EARLY PORTSMOUTH NH TEACHERS (continued)

After the rebuilding of the school-house in 1814, the teachers were Messrs. E. Hathaway, Ezra A. Stevens, William C. Harris, --- Snell, William H. Y. Hackett, Isaac Adams, Israel W. Bourne, Moses P. Parish, Chandler E. Potter, John T. Tasker, Israel Kimball, A. M. Payson, Lewis E. Smith, and some others, we think, but we have no record for reference.

We have before us the original contract made in 1748 between Samuel Hale and the Selectmen of Portsmouth, in which he obligates himself to keep the grammar school of Portsmouth, and instruct in the languages for five years; and the selectmen bind the town to give him an annual salary of L45 during that time.  Salmon Chase received about L80 per year.  We find he left the school in 1789.

We have seen Deacon Tappan's receipts in 1791, written in a beautiful hand, showing that his pay as teacher of the high school was L100 per year.  He was a keeper of the school about twelve years.  Between his time and Mr. Taft's entry in 1805, the school was kept by Mr. Peter Cochrane.  His memory is vividly impressed upon the minds of his scholars--whose hands can almost feel the tingle of that awful ferrule, which was in constant use.

In the next generation some of the boys were better prepared for the
Reckoning -- especially when the cowhide was the dispenser of punishment for playing truant.  In one of the schools of a second grade in those times, a boy who was certain of receiving punishment for truancy the day before, went like a martyr to his post, and received his punishment without flinching,  though put on perhaps rather more severely to overcome his stoicism.  He walks to his seat without a tear, and while the boys admired his bravery, they pitied him for his suffering, as was very evident from the stiffness of his gait.  There was however a good shout at play-time, when he withdrew from under his jacket the remains of an innocent salt-fish his sister had aided him in placing there to receive the punishment.

In this same school, kept in a room under Mr. Taft's, in the time of the embargo in 1809, the children were taught the first principles of writing, without the use of pen, ink, pencil or slate.  The whole length of the desk, in front, was a level about eight inches wide, and sunk about half an inch below the other part of the desk.  This place was covered with yellow sand, smoothed by a guage with projections in it, giving the lines to conform with those in the copy book.  In this sand, with sticks formed like lead pencils, the young urchins would make their pot-hooks and trammels -- and every form their imagination suggested, on to the mystery of joining-hand.  One of our Market-street merchants informs us that in this way he took his first lessons in chirography, without wasting a quill or blotting a book.

Mr. Bowles describes his recollection of the old brick school house, in the following communication:
Among the ancient edifices that have been used for cational purposes, there is none where so many of the past and present generations of Portsmouth have received their earlier instruction, and with which so many memories are associated, as the old Brick School House in State street.  Boys have gone forth from its venerable walls not only to fill almost every station in life, from the most humble but useful calling to the highest positions in the state and national councils of the Republic, and, better far, to become faithful watchmen on the walls of Zion, and to elevate the American name in other lands beside our own.  Neither have the girls, when weighed in the balance, been found wanting.  In every place where woman's duty and destiny call her, they have acted well a woman's part--crickets of the hearthstone, bringing joy and gladness to their husbands' firesides -- and better mothers never fulfilled "Life's highest, holiest task."

The scholars of some forty years ago, when a bell upon the roof rang out its stirring notes to call them to their tasks, had a more extended play ground than those of the present day enjoy; for School House Hill was then an open thoroughfare between Pitt and State streets.  Although the school building had risen Phoenix-like from its ashes, other memorials of the great conflagration of 1813 were visible around, in the form of old cellars and bricks, innumerable, the latter affording an inexhaustible fund of amusement in recess time.  Upon the summit of the hill, on the State street side was an old well, with the stump of a half-burnt pump in the centre.  It was a hideous trap, into which it is a miracle that more than one unfortunate wight did not fall, during the years its open mouth stood ready to receive them.
 
One day it occurred to Master Stevens, in connection with the above, that he would bring the boys' play to some practical account.  Having interested them just before recess hour with the incident in ancient history where a river is recorded to have been filled up, by each soldier of one of the conquerors of old throwing a stone into it, he then suggested that they should thus fill up the old well with a portion of the bricks that lay so profusely scattered around.  It would be such rare fun, they were not slow to act upon the hint thus given them, and before the bell rang for their return, (delayed a little probably in honor of the occasion,) the dangerous aperture had been filled to the surface of the ground; the last course of brick laid with the smoothness and precision of a Russ-pavement.

CONTINUE with Brewster's SCHOOL MEMORIES