374 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



go-as-you-please encounter, that pedagogue was no good 

 for that school. 



Learning was quite a secondary accomplishment in 

 teachers' fitness. For this reason the annual school com- 

 mittees had always to furnish a master, and not merely a 

 teacher. 



For a community so poor as this, where the annual 

 appropriation for schools did not exceed twenty pounds 

 but once in the first twenty years of the precinct life, no 

 man of experience could afford to be the master. The one 

 procured for the three months of each winter was a young 

 man who needed this bit of hard-earned money to help 

 him through his college course. 



At Hingham, in the first precinct, Cornelius Nye dur- 

 ing several years taught the public school for eight or nine 

 months ; but here, in the second precinct, only about one 

 third of that time was supplied. The first master for 

 Cohasset mentioned by name in the treasurer's book was 

 Samuel Holbrook, who taught for one hundred and three 

 days in 1734-35 and received ^19 15^-. \d., or less than 

 one hundred dollars. 



The place where this young man, one hundred and 

 sixty-four years ago, gathered his pupils, was in a little 

 building near by the church. At least a part of the one 

 hundred and three days were spent there. Possibly the 

 Beechwood inhabitants and those at Jerusalem had the 

 school in private houses of their own neighborhoods for 

 a part of the time ; but upon the plain at the center of 

 the precinct there was a little building for the school, 

 erected in the year 1734. The town government had 

 granted to this precinct a little .money for a schoolhouse, 

 and some school advocates had already started the little 

 building referred to ; for on October 7, 1734, this precinct 

 "voted that the frame now raised shall be here continued 

 and finished." 



They also voted "that the two arms of the precinct, 



