Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/196

 152 THE HISTOEY OF BARRINGTON. rector of King's Chapel, Boston, in 1689, and died in 1729, after an able ministry of forty years over one people. And the girls, — well, we know not how our intelligent grand- mothers and grand aunts would have figured in the world, and how different a figure we should have cut to-day, had it not been for the schools and teachers of that ancient time. In 1698 the selectmen met and treated with Jonathan Bosworth to be schoolmaster for the town for the year en- suing and to teach school in the several places of the town by course. The town records the fact as follows : "At ye meeting for choice of Town Officers March 28, 1699. Also then voted and confirmed the agreement the select- men made with Jonathan Bosworth for schoolmaster this present year and to begin teaching the first month on Wanamosset neck ye second month on New Meadow neck ye 3d month on Kicamuet ye 4 month at Barttroums neigh- borhood ye 5th at Mattapoiset, and so successively and to have 18^ per annum one fourth part in money the other 3 parts in provisions at money price." In 1695, it was proposed and concluded "that any part of the town that neglects to provide a convenient place for teaching school, that then the other part of the town that doth provide and accommodate shall improve said school- master." In 1 701, pedagogue Bosworth is still teaching with his salary increased to ^^20 and his itinerancy extended from Wannamoisett to Bartram's, and " he to satisfie for his diet out of his wages." In 1702, the Court of Quarter Sessions at Bristol has fined our old town for want of a grammar schoolmaster the sum of ;C^, and the selectmen are au- thorized to procure a grammar schoolmaster with all con- venient speed, and in November, 1702, we find that they have agreed with one Mr. John Devotion to give him ;£i2, current money of New England, to be paid quarterly, and the town to pay for his diet ; " that he shall in the year remove in ye four quarters of ye town," and they also allow him ;^20 to be paid by the town for the keeping of his horse.