Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/645

Rh with her sister states, in establishing a system of public schools, and even a Massachusetts-born town naturally and inevitably fell into the habits of towns of its own commonwealth, and from the date of its admission to Rhode Island its educational interests declined. In 1800 the legislature of Rhode Island passed a free school act, requiring each town to provide schools for the children of school age. By that act Barrington was required to maintain schools for four months in each year. The town voted, June 2, 1800, to adopt the act of the General Assembly in respect to free schools, and appointed a committee, consisting of William Allin, Ebenezer Peck, Nathaniel Smith, Amariah Lilley, Jeremiah Drown, and Benjamin Drown, to draw up a plan and report to the town. No report appears on the town records, and, as the free school act was repealed in 1803, we may assume that none was made, and there is no reference therein to free schools, until April 16, 1828, when it was voted that the following persons be a committee to superintend the free schools in the town, viz.: Sylvester Allin, Enoch Remington, Ebenezer Smith, Benjamin Medbury, Simon Smith, Samuel R. Martin, Jeremiah A. Drown, and John Kelley. Though there is silence in the town records as to schools for the period of twenty years from 1800 to 1828, the date of the adoption of the free school act, there is sufficient testimony from persons whose school days were embraced in that period, to prove that schools were kept at least three months in winter and two months in summer. The winter schools were kept by male teachers, usually college students, and the summer schools by the most competent young women that could be found. The wages paid to men was from $12 to $20 a month, with the privilege of "boarding around " the district, and to women $8 to $12 a month, with the same privilege as to board.

The following memoranda illustrate the business side of the tuition schools of that period:

Nov. 29, 1817. An agreement was made between Alva Carpenter of Seekonk, a member of the senior class of