SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 377 



guided by some private tutoring, either in school as spe- 

 cial students, companions of the teacher, or out of school 

 by some experienced mariner who passed along what he 

 had learned. Young navigators were always to be found 

 in Cohasset during the last century, studying distances 

 and courses upon the ocean, from shore to shore, such 

 as the practical sailing of a ship might require. The ac- 

 companying example taken from the book of Nathaniel 

 Nichols, Jr., 1745, is a fair illustration of what many 

 young men, brought up in this seacoast village, might have 

 done at that early date. 



Soon after the year 1750 schooling for seven months 

 of the year instead of three was in vogue, lasting from 

 November i to June i. During the years 1754 and 1755 

 Samuel Gushing, Esq., of Beechwood, taught for these 

 seven months, receiving annually p^i8 135'. A^d. He was a 

 justice of the peace, a man fifty-five years of age, and he 

 may have been needed to quell the school at a time when 

 it suffered a critical disturbance. The amount paid him was 

 a very small wage, but his legal business could be carried 

 on at the same time. In the year 1761 the town of 

 Hingham gave this precinct over ;^26 for the schoolmaster, 

 but it was not a satisfactory proportion of the ;£i^0 or 

 more devoted to the school purposes of the whole town. 

 The grammar school, which the province laws required 

 to be held in every town, was kept in the first precinct, 

 while the other two precincts had to help pay for it. 

 There is no evidence that Cohasset ever had a grammar 

 school while she was a precinct ; it was only " Reading, 

 Riting and Rithmetic," the " three R's," that the Co- 

 hasset schools could provide. 



Some eighteen years after the first little schoolhouse on 

 the plain, the precinct voted in 1752 to build two more 

 schoolhouses. It voted "also that three men who shall 

 be appointed by y"^ Parish shall order where each of 

 y"" shall be placed;" the design being probably thus to 



