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 The First Schoolmaster of Boston. 223

��THE FIRST SCHOOLMASTER OF BOSTON.

By Elizabeth Porter Gould.

When Agassiz requested to go down and in 1643, while receiving this salary,

the ages with no other name than his name is sixth in the list of planters

"Teacher," he not only appropriately and their estates, his estate being valued

crowned his own life-work, but stamped only at twenty pounds. In the year

the vocation of teaching with a royalty following, his salary was raised to thirty

which can never be gainsaid. By this pounds a year. This probably was an

act he dignified with lasting honor all actual necessity, for his family now

thosf to whom the name "Teacher," consisted, besides himself and wife, of

in its truest meaning, can be applied, a son Samuel, five years old, and a

In this work of teaching, one man daughter Mary of four years. Ezekiel,

stands out in the history of New England born two years before, had died. This

who should be better known to the son, Samuel, it may be said in passing,

present generation. He was a bene- was graduated at Harvard College in

factor in the colonial days when educa- 1659, and was settled as a clergyman

tion was striving to keep her lamp at Marblehead, Massachusetts, where he

burning in the midst of the necessary died at the age of eighty-five, having

practical work which engaged the been universally esteemed during his

attention of most of the people of that long life.

time. His name was Ezekiel Cheever, Besides being the teacher of the

When a young man of twenty-three new colony, Mr. Cheever entered into

years, he came from London — where other parts of its work. He was one of

he was born January 25, 16 14 — to the twelve men chosen as "fittfor the

Boston, seven years after its settlement, foundacon worke of the church." He

The following spring he went to New was also chosen a member of the Court

Haven, where he soon married, and for the plantation, at its first session,

became actively engaged in founding and in 1646 he was one of the depu-

the colony there. Among the men ties to the General Court. It is sup-

who went there the same year was a posed that during this time he wrote

Mr. Wigglesworth, whose son, in later his valuable little book called The Acci-

years, as the Reverend Michael Wiggles- dence. It passed through seventeen

worth, gave an account of Mr, Cheever's editions before the Revolution. A copy

success in the work of teaching, which of the eighteenth edition, printed in

he began soon after reaching the place. Boston in 1785, is now in the Boston

" I was sent to school to Mr. Ezekiel Athenaeum. It is a quaint little book

Cheever, who at that time taught school of seventy-two pages, with one cover

in his own house, and under him in gone, and is surely an object of interest

a year or two I profited so much through to all loving students of Latin. A copy

y« blessing of God, that I began to of the tenth edition is found in Har-

make Latin & to get forward apace." vard College, while it has been said

Mr. Cheever received as a salary that a copy of the seventh is in a pri-

for two or three years twenty pounds ; vate library in Hartford, Connecticut.

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