of Gov. David Hall to the assembly on January 4, 1805. He says:

When we take into view the gross ignorance that prevails in some parts of this State among the lower classes of the people, for want of proper schools established in their neighborhood, we lament that the legislature has not paid a more early attention to this important duty. A law having passed in 1796 to create a fund sufficient to establish schools in this State and the fund at this time being considerable, I beg leave to recommend the application of such part of the said fund as the legislature shall judge proper to the establishment of schools as in the said act directed.

Two weeks later, on January 17, 1805, we find the following in the journal of the house (p. 36). Its very brevity speaks with startling emphasis:

Mr. Higgins laid on the table sundry petitions, signed by 256 inhabitants of New Castle and Sussex Counties, praying the legislature to pass an act to enable trustees to open schools and to appropriate the school funds, which were read.

On motion of Mr. Higgins, seconded by Mr. Reynolds, that the said petitions be referred to a committee of three.

On the question, it was determined in the negative.

On motion of Mr. Higgins, seconded by Mr. Green, the petitioners had leave to withdraw their petitions.

1 H. J., 1803, p. 44.

* Barnard's Jour. of Educ., 1866, xvi, 129, quoted in part in Powell, 142.

H. J., 1805, p. 8.

This and nothing more. The first effort to pass a school law had failed.

Gov. Nathaniel Mitchell, in his message to the assembly on January 8, 1807, says: 1

*

The state of our finances has gradually improved; * we are flattered with the prospect of realizing the expectation of the legislature, in establishing funds competent to the support of public county schools. This institution deserves encouragement. Ignorance is the bane of our Government. General information is its strongest pillar.

But at this session no petition for schools was presented; no bill was introduced, and on February 5, 1808, the trustee of the school fund was instructed to invest all funds on hand in shares in the Farmers' Bank of the State of Delaware."

For the next few years there was silence in Delaware on the subject of education. Indeed for the whole of these decades, short and simple are the annals of education, and what legislation does appear is mainly devoted to private institutions. A summary of these provisions may be properly included here: In 1810 the Dover Academy was incorporated; in 1811 permission was granted to raise by lottery $10,000 for the use and benefit" of the trustees of the college of Wilmington; the next year the Georgetown school in Sussex County was incorporated, as was the New Castle Library Co.; and the Glasgow Grammar School was authorized to raise $1,000 by lottery; in 1813 the "English schoolhouse" in Newark was to be repaired out of the proceeds of a lottery that was also to go in part to paving the streets of the town. In 1815 the Union School in New Castle Hundred and the Brandywine Academy in New Castle County were incorporated. Two acts for lotteries to aid education were passed in 1816 and these were followed by other acts of incorporation in 1819 (Milton and Seaford Academies).

On January 7, 1813, Gov. Joseph Haslet said to the assembly:

The school fund is also a subject for your consideration. The establishment of this fund must have been for general use, not for the erection of large and expensive seminaries, in the benefits of which very few can participate. A diffusion of knowledge is a principal concern in every republican government, whose great object is that each citizen may be able to come forward in public life, and avail himself of, and benefit society by, the exercise of those talents with which nature may have endued him. A man possessing the rudiments of education may improve himself by his own assiduity. Some of the greatest characters have made themselves in this way. The want of the rudiments of education has kept in obscurity many who would otherwise have been extensively useful and has lost to the world abilities which might have been its greatest ornament. The income of the school fund is now such, that it is believed, without exhausting the whole of this income, but leaving the fund gradually to increase, appropriations might be made, which with such aids as the different neighborhoods in this State might easily and would readily afford, would establish, for limited seasons, schools in these neighborhoods sufficient to teach the rudiments of education.