130 BOAED OF AGRICULTUKE. [Pub. Doc. 



of the cit}', the people of Boston, in town-meeting assem- 

 bled, requested ' Brother Philemon Piermont to become 

 schoolmaster for the teaching and nourteuring of children ' 

 in the town. In part pay thirty acres of land were voted 

 him by the young colony. At about the same time, ' a gar- 

 den plot was voted to Mr. Danycll Maude, schoolmaster,' 

 also." Other towns made similar provision until, in the 

 year 1642, in an attempt to make the privileges of the few 

 towns general, the Colonial Court enjoined upon all towns 

 the duty of providing these privileges in their several local- 

 ities. By this act the duty of making education universal 

 was enjoined. 



In 1647 the Massachusetts Colony passed a law providing 

 that every township of fifty householders should appoint a 

 schoolmaster to teach the children to read and write ; and it 

 was further ordered that " where any town shall increase to 

 the numl)er of 100 families or householders they shall set 

 up a grammar schoole, the Master thereof being able to in- 

 struct youth so farr as they may be fited for the University." 

 This act made the support of public schools compulsory and 

 education universal and free. By the year 1665, only forty- 

 five years after the first landing at Plymouth, every town in 

 Massachusetts had a common school, and, if it contained 

 over a hundred families, a grammar school. In 1683 all 

 towns of five hundred families were required to maintain 

 two grammar schools and two writing schools. 



In the autumn of the sixth year of the settlement of 

 Boston, September, 1636, the General Court of the colony 

 voted the sum of four hundred pounds ' ' towards a school or 

 college," and the following year twelve of the most trusted 

 men of the whole colony, magistrates and ministers, of politi- 

 cal foresight and abundant learning, were directed to execute 

 the ofiicial order, — in the language of the ordinance, "to 

 take order for a college at New Townc," the original name 

 of Cambridge. This was the beginning of Harvard Uni- 

 versity. During the two hundred and fifty years that have 

 elapsed since these foundations were thus laid the work has 

 been continued and enlarged. The public school system has 

 been established, private schools, academies and institutes 

 have been founded, one and another has been added to the 



