384 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



proportion to its taxes, but that year it was voted to divide 

 the town according to the number of children. 



The basis, not of property, but of children, was then 

 for the first time inaugurated. The next year some 

 attempt was made to get the system back again to a 

 property basis ; but the vote was reconsidered, and 

 again the money was "proportioned by the number of 

 children." 



The divisions were now four : North End and South 

 End, meeting at the bridge near Christopher James' hotel 

 (Norfolk House), Beechwood and Jerusalem. The total 

 number of school children in the year 1796 was 472, of 

 whom 36 were at Jerusalem, 63 in Beechwood, 165 at the 

 South End, and 208 at the North End. The two hundred 

 dollars appropriated that year went, therefore, to these 

 in the order just named, $15.27, $26.69, ^69.91, and 

 $88.13.* The spirit of democracy was fairly begun by that 

 reform in proportioning school expenses, and the name of 

 the man who inaugurated it would be perpetuated if we 

 only knew him. 



At about this time, 1796, a private or at least semi- 

 public enterprise to educate the young was inaugurated; 

 it was the establishment of an academy. Two hundred 

 dollars for the schooling of four hundred and seventy-two 

 children was ridiculously small when compared with our 

 present-day appropriation of thirteen thousand dollars for 

 less than four hundred scholars. One century ago the 

 average amount paid by the town for each scholar for a 

 whole year was less than fifty cents, whereas now it is 

 nearly thirty-two dollars — sixty-four times as much. 

 Some of the citizens of those early times felt the town's 

 blunder in spending so little upon its children, and there- 

 fore they began to institute an academy upon the plan 

 of a joint stock company. 



*See Short Valuation by Elisha Doane for 1796. This census inchided children 

 younger than five years and older than fifteen years, our present limits. 



