Catskills Past No More Pencils, No More Books

By T.M. Bradshaw

In his History of Schoharie County (D. Mason & Co., Syracuse, NY, 1882) William E. Roscoe refers to “the ‘Seminary epidemic’ of 1850 and 1854 that swept over the country and excited the usual steady minds of the people, and made sad havoc with the accumulation of years of economy and industry.” It seems Mr. Roscoe wasn’t a fan of spending money on education, or perhaps he thought too many schools had been built. These were called academies and seminaries, essentially high schools, offering courses that prepared students to join the work force or apply to colleges. These schools offered Latin, Greek, mathematics, engineering, music, and art courses and were places for students to continue their education after graduating from the one room schoolhouses that dotted the landscape every few miles.

Mandatory attendance was still in the future, but a large percentage of children attended school. It has been estimated that by the middle of the nineteenth century, as many as 90 percent of all rural youth in New York attended school for at least a period of time.

Many secondary schools had been built much earlier than in the “epidemic” described by Roscoe—in 1784 the Regents of the University of the State of New York were established by law. In 1787 the first academy charter was granted. The August 23, 1821 edition of the Delaware Gazette printed a notice about the Delaware Academy:

“This institution is now opened for the reception of scholars, under the direction of John A. Savage, A. B. … The tuition has been regulated by the trustees as follows:

“For teaching the Latin and Greek Languages, Astronomy, Natural Philosophy, Natural History, Chemistry, and the higher branches of the Mathematics, or either of them, 37.5 cts. per week. All other branches of science taught in the Academy, 25 cents, and no deduction to be made for the fraction of a week.”

These academies were the principal form of secondary school in New York through the late 1800s. Most had a local board of trustees and charged tuition, but also received funds from the state. In 1813 the Board of Regents established the Literature Fund to aid academies in the purchase of educational materials. State government apparently occasionally attempted to use this fund as a weapon, as evidenced by this item from the Delaware Gazette of March 23, 1836: “The Assembly of this State have, without a dissenting voice, passed a resolution directing the committee on Literature to inquire into the expediency of withholding from the Oneida Institute the share of the Literature Fund which it is now entitled to receive—in consequence of its being made a nursery of Abolitionism.”

The amounts to be distributed were determined by the number of students in a given school and were drawn from that year’s revenue of the fund. A message from the governor, printed in the Delaware Gazette on January 23, 1856, noted that that year the “capital of the Literature Fund was $268,620.12, its revenue $16,831.26.”

The Jefferson Academy began as a school built by subscription shares, starting in 1812. Additional financing became necessary to finish the building and it was 1817 before it was complete enough to use. In that year Stephen Judd donated to his brother William Judd 108 rods of land contingent on it being used for the school. The building, fully completed in 1822, was a square forty-five feet on a side and three stories tall; it cost about $4,000, and was incorporated as the Jefferson Academy in 1824. The success of the school waxed and waned and in 1852 the land reverted to the Judd heirs.

Certainly by the 1850s, academies and seminaries were all over the area. Various newspapers in both Delaware and Schoharie counties continued to carry ads announcing the tuition fees and start dates of the terms at such institutes of higher learning. An 1857 ad for the Delaware Academy in Delhi shows a surprising situation—the prices had remained more or less constant since 1821.

“The tuition for the upcoming term of 14 weeks by subject: $3.50 for “common” English, $4.00 for higher English and

Mathematics, $5.00 for Latin, Greek, or French, $2 to $3 for Drawing, Flower, and Landscape painting, $10 for piano.” Students attending the Normal Department (teacher prep) attended for free, with a requirement that they attend at least four months a year.

Papers also carried news articles detailing the activities of “Commencement Week;” at the Stamford Seminary and the Delaware Academy, and probably elsewhere as well, these were treated as evening entertainments—recitations, musical performances, and debates—open to the public.

Most of these academies served students from outside the immediate area. In some, the school provided room and board, in others, the local villagers rented space to students. In the fall 1870 term at the Stamford Seminary there were 130 pupils, 55 of whom were boarders. A letter to the editor in the Coxsackie Union of July 4, 1855 lamented the fact that the Coxsackie Academy had difficulty recruiting students from outside its environs because local families were not accustomed to housing boarders. One might begin to see that the housing of students eventually paved the way for housing tourists.

One area school suffered a very serious loss. Several papers carried the story and followups. The July 25, 1854 issue of the Bloomville Mirror carried a report filed with a dateline of Schoharie, July 20, 1854:

“The examination of students connected with the burning of the Richmondville Seminary closed Tuesday night, and five of them were bound over to the next term of Court for trial. Robert Besson was bailed for $5,000, James Wood for $5,000, Henry Lamb $4,000, Benjamin McDonald $2,000—all boys under 15 years of age. They still refuse to tell all the particulars, but enough has leaked out to satisfy the public that the seminary was set on fire by these boys. The three first named carried shavings up to their rooms in their pockets, wet them with turpentine; removed some plastering, placed them in the ceiling, and one of them set them on fire, went down into the street, and when the alarm was given, fell in with others in aiding the escape of their fellow students and the removal of property.

“Previous to the fire, the boys and several girls were called into the room, told that they were going to burn the Seminary, and the Wood boy administered an oath to them swearing that they would not tell of it. The Lamb and McDonald boys done nothing toward setting it on fire, but happened to catch them at the work, and thus were obliged to take the oath. They say they had no idea they were actually going to do as they said. The Wood boy, on being asked why it was fired, said he had not seen a fire since he left New York—showing a thoughtlessness as to consequences.

“The Seminary will not be rebuilt, as the people in the vicinity have lost over $30,000 already, and are unwilling to hazard any more in such an enterprise.”

An editorial column of travels around the region from the same edition noted that the writer made “a short halt at Rich- mondville, where stood the large seminary building when we were there last fall, nothing but a few charred fragments of the structure now remain. There is some talk of rebuilding.”

Another article in the Bloomville Mirror, this one dated October 3, 1854, includes the name of the fifth student charged, Lory A. Palmer, but also states that all five were released on $5,000 bail rather than the lower amounts the first article claimed for several. An additional item in that issue notes that “At a recent meeting of the stockholders and officers of the Richmondville Seminary, it was decided to re-build of brick.”

The September 20, 1854 Schoharie Republican also reported that the stockholders and officers voted unanimously to rebuild. But it’s really hard to imagine that they were willing to rebuild because it wasn’t their first fire, and according to William Roscoe in his History of Schoharie County they did not. He described how in the spring of 1852,

“The citizens of this place concluded to make a permanent investment … in one of those palatial seminaries in which many communities become partial. During the summer of that year a building was erected … and school commenced in the fall under very flattering circumstances.

“One night in December of the same year an incendiary laid the whole in ashes, which was a heavy stroke to the stockholders.

“But believing in the wisdom of the investment a similar building was built the season following and opened for patronage in the fall of 1853. The success of this institution was considered certain, but in 1854 the second structure was burned and after an expenditure of nearly sixty thousand dollars, further efforts to rebuild were abandoned.”

James Wood was found guilty and sentenced to the House of Refuge. Benjamin McDonald was found not guilty and the other boys were not tried.

T. M. Bradshaw shares other thoughts on history at tmbradshawbooks.com.