It Happened Here--  The Learning Continues:                                                                         Academies &  Seminaries

                                                                 The Academy in Clermont

                                                                       U.S. Rte 9 Germantown

                              Rte 9H, Claverack

In their earliest years the first Academies and Seminaries [1] provided a "classic education" emphasizing languages, especially ancient languages --Greek and Latin, and mathematics to prepare students to attend one of the few colleges in the northern colonies/states--Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth or Kings (Columbia) but soon they were offering more practical instruction, as well. Clinton Academy in East Hampton. for example, offered courses in surveying and navigation.  And for their female students (as yet, a rarity) courses in ettiquette, social graces and household management. Some schools offered an "ornamental education" for the "fairer sex" and many offered what today might be called

remedial education to insure students of both genders had basic literacy.

In 1787 New York State established a board of Regents to recharter Kings College (now Columbia University) as Columbia College and to encourage the development of schools. In 1787 they were given the authority to charter academies, though some schools would be chartered by the legislature, itself. By the end of the 19th century over  400 Academies and Seminaries would be chartered. A blend of private and public, most academies would be privately financed through tuitions charged to their students but would be administered by public trustees selected from the communities in which they were located. Many operated as live-in boarding schools.

                                                                                           cor. Crown St, John  St. Kingston

                                                                                          Kingston Academy located in a solid two-story 

                                                                                                            stone building, would survive the British burning of the city,                                                                                                                 relocating to Academy Park in 1830, continuing until 1916                                                                                                                      when it would be replaced by Kingston High School

                                                                             Albany Av. (Co. Rte 21) Kinderhook

                                         Kinderhook's Columbia Academy developed from its early Dutch common school

The Regents would  administer grants  to academies from time to time and a " Literacy fund" was created in 1813 to provide subsidies on a more regular basis.

                                                                                                                                                                                                           Rte. 28 Milford

Hartwick Seminary developed out of the work of John Christopher Hartwick who spent his life while a frontier missionary amassing land to establish a christian utopian settlement but died before he accomplished this, but he left a request that a theological seminary be established. Three pastors, Dr. John Christopher Kunze, a leading Lutheran theologian, Rev. Anthony Braun a teacher of sciences and languages from Albany and Rev. John Frederick Ernst a primary school teacher established their school on the Hartwick patent in 1815 with a theological department for training for the ministry, and a classical department  for college preparation.  Beginning with 60-70 students, by the 1880's the student body regularly exceeded 100.  A freshman year of college courses was added in 1888 and  in 1927 it moved to Oneonta and became Hartwick College a four year liberal arts college.

Like Hartwick, some academies would grow and become colleges while others would survive only by re-trenching, becoming primary schools.

Spencertown Academy was housed in an impressive building. It was opened in 1847,  the work of the indefatigable blind pastor of St.Peter's Church,  Timothy Woodbridge. It was opened as a teacher training academy but closed after only a decade .  Taken over by the Spencertown and Austerlitz school districts it operated as a two room school.  Later it became part of the Chatham Central School district  until 1970 where today it is a community arts center hosting exhibits, performances and events.

                                          NY Rte 203, Spencertown

Some academies appear to have come and gone rather quickly, while  a very few evolved into colleges and even great universities.

                                                                                                                                                                             Livingston St., Saugerties

                                

   College St., Lima

Founded in 1831 [2]  by the  Genesee  Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, this seminary began  with 341 students, growing steadily until 1849 when Genesee  College was formed out of it. Seeking to become more centrally located in a transportation hub, the  administration attempted to re-establish the college in Syracuse in 1869 but was blocked by  the town of Lima which didn't want to lose its college.  In 1870 Syracuse University got its own charter and finally in 1875 the faculty and student body of Genesee College, in effect, transferred en masse to the new university. 
Genesee college closed but the Genesee Wesleyan      Seminary (prep school) continued until the beginning of World War II.

Though some schools (like the Charlotteville Academy, featured in the next post) sought out remote locations to protect their students from the dangers and vices of cities and transients on the open roads and turnpikes, most sought out and benefited from the easy access to towns and turnpikes.

                                                                                                                         Albany Tpke at Co.Rte.  13  Old Chatham

 

                                                                                        

            

Adjacent villages or hamlets or sections of a town often quarreled over where an academy or seminary would be located.  

