Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/649

Rh In 1840 the State Census showed the population of Barrington to be 549; under fifteen years, 193; between five and fifteen of school age, 128; the town appropriated $50 for schools, the first made by the town; received from State $160.30; total, $210.30.

It was not until what was called the awakening of 1843, that public education received the general attention at all proportioned to its importance. The movement then inaugurated in the State Legislature by Hon. Wilkins Updike, and the appointment of Hon. Henry Barnard as School Commissioner of the State, by Governor Fenner, lie at the foundation of nearly all, in the history of public schools in our State or town that can be reviewed with any high degeee of satisfaction. Since that period no friend of education in our State need be ashamed of the progress made and the success that has been achieved. Of this movement, Barrington was one of the first to reap the advantage. Two new school buildings were soon erected, and a third was repaired and refitted. The new building in the South or Nayatt district, was one of the best of its grade in New England. Its furniture and fixtures were after the best models of the time. Through the efforts, chiefly, of two members of the district, the school was furnished with an excellent library of six hundred volumes, which, in connection with other influences, did much to elevate the standard of education in the town.

Mr. Barnard, in his report on school architecture, inserted a cut of the new Nayatt school house, and said of it, "The new schoolhouse in Dist. No. 2, Barrington, is the most attractive, convenient, and complete structure of the kind in any agricultural district in the state—and, it is believed, in New England." 34