THE FIRST SCHOOLMASTER OF BOSTON. BY ELIZABETH PORTER GOULD. WHEN Agassiz requested to go down the ages with no other name than "Teacher," he not only appropriately crowned his own life-work, but stamped the vocation of teaching with a royalty which can never be gainsaid. By this act he dignified with lasting honor all those to whom the name "Teacher," in its truest meaning, can be applied. In this work of teaching, one man stands out in the history of New England who should be better known to the present generation. He was a benefactor in the colonial days when education was striving to keep her lamp burning in the midst of the necessary practical work which engaged the attention of most of the people of that time. His name was Ezekiel Cheever. When a young man of twenty-three years, he came from London-where he was born January 25, 1614-to Boston, seven years after its settlement. The following spring he went to New Haven, where he soon married, and became actively engaged in founding the colony there. Among the men who went there the same year was a Mr. Wigglesworth, whose son, in later years, as the Reverend Michael Wigglesworth, gave an account of Mr. Cheever's success in the work of teaching, which he began soon after reaching the place. "I was sent to school to Mr. Ezekiel Cheever, who at that time taught school in his own house, and under him in a year or two I profited so much through ye blessing of God, that I began to make Latin & to get forward apace." Mr. Cheever received as a salary for two or three years twenty pounds; and in 1643, while receiving this salary, his name is sixth in the list of planters and their estates, his estate being valued only at twenty pounds. In the year following, his salary was raised to thirty pounds a year. This probably was an actual necessity, for his family now consisted, besides himself and wife, of a son Samuel, five years old, and a daughter Mary of four years. Ezekiel, born two years before, had died. This son, Samuel, it may be said in passing, was graduated at Harvard College in 1659, and was settled as a clergyman at Marblehead, Massachusetts, where he died at the age of eighty-five, having been universally esteemed during his long life. Besides being the teacher of the new colony, Mr. Cheever entered into other parts of its work. He was one of the twelve men chosen as "fitt for the foundacon worke of the church." He was also chosen a member of the Court for the plantation, at its first session, and in 1646 he was one of the deputies to the General Court. It is supposed that during this time he wrote his valuable little book called The Accidence. It passed through seventeen editions before the Revolution. A copy of the eighteenth edition, printed in Boston in 1785, is now in the Boston Athenæum. It is a quaint little book of seventy-two pages, with one cover gone, and is surely an object of interest to all loving students of Latin. A copy of the tenth edition is found in Harvard College, while it has been said that a copy of the seventh is in a private library in Hartford, Connecticut. The last edition was published in Boston the judgment of the church and elders in 1838. In a prospectus, containing in regard to some cases of discipline, commendations of the work from many eminent men of learning, the Honorable Josiah Quincy, LL.D., president of Harvard College, said of it: "A work which was used for more than a century in the schools of New England, as the first elementary book for learners of the Latin language; which held its place in some of the most eminent of those schools, nearly, if not quite, to the end of the last century; which has passed through at least twenty editions in this country; which was the subject of the successive labor and improvement of a man who spent seventy years in the business of instruction, and whose fame is second to that of no schoolmaster New England has ever produced, requires no additional testimony to its worth or its merits." A copy of this edition is now in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Dr. David W. Cheever, of Boston, a descendant of the schoolmaster, also has one in his possession. There is another old book in the Boston Athenæum, published in 1757, containing three short essays under the title of Scripture Prophecies Explained. The first one is "On the Restitution of All Things"; the second is "On St. John's First Resurrection"; and the third, "On the Personal Coming of Jesus Christ, as Commencing at the Beginning of the Millenium described in the Apocalypse." These were written by Mr. Cheever, but at what time of his life there seems to be some doubt. They indicate his religious zeal, which at this time in New Haven was put forth for the good of the church. Although he was never ordained to the ministry, yet he occasionally preached. In 1649, however, he dissented from and for some comments on their action, which seemed to them severe, they brought charges against him. Two of the principal ones were: “1. His unseemly gestures and carriage before the church, in the mixed assembly;" and "2. That when the church did agree to two charges (namely, of assumption and partiality), he did not give his vote either to the affirmative or the negative." As showing some of the phases of a common humanity, the reading of the trial is interesting. Mr. Cheever, who was then thirty-five years old, was desired to answer these charges of unseemly gestures, which his accusers had brought down to a rather small point, such as holding down his head into the seat, "then laughing or smiling," and also "wrapping his handkerchief about his face, and then pulling it off again; and still another, "that his carriage was offensively uncomely," three affirming "that he rather carried it as one acting a play, than as one in the presence of God in an ordinance." In his answer to these, Mr. Cheever explained his actions as arising from violent headaches, which, coming upon him usually "on the Lord's day in the evening, and after church meeting," were mitigated by winding his handkerchief around his head as a fillet.' As to his smiling or laughing, he knew not whether there was any more than a natural, ordinary cheerfulness of countenance seeming to smile, which whether it be sinful or avoidable by him, he knew not; " but he wished to humble himself for the "least appearance of evil, and occasion of offence, and to watch against it." As to his working with the church, he said: "I must act with the church, and (which is uncomfortable) I must either act with their light, or may expect to suffer, as I have done, and do at this day, for conscience' sake; but I had