                                                                                                                      Co.Rte. 68,  White Creek

"Site of 

Cambridge Washington Academy

Incorporated by Regents 1815

Merged with Union School,1873"

  --Academy St., Cambridge--sign missing

The dispute between the village of Cambridge and the hamlet of White Creek went on for over a decade. In 1799 the citizens of Cambridge  and North White Creek (part of Cambridge) decided to build an academy but at a vote to determine its location the Cambridgers dominated, locating the new academy in the western end of town.  The Whitecreekers revolted, withdrawing their support, eventually building their own academy in the hamlet of White Creek. Cambridge was able to build an academy with the support of the Presbyterian congregation in Coila, a hamlet on the northern border of Cambridge but only after it was agreed that        students would be required to attend religious services twice a week.

By the first decade of the 20th century most communities would decide that the growing needs for higher education could not be met by the random collection of private tuition-based academies that occasionally received public support.  Instead there needed to be publicly funded high schools, free to all.

[1]  Today, Seminaries are most often thought of as theological schools for training priests and clergymen but throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the terms were used pretty much interchangeably, a seminary being a place where knowledge was "disseminated."

[2] Several written sources cite 1831 as  Genesee Wesleyan's founding date.

--Besides the usual internet sources I would like to point out some pieces I found useful.

--The New York Almanack's  recent"Guest Contributor" article of March 30,2025, "Education in NewYork:   Academies and Common Schools" (newyorkalmanack.com) gave me a basic framework and orientation on a subject I heretofore knew very little.

--Ken Gotty, "History of Cambridge Schools" (csindians.com) illustrates some of the kinds of territorial disputes that could happen between towns/villages/hamlets looking to create new schools/academies.

--History of ______County.  In the 1870's-1890's several publishing houses produced large county-wide local histories for subscription sale, featuring lots of granular, local historical detail including generous amounts of historical stories/myths etc. Though often difficult to navigate through, most are available in PDF on line.  I have used volumes from Schoharie, Columbia, Ulster, Rensselaer, and  Oneida counties with varying degrees of success.

                                                                          ********

 Next Time--  The Schoharie County  "Seminary Mania" and How seminary failures and fires devastated the small towns and hamlets of Schoharie

                                                                           ********

 Marker of the Week  Fortnight (!)  -- The Marker that started it all.

It's just perverse to take a 12-14 year old boy, who has spent his whole summer back in the early 1960's engrossed in reading  Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans and  Edmonds Drums Along the Mohawk  to Lake George and to show him this sign without explanation.

If you don't know the backstory, I'm not going to tell you!  At least YOU have the internet!  :)

  It Happened Here-- America learns to Read & Write                                                               American*

                                                                 (*the New York experience)                                           

Spurred on by the Calvinist belief that the Faithful needed to be guided/inspired/directed by the "word of God" itself the early Dutch communities along the Hudson began organizing schools to teach their children to read the Bible  soon after  the Reformed Church in Holland began assigning "Dominies" to communities.  Likewise, the Palatine-German and French Huguenot  (Protestant) communities did the same.

A year after they arrived in East Camp the Palatines built their first school, in 1711,  undoubtedly before many homes were finished.   Co. Rte. 33 cor. Amber Lane, Germantown.

Co. Rte. 402, Westerlo

The Huguenot first church/school was built  eight years  after the settlement was founded in 1675.  Huguenot St. at cemetery, New Paltz.

Most colonial school buildings, like most of  the common houses, barns, shops and miscellaneous buildings of ordinary people did not survive the hundred and twenty five or so years of the colonial period, through the next two centuries to today, and were abandoned, repurposed (and surprisingly often) broken up with their component parts used in other buildings.  Except where some historical incident occurred at them, their sites are not generally recognized by the NYSHMs                                         

                                                                                                                                                                                 Co. Rte. 80, Port Jervis                                                                                                     

Rte. 30, Schoharie

. 

