Colonial days in old New York

								

Renssellaerwyck. I fear he was not a very reputable fellow, “people
did not speak well of him;” and he in turn was sued for slander; and
some really sad scandals were told about him, both in and out of court.
And some folk have also made very merry over the fact that he took in
washing, which was really one of the best things we know about him, for
it was not at all a disreputable nor unmanly calling in those times.
It doubtless proved a very satisfactory source of augmentation of the
wavering school-salary, in those days of vast quarterly or semi-annual
washings and great bleeckeryen, or laundries,--which his probably
was, since his bills were paid by the year.
A carpenter, Jan Cornelissen, tired of his tools and trade, left
Renssellaerwyck upon hearing of the vacant teacher’s chair in New
Amsterdam, went down the river to Manhattan, and in turn taught the
school for ten years. Jan was scarcely more reputable than Adam. He lay
drunk for a month at a time, and was incorrigibly lazy,--so aggravated
Albanians wrote of him. But any one was good enough to teach school.
Neither Jan nor Adam was, however, a convicted and banished felon, as
were many Virginian schoolmasters.
This drunken schoolmaster was only the first of many. Until this
century, the bane of pedagogy in New York was rum. A chorus of colonial
schoolmasters could sing, in the words of Goldsmith,--



    “Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains

      With grammar and nonsense and learning;

    Good liquor I stoutly maintain

      Gives genius a better discerning.”
Occasionally a certain schoolmaster would be specified in a
school-circular as a sober man; proving by the mentioning the
infrequency of the qualification.
As the colony grew, other teachers were needed. Governor Stuyvesant
sent to the Classis of Amsterdam for “a pious, well-qualified, and
diligent schoolmaster.” William Vestens crossed the ocean in answer to
this appeal, and taught for five years in one room in New York; while
Jan de la Montagne, with an annual salary of two hundred florins,
taught at the Harberg--later the Stadt-Huys--and occupied the position
of the first public-school teacher.
For years a project of building a schoolhouse was afloat. A spot had
been fixed upon, and some money subscribed. In 1649 the Commonalty
represented to the West India Company that “the plate was a long time
passed around for a common school which has been built with words,
for as yet the first stone is not laid.” In response to this appeal,
a schoolhouse was at last erected. Still another school was opened
by Master Hoboocken, who taught in the Governors’ bowery, where
Dutch-American children were already beginning to throng the green
lanes and by-ways. He was succeeded by Evert Pietersen, who was engaged
as “Consoler of the Sick, Chorister and Schoolmaster;” and all persons
without distinction were ordered not to molest, disturb, or ridicule
him in either of these offices, but to “deliver him from every painful