rather suffer anything from men than make a shipwreck of a good conscience or go against my present light, though erroneous, when discovered." He then went on to say that, while he did not wholly free himself from blame as to his carriage, and as to his "want of wisdom and coolness in ordering and uttering his speeches," yet he could not be convinced as yet that he had been guilty of "Miriam's sin," or deserved the censure which the church had inflicted upon him; and he could not look upon it "as dispensed according to the rules of Christ." Then he closed his address with the following words, which will give some idea of his Christian spirit: "Yet I wait upon God for the discovery of truth in His own time, either to myself or church, that what is amiss may be repented of and reformed; that His blessing and presence may be among them and upon His holy ordinances rightly dispensed, to His glory and their present and everlasting comfort, which I heartily pray for, and am so bound, having received much good and comfort in that fellowship, though I am now deprived of it." At about this time of his trial with the church he was afflicted by the death of his wife. Three more children had been born to them-Elizabeth, Sarah, and Hannah. Soon after this, in 1650, and, it has been said, on account of his troubles, he removed to Ipswich, Massachusetts, to become master of the grammar school there. His services as teacher in New Haven must have been valued, if one can judge by the amount of salary received, for, in the case of the teacher who followed him, the people were not willing "to pay as large a salary as they had done to Mr. Cheever," and so they gave him ten pounds a year. After Mr. Cheever had been in Ipswich two years, Robert Payne, a philanthropic man, gave to the town a dwelling-house with two acres of land for the schoolmaster; he also gave a new schoolhouse for the school, of which this man was the appreciated teacher; for many neighboring towns sent scholars to him, and it was said that those who received "the Cheeverian education" were better fitted for college than any others. In November of this same year he married Ellen Lathrop, sister of Captain Thomas Lathrop, of Beverly, who two years before had brought her from England to America with him, with the promise that he would be a father to her. While living in Ipswich they had four children, Abigail, Ezekiel, Nathaniel, and Thomas; two more, William and Susanna, were born later, in Charlestown. Their son Ezekiel must have lived to a good old age, at least seventy-seven years, for as late as 1731 his name appears in the annals of the village parish of Salem, where he became heir to Captain Lathrop's real estate; while their son Thomas, born in 1658, was graduated at Harvard College in 1677, was settled as a minister at Malden, Massachusetts, and later at Rumney Marsh (Chelsea), Massachusetts, where he died at a good old age. After having thus lived in Ipswich eleven years, Mr. Cheever removed, in 1661, to Charlestown, Massachusetts, to become master of the school there at a salary of thirty pounds a year. The smallness of this salary astonishes and 46 suggests much to the modern reader; so much, that it is well worth reading. but when he is informed that the It is as follows: worthy teacher was obliged during his teaching there to petition the selectmen that his "yeerly salarie be paid to him, as the counstables were much behind wth him," the whole matter becomes pathetic. Mr. Cheever also asked that the schoolhouse, which was much out of order, be repaired. And in 1669 he is again before them asking for a "peece of ground or house plott whereon to build an house for his familie," which petition he left for the townsmen to consider. They afterward voted that the selectmen should carry out the request, but as Mr. Cheever removed in the following year to Boston, it is probable that his successor had the benefit of it. When Mr. Cheever entered upon his work as head master of the Boston Latin School, in 1670, he was fifty-seven years old; and he remained master of this school until his death, thirtyseven years later. The schoolhouse was, at this time, in School Street (it was not so named by the town, however, until 1708) just behind King's Chapel, on a part of the burying-ground. It has been said that the building was of two stories to accommodate the teacher and his family. This seems probable when we read that Mr. Cheever was to have a salary of sixty pounds a year, and the "possession and use of y° schoole house." But if he lived in the building at all, it was not very long, for he is later living in a house by himself; and in 1701 the selectmen voted that two men should provide a house for him while his house was being built. The agreement which the selectmen made with Captain John Barnet with reference to this house is given in such curious detail in the old records, and suggests That the said Barnet shall erect a House on the Land where Mr. Ezekiel Cheever Lately dwelt, of forty foot Long Twenty foot wide and Twenty foot stud with four foot Rise in the Roof, to make a cellar floor under one half of Sd house and to build a Kitchen of Sixteen foot in Length and twelve foot in breadth with a flush through out the maine house and to Chamber therein, and to Lay the floors make three paire of Stayers in ye main house and one paire in the Kitchen and to Inclose sd house and to do and complete all carpenters worke and to find all timber boards clapboards nayles glass and Glaziers worke and Iron worke and to make one Cellar door and to finde one Lock for the Outer door of said House, and also to make the Casements for Sd house, and perform Sd worke and to finish Sd building by the first day of August next. In consideration whereof the Selectmen do agree that the Sd Capt. Barnet shall have the Old Timber boards Iron worke and glass of the Old house now Standing on Sd Land and to pay unto him the Sum of one hundred and thirty pounds money, that is to say forty pounds down in hand and the rest as the worke goes on." Then follows the agreement for the "masons' worke" in all its details. Later on, in March, 1702, there is some discussion as to how far back from the street the house should be placed. But in June of that year the house is up, for the worthy dignities order that "Capt. John Barnard do provide a Raysing Dinner for the Raysing the Schoolmasters House at the Charge of the town not exceeding the Sum of Three pounds." This was done, for later they order the "noat for three pounds, expended by him for a dinner at Raysing the Schoolmasters House," be paid him. After Mr. Cheever's house had re |