Though the Adsit cabin (1778?, 1794?) was never used as a school, many of the earliest New York schools probably looked like this. 
Co. Rte 27, Willsboro

                                                                                                       Co. Rte 31, East Springfield  

As the American Revolution drew to a close with the British defeated at Yorktown and Americans waiting anxiously month after month for the diplomats to hammer out a peace treaty, Americans had time to reflect on what their new society and government should become. Even the "king's English" came under question.  Should the language of their former oppressor continue as the language of a free people?  In some predominately German areas the notion that German, a "people's language", should become the official language was considered.  In Boston there was even discussion about making Hebrew the              official language for government and business, to be taught in schools. Generally, it was believed                American English grammar should be simplified and American spelling reflect more the ways words were pronounced. Everywhere was the belief that the moral education taught in schools needed to be supplemented with civic education for a new republic.  Nowhere were these ideas more frequently discussed than among the officers of the Continental Army in cantonment at New Windsor. A friend of several officers and frequent visitor to the cantonment was one Noah Webster, who taught school in a small private academy to the children of wealthy townsmen in Goshen, a few miles from New Windsor.      Webster would live in Goshen only two years but in those two years he would find a cause and a project that would dominate most of the rest of his life, and make him famous.  He would write a little book known after its first editions by its blue back (cover) that would outsell every other book in 19th century America, except the Bible!  This"American Spelling Book" that taught children how to read phonetically simplified common words and would be followed in later years by a more complete grammar,  and a book of readings that was also popular until surpassed by Mc Guffy's Reader in the 1830's. In 1801 he began work on an American Dictionary of the English Language which he would continue to enlarge and improve upon until 1828. New American words like chowder, skunk and hickory were included. Webster continued 

his crusade to simplify and rationalize American language.  Musick became music;  plough became plow;  centre became center; and the silent u in colour and favour was dropped. Other changes were rejected over time.  Tung never replaced tongue and wimmen never women, though clearly wimmen  is phonetically more accurate.

                             41 Webster Av., Goshen

       Goshen Town Hall                         

In 1784 Governor George Clinton appointed a state Board of Regents to study education in New York State.  In 1787 it was given the power to re-certify New York's Kings College (now known as Columbia College) and to charter additional colleges and academies.  By the first decades of the 19th century some 400 academies had been chartered. (More on this in a future post.) By 1795 sale of state lands (product, largely of the expulsion of Indian populations) enabled a fund to be amassed for public education.  Towns were encouraged to establish schools, which based on their populations would receive matching funds. By 1800 the state fund was exhausted and state legislators led by Jedediah Peck led a 12 year fight to get State support for common schools reestablished. (see NYSHMs:It Happened Here--"A Man of Public Usefulness and Private Worth, Aug. 13, 2016.) Each township was required to       establish                                                                                                                                                         local schools, with state matching support, to hire teachers and provide facilities, administered by local school boards. With rural populations so scattered  and transportation difficult, it was necessary to set up many local schools

Rte.443, Berne

Most cities had a patchwork collection of schools providing primary education--private, tuition schools for wealthy families, congregation-based religious schools and a few charity schools. In 1805 New York City led the way for urban public schools by forming the Free School Society, for years scraping by on public donations and by employing the Lancasterian

system, teaching a core of older student "Monitors"to instruct large numbers of younger students.  As large numbers of immigrants came to the cities of New York State they began to object to the Protestant biases of the public educational systems. Extensive parochial school systems developed. By the 1840's large numbers of Catholic parents whose children were still in the NYC Free School Society system continued to object to the Society's biases and the city Board of Education reorganized the system to a series of Ward based schools similar to rural township-based schools which gave local ethnic communities a measure of greater local control. (Unfortunately the vast number of urban primary school came, served their purpose and were replaced overtime with few public markers or plaques to record their existence, or their passing.)

Public, yes, but privately funded by the Patroon's family, the Livingstons.     U,S.,Rte 9, Clermont

By the end of the first two or three decades of the 19th century, rural and town  school houses were being built and taking on the features we would all recognize as the classic "one room schoolhouse."   One story, post and frame buildings with clapboard siding painted white or barn-red and multiple windows on both sides and ends for light, they occasionally had a small cupola mounted on them with a bell to summon children to school.

                                        Potter's Hollow School, Potter Hollow Rd., Co Rte 354. Preston Hollow

Of course, there could be a great deal of variety:

NYSHM for the "OldStone Schoolhouse"   Rte 28/30  Margretville                         

                                                                    Cobblestone Schoolhouse, cor. Center and Elm St.  Geneseo

A shingled schoolhouse, Rt. 85A Voorheesville

                                                      Huguenot School, made from  local Neversink River Valley Bricks

                                                                                    Rte 203, Huguenot, NY

Inside, a separate cloak room  helped keep out winter drafts from the class room and provided  space for hanging outer garments.  In the classroom, the rude benches of earlier years were being replaced by rows of "school desks"-- chairs or sometimes, backed benches, with desk-writing surfaces attached to their backs for students sitting behind them.  Most would be  all wood, of local construction.  Not until later would cast iron framed commercial school desks be available.  Most classrooms would be heated with a small, centrally located box stove, likely produced in Albany or Troy.  

Young unmarried men would often teach school in winter and before and after the growing season.  Women often taught more in summers, late spring and early fall  when there would be fewer older boys who would be working during these seasons, in farming activities. Gradually women would come to predominate the one room school when penny-pinching school boards believed they could pay them less than men.

          Garfield Rd., off of NY Rte 2, Eagle Mills

          President Garfield taught school here when 

          he was a college student.

Perhaps the most famous New York one room school teacher in literature is Ichabod Crane, the character  based on Washington Irving's friend,  Jesse Merwin who taught school in Kinderhook.   This schoolhouse is a replacement for the one Jessie Merwin taught in. Merwin mentions the original school's destruction in an 1851 letter to Irving.

--Besides the usual "internet suspects" rounded up for this post I found Joshua Kendall's The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of the American Culture.  New York, 2010 fascinating.  (I cite the whole title to give you a hint about the personality and purpose of the difficult and compelling Mr. Webster. presented in this book.)

Next Time--  The Learning Continues: Academies & Seminaries

                          

 

 

         It Happened Here--  Steuben:  the Man and the Markers 

                                                                         Part II, the Markers

                                                                                Fuller Rd,. cor. NY 274, Remsen

Many years ago the Association of Public Historians of New York State (APHNYS) published a county list of NewYork historical markers, composed mainly of the Department of Education sponsored markers from the 1930's.  Looking at the Oneida County list, one fact leaps from the page. There are a lot of markers with Steuben as the subject,  that direct the public to the Steuben's tomb and Memorial Park, or that claim their historical significance through their association to Steuben!  Though many of them disappeared over the years,  nearly identical signs, like the one above, directed visitors to the tomb and memorial park from roads all over the county -- 21 miles, 20 miles, 17 miles (2 signs),  4 miles,  2 1/2 miles,   2  miles, 1 1/2 miles, "Next Turn Right".  

                                                                        Starr Hill Rd. Co. Rte 57,Remsen

Rte 53, Fuller Rd., Remsen

                        Fuller Rd.,Remsen

About eighteen  more  NYSHM signs give information about Steuben's life or the creation of the memorial park.  We learn who he was; where he was buried; where he was re-buried; his monument; the "sacred grove";  the church who tended his grave;  the person who tended his grave; who created the park;  who dedicated the park; where his mill was; who settled farms on land bought from him; who was his friend and neighbor; who made barrels for him; the creek named by him and the town named for him. 

Important as Steuben was to  the American Revolution you have to wonder about the amount of attention lavished on this place where Steuben spent his retirement and was buried. Probably no European saint has had so much "official" signage dedicated to him, and the total effect is that you almost get the feeling that you are making some kind of religious pilgrimage.  Even the patriarchs of Mount Vernon, Monticello, Hyde Park, or the Hermitage don't get this sort of treatment around their homes/burial sites.  As usual, a little history gives us some insights

When Steuben died in 1793 he was buried wrapped in his military cloak, in a simple wooden coffin. in an unmarked grave, according to his wishes.  But when a road, being cut through in 1804 disturbed his grave, his former aide, Ben Walker had his body removed to another location on the Steuben Grant.  Twenty years later citizens of Oneida county placed a  marble stone inscribed "Steuben" over it.

Large numbers of Germans have always immigrated to America. From the first census of 1790 we can estimate several of the original states  had German populations of close to 10% and 1 out of three Pennsylvanians were of German origin!  The 1850s and 1880s saw huge influxes of Germans.  German language newspapers flourished and Germans were politically active.  In 1857 German-American societies and German language newspapers began a campaign to raise money for a tomb for the Baron. They pressured the Governor's office. In 1872 with New York State's help it was accomplished.

 World War I brought a storm of anti-German sentiment and propaganda. After the war,.the German-American community rebounded, forming or re-forming social clubs often naming them Steuben Clubs to honor the German general that personified the German immigrant  they believed contributed so much to America's freedom;  a man that personified the notion that a German born American could be an American Hero.  In 1919 the Steuben Society of America was formed to educate Americans on the patriotic contributions of German-Americans  and to encourage German Americans to take an active role in civic affairs.  In Chicago, home to a large German population, successful German-American businessmen in 1929 built the 45 story Steuben Club building as a club house for its 2500 members,  with retail space and office suites on the first 21 stories for rental.  Meeting, banquet,  exercise and recreational  rooms, and a pool were built  for club members on the upper floors.  The early 1930's would see German-American social prestige and political influence at a highpoint before the rise of Nazi-ism in Germany would divide the German-American  community  and once again German-Americans would be disgraced by events in Europe.

The Sesquicentennial of the American Revolution in 1926, like the Bicentennial fifty years after it, brought a flurry of interest in American history, encouraged  by the growth of the  Sons  of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the American Revolution.  The "Daughters" founded in 1919, after women were denied membership in the SAR became especially prominent.  Among other "patriotic" activities was a big effort to find and mark Revolutionary war veterans graves, and memorialize events of the revolution with bronze plaques on buildings and stone monuments.  Across New York State and up and down the east coast and beyond, scores (hundreds?) of places would see the installation  of these plaques with the distaff and spinning wheel logo of the DAR.  Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the governor, herself, was a DAR member. [1

                                                                                          DAR Plaque, Rhinebeck

With German-Americans, the SAR and the DAR and wife, Eleanor behind it, Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt was more than willing to attach his imprimatur to the project by dedicating the park in 1931.       (FDR, the consummate politician, was also eager to demonstrate that while handicapped by polio, he was not dis-abled so he made a conscious effort before and after his election as governor, to get out of Albany  into upstate New York,   to towns like Deposit, Port Jervis,  Hancock, Owego, Batavia, Dunkirk, Boonville, and Herkimer--towns that may had never seen a visit from a governor or governor-candidate.)

Six years after the  1926  sesquicentennial, in 1932 was the 200th birthday of George Washington.  In the middle of these two commemorations  was the bicentennial of Steuben's birth (1930).  As part of the 1926 celebration New York State issued the first NYSHMs.  The program was unexpectedly popular with public submissions for signs resulting in  59 signs erected in 1927, 31 in 1928 and 9 in 1929.   When attention turned to signage for the park a second program was underway.  For the Washington bicentennial a second release of NYSHMs was funded under the auspices of the New York Dept. of Education. In 1932 a whopping 624 markers were issued and groups supporting the park made liberal use of the program. [2]

[1] Eleanor Roosevelt very publicly renounced her membership in 1933 when the DAR invited, then     dis-invited famed Black mezzo-soprano Marion Anderson to sing at an event at their memorial hall when they realized members of the Black community sought to attend the event, of the (then)  all -White organization.

[2] see "A Marker was Erected".  New York State Historical Markers: It Happened Here.  March 21.2015. The numbers are derived from the photographic evidence derived from the sources quoted in my article. They do not include existing markers whose dates have been obliterated  when they were broken/repaired, or , of course, signs missing or destroyed.  The 27 "Steuben" signs of the APHNYS list are probably a more complete list of those created.   

Marker of the Week  Fortnight (!)  -- Hay Presses

                                                                                       Rt. 66, Ghent

The old expression, "to eat like a horse" is based on the truism that horses eat a LOT!  And their main feed is hay, and they require a substantial amount of hay- bedding to keep them clean and healthy.  When most horses lived on farms or in towns a few miles from farms this was not a significant problem that could not be solved with loose hay piled on hay wagons.  But as cities grew and thousands of horses in cites needed fodder and bedding an industrial solution was necessary.  Fortunately, hay is extremely compressible. By the 1850's many companies were  patenting  and selling hay presses. P.K. Dederick's Sons  of Albany was selling one in 1843. Most presses simply dropped a weight on a box of hay to compress it.  Then more hay was hay-forked into the box and compressed; and more added and compressed until a bale was formed.  Multiple strands of bailing twine (cord)  laid across the bottom of the box was brought up to tie  a compact bale of often 300 pounds. A rope, running through a pulley, connected to a windless, turned by a team of horses or oxen raised the weight. Heavy freight wagons could carry several  bales, and many more could be carried by locomotive flat cars.

Some Resources, beyond the usual Google suspects, I found useful in this last pair of posts:

--Burgess, Michael J.  Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in Albany. Charleston, SC. 